(1) [After mid-August] Create a login on the LML Course Manager: https://LCM.liacs.nl and then
(2) Register for Course: Multimedia Systems

Period: Sept. 6 - Dec. 13 (tentative)
Time: Lectures 13:15-15:00
Place: see MyTimeTable

- See Leiden StudyGids website and MyTimeTable

Organizers:

Prof. dr. Michael Lew, (Lecturer) email: lewmsk@gmail.com (Email to make an appointment)

Dr Erwin M. Bakker, (Lecturer) email: erwin@liacs.nl

Cong Ning, (Teaching Assistant)

      Students: In emails, please use subject lines which start with MS: (e.g. MS: Help on project)

Goals

At the end of the Multimedia Systems course, the student should be able to

- understand how scientific researchers view multimedia systems
- have insight into the state-of-the-art in the prominent areas of scientific multimedia research including social computing, advanced Internet technologies, speech recognition, robotics, computer vision, video tracking, and biometrics
- have insight into building a multimedia system from diverse core technologies.
- have insight into the challenges and limitations of current multimedia systems
- scientifically evaluate a multimedia system
- build a prototype multimedia system

Description:

Multimedia systems is a wide and diverse area. In this course we focus on the scientific view of multimedia systems as presented in major conferences and journals. The intention is to focus on current research trends such as social computing, speech recognition, robotics, and computer vision and gain insight into what is novel from a modern scientific perspective. From a practical standpoint, the technologies may be areas where the student will do further research, take in-depth courses in the specific area (i.e. Speech Understanding) or be used as components for future multimedia systems.

This is a masters level course, where instead of having only lectures and an exam, we have a combination of lectures and student presentations and novel programming projects. Two projects which emphasize the students vision on future multimedia technologies are mandatory: (1) In the future vision video project, the student is expected to show their own vision on how multimedia technology will effect society in the future. (2) In the final project, the students create a working prototype of a novel multimedia system based on thier own vision and interests. In summary, we show you the diverse landscape of multimedia technology as a broad foundation, and based on that foundation you develop your own interests and vision. This year, we will discuss the following topics in multimedia systems: speech recognition, social computing, robotics, vision & machine learning (OpenCV, CUDA), video understanding & retrieval, and biometrics & face recognition.

There are workshops and project discussions during the semester, which are meant to provide reinforcement, practical experience, feedback and advice for each student’s application. Late submissions are always penalized and may not be submitted 2 days or more after the deadline. For every assignment, to receive credit, each student must submit their own answer whether they are working alone or in teams (2 people on a team means 2 submissions). Class discussion is important and is included as part of the grade.

Prerequisites: The student should be fluent in C/C++ programming (Equivalent of 6 months programming experience in C or C++)

Examination (6 EC):
- Multimedia Project: Design & Programming & Documentation for your multimedia system (60% of grade).
- Future Vision Project (10% of grade): Create a short video of the future.
- Class discussions, attendance/participation (you should be at every class), homework, and problem sets (30% of grade).

Table of contents/Topics

- Introduction to multimedia systems
- Important areas of scientific multimedia research
- Challenges in scientific multimedia research
- Social computing
- Collaborative filtering
- Advanced internet technologies
- Speech recognition and audio analysis
- Robotics
- Planning
- Computer vision
- Video analysis and tracking
- Biometrics

Schedule (tentative)

Each lecture is meant to be a blend of past, present, and future trends

09-06 - Course Introduction & Social Computing I

09-13 - Future Vision Examples, Multimedia Project Discussions and Demos (Michael)

09-20 - Social Computing II and Student Perspectives (Michael)

09-27 - Project Discussions (Michael, Erwin)

10-04 - no class

10-11 - Future Vision Expo (Michael, Erwin)

10-18 - Speech Recognition (Erwin)

10-25 - Speech Recognition Workshop (Erwin)

11-01 - Project Progress and Direction (Michael, Erwin)

11-08 - Robotics (Erwin)

11-15 - Robotics Workshop (Erwin)

11-22 - Visual Learning (Michael)

11-29 - no class - work on Final Projects

12-06 - Project Expo

12-13 - (if necessary additional Expo session)