ViGOR: a grouping oriented interface for search and retrieval in video libraries

In this paper, we present ViGOR (Video Grouping, Organisation and Retrieval) a video retrieval system that allows users to group videos in order to facilitate video retrieval tasks. In this way users are able to visualise and conceptualise many aspects of their search tasks and carry out a localised search in order to solve a more global search problem. The main objective of this work is to aid users while carrying out explorative video retrieval tasks; these tasks can be often ambiguous and multi-faceted. Two user evaluations were carried out in order to evaluate the usefulness of this grouping paradigm for assisting users. The first evaluation involved users carrying out broad tasks on YouTube, and gave insights into the application of our interface to a vast online video collection. The second evaluation involved users carrying out focused tasks on the TRECVID 2007 video collection, allowing a comparison over a local collection, on which we could extract a number of content-based features. The results of our evaluations show that the use of the ViGOR system results in an increase in user performance and user satisfaction, showing the potential of a grouping paradigm for video search for various tasks in a variety of diverse video collections.