CinemaGazer: a System for Watching Video at Very High Speed

TL;DR

CinemaGazer introduces a high-speed video viewing system with adaptive playback control and subtitle display features, enabling faster viewing while maintaining comprehension and reducing fatigue.

Contribution

It proposes a novel two-level fast-forwarding scheme with subtitle display enhancements, adaptable for mobile devices to improve high-speed video watching experience.

Findings

Effective high-speed viewing demonstrated in evaluation

Subtitle display features reduce viewer fatigue

Versatile encoder supports various playback speeds

Abstract

This paper presents a technology that enables the watching of videos at very high speed. Subtitles are widely used in DVD movies, and provide useful supplemental information for understanding video contents. We propose a "two-level fast-forwarding" scheme for videos with subtitles, which controls the speed of playback depending on the context: very fast during segments without language, such as subtitles or speech, and "understandably fast" during segments with such language. This makes it possible to watch videos at a higher speed than usual while preserving the entertainment values of the contents. We also propose "centering" and "fading" features for the display of subtitles to reduce fatigue when watching high-speed video. We implement a versatile video encoder that enables movie viewing with two-level fast-forwarding on any mobile device by specifying the speed of playback, the reading rate, or the overall viewing time. The effectiveness of our proposed method was demonstrated in an evaluation study.