A Multi-Scale Timeline Slider for Stream Visualization and Control

Abstract

We present a new user interface technique for the visualization and playback of long media streams decorated with significant events. Our Multi-Scale Timeline Slider allows users to precisely focus on a specific location in a very long media stream or set of streams based on significant events while also retaining the stream's entire context. KEYWORDS: Timeline slider control, multimedia streams, visualization, focus + context. INTRODUCTION Applications in automated capture and access for ubiquitous computing generate large amounts of captured streams of information (such as video) and events related to these streams (such as when a particular person in the video is talking). Users often browse the media streams using significant events to help pinpoint an exact location to playback. For example, a user might want to review a series of captured meetings that span a period of 3 months in order to discover what "deadlines" were discussed. This may be accomplished by annotating the vi...