Automatic Content Repurposing for Mobile Applications

Stéphane Cloarec received a master's degree in signal processing from the University of Rennes in 1991. He graduated from Ecole Supérieure d'Electricité (SUPELEC) in 1993 with a degree in computer science and telecommunications. Cloarec first held project management and product management responsibilities with Wavetek Wandel Goltermann/Acterna (now JDS Uniphase) in digital transmission, mobile transmission, and digital television test and measurement. He joined Thales Broadcast & Multimedia in 2002 to run the product management activities for MPEG broadcasting products. Now with Thomson, Cloarec is the director of product management for digital television head end applications.

Philippe Guillotel is a distinguished scientist at Thomson-Technicolor Corporate Research, in charge of video perception, processing, and coding research. He has worked in the media and broadcast industry for more than 20 years. Before joining Thomson, he received a Technology & Science Master I from the University of Rennes I in 1986, and graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications (ENST) with an engineer diploma in telecommunications in 1988. In addition to his work on video coding systems and compression algorithms, Guillotel's work at Thomson has covered video processing, video delivery, as well as human perception and video quality assessment studies. He is the author of more than 50 patents. The automatic content repurposing solution proposed, enables broadcasters to adapt traditional content to the specific constraints of handheld devices, both automatically and in realtime. The goal is to provide customers with the best possible viewing experience. Automatic content repurposing solution rests mainly on the dynamic reframing (also called retargeting) of content. It aims at identifying the regions of interest and zooming in on these regions. Although initially dedicated to mobile TV, this solution could also target broadcast, PDAs, portable devices, or internet and web publishing. Thanks to this new and unique approach, broadcasters and content owners now have the ability to adapt content for multiple distribution platforms in a cost-effective way. Compared to the classical approach, the proposed reframing solution delivers a superior viewing experience by focusing on the most visually interesting areas. Based on a human visual model, this unique solution dramatically reduces the repurposing tasks.