DCU at MediaEval 2011: Rich Speech Retrieval

We describe our runs and results for the Rich Speech Retrieval (RSR) Task at MediaEval 2011. Our runs examine the use of alternative segmentation methods on the provided ASR transcripts to locate the beginning of the topic, assuming that this will capture or get close to the starting point of the relevant segment; combination of various types of queries and weighting of metadata to move the relevant segment higher in the ranked list; and different ASR transcripts to compare the influence of the ASR transcripts quality. Our results show that newer versions of the transcripts and use of metadata produce better results on average. So far we have not used information about the illocutionary act type corresponding to each query, but analysis of the retrieval results shows difference in behaviour for queries associated with certatin classes of act.