Special Session - [VR4B-2026] Video Retrieval for Beginners Call for Papers

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22nd International Conference on Content-based Multimedia Indexing, CBMI 2026
 Toulouse, France, October 21-23, 2026

https://cbmi2026.sciencesconf.org/

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[CBMI2026] Special Session - [VR4B-2026] Video Retrieval for Beginners

Despite the advances in automated content description using deep
learning, and the emergence of joint image-text embedding models, many
video retrieval tasks still require a human user in the loop. This is
particularly true when the information need is fuzzy (e.g., a question
about the content), or when the underlying dataset is homogeneous,
i.e. contains data from one domain, differing in small details and
with little or no editorial structure.

Interactive video retrieval (IVR) systems address these challenges. In
order to assess their performance, multimedia retrieval benchmarks
such as Video Browser Showdown (VBS) or Lifelog Search Challenge (LSC)
have been established. These benchmarks provide large-scale datasets
as well as task settings and evaluation protocols, allowing to measure
progress in research on IVR systems. However, in order to achieve the
best possible performance of the participating systems, they are
usually operated by members of the development team. This setting does
not allow to properly measure usability aspects of the system, which
are important in order to deploy them successfully in a target
application context, where they need to be operated by domain experts
rather than video retrieval researchers.

This special session aims at providing better insights into how such
systems are usable by users with a solid IT background, but unfamiliar
with the details behind how the system operates. The special session
thus calls for papers describing IVR systems, focusing on the features
that make them usable by these users, and will provide a forum for
demonstrating and testing these systems.

The contributions to this session will be short papers (4 pages +
references), describing the participating IVR system, or multiple such
systems to be compared. In contrast to papers such as those submitted
to VBS or LSC, these papers should focus on the usability for users
that are not retrieval experts, and the search and browsing features
expected to be of particular interest to these users. Papers may also
provide analysis of a system’s performance in VBS, LSC or a similar
competition, and present hypotheses concerning the usability of the
system by novices to be tested in the interactive session at CBMI.

The review process is single-blind, i.e. submissions do not need to be
anonymized. The papers will be reviewed by two reviewers of the
special session (organizers or other IVR experts) and at least one
reviewer from the general pool of CBMI reviewers.

Important dates :

Paper deadline: 20 APRIL  2026 

Notification: 22 MAY  2026

Camera-ready: 15 JUNE 2026

Paper submission  : Author Guidelines

Please indicate in the comments that this paper is for SS VR4B-2026

SS chairs

    Werner Bailer, JOANNEUM RESEARCH, Austria
    Cathal Gurrin, Dublin City University, Ireland
    Björn Þór Jónsson, Reykjavík University, Iceland
    Klaus Schöffmann, Klagenfurt University, Austria