Technical Information for Recording your Talk

Presenter Information

This page provides information to presenters at IEEE VIS about how to prepare your recorded talk.

Please read the following instructions carefully for guidelines on preparing your video recordings for VIS 2021, or a VIS 2021 associated event. You will need the following information in order to prepare your recorded Presentation Videos as well as your Video Preview if required.

Work must be submitted via IEEE CPS by 5:00pm Pacific Time (PDT) on the dates listed below.

Video Previews:

• VIS Full/Short Papers: Aug. 15
• All Other Events and TVCG/CG&A Presentations: Sept. 1

Presentation Videos:

• Full/Short VIS Papers, TVCG/CG&A Presentations: Sept. 8, Sept. 12
• Symposia/VisInPractice/VISAP: Sept. 15, Sept. 19
• Workshops/Tutorials/Challenges: Sept. 22, Sept. 26

IEEE Visualization 2021 is a fully virtual conference

Presentations at IEEE VIS 2021 will consist largely of the streaming of prerecorded videos with small live interaction components. Live presentations will be reserved for special scenarios (e.g., a keynote presentation, short opening or closing by the chairs). The majority of talks and sessions should be prerecorded to avoid potential issues impacting the event (e.g., networking, time zones, etc.).

Only those answering questions or facilitating the session will be in the interactive Zoom call Watching the session will be done through embedded content available on the IEEE Visualization 2021 Web Page. Questions by the audience will be asked over sli.do, a chat application seamlessly embedded in the web page. Session chairs will relay questions on sli.do to the speaker(s) on the Zoom call. Discord and GatherTown options will be available for socializing or discussions.

Video previews are a great opportunity to publicize your work or event to a wide audience. Video previews are accessible from the conference website on the VIS YouTube channel prior to, during, and after the conference.

IEEE Visualization allows authors to release their video preview on websites and any social media platform prior to the conference, but authors should not release their presentation videos to the public until AFTER the conference. Do not upload your presentation vide to YouTube, as such videos may conflict with the conference uploads.

File Naming Convention

• All files (videos, subtitles, images) are uploaded through IEEE CPS: please use the following guidance when naming your submission materials.

• Name all files with the following convention: [EventPrefix]_[PaperID]_[FirstAuthorLastName]_[SubmissionItem].[ext].

• For the the [EventPrefix] please find your event or track in the tables below. Your event organizers will send any additional information about the unique identifier they expect you to use.

Technical Information for Recordings

Your submission consists of three pieces:

1. Video Preview
   • A 25-second video that clearly communicates the research and contribution, inviting readers to read your paper.
   • Please do NOT include the paper title or authors’ information. The FF chairs will add these as a 5-second title slide in front of your 25-second video in a consistent way.
   • Must be self-contained.
   • Despite recent years’ Fast-Forwards sessions, we discourage humor and trailer-like ‘ads’ because the video will exist for a long time and can be shared widely by the authors on social media and other channels.
   • Should contain audio narration. However, we discourage background music and request that the video focuses viewers’ attention on the content.
   • Subtitles are mandatory to increase accessibility. See below for tips on how to create and include subtitles
   • File Name: [EventPrefix]_[PaperID]_[FirstAuthorLastName]_Preview.mp4
   • Example: v-full_0001_Smith_Preview.mp4
2. Presentation Video
   • Must follow the formatting described below.
   • Subtitles are mandatory to increase accessibility. See below for tips on how to create and include subtitles
   • File Name: [EventPrefix]_[PaperID]_[FirstAuthorLastName]_Presentation.mp4
   • Example: v-full_0001_Smith_Presentation.mp4
3. Representative Image
   • Authors are asked to submit a representative preview image that will be used as an icon next to the listing of the paper on our web pages.
   • File Format: png
   • Image Size Limit: 1920 x 1080 Maximum
   • You will also be asked to provide a plaintext file with an image caption (100 words or less).
   • File Name: [EventPrefix]_[PaperID]_[FirstAuthorLastName]_Image.png
   • Example: v-full_0001_Smith_Image.png

Guidance for creating both and requirements for file encoding and naming are provided below. Videos will be streamed live to YouTube and the YouTube video is embedded in the conference website during the conference, please make sure your videos do not contain copyrighted audio or video content.

Presentation Length

• VIS Video Previews: 25 seconds, Maximum file size: 50MB
• VIS Full Papers, TVCG/CG&A Presentations: the maximum length of your talk is 15 minutes, including questions. We recommend a 12 minute talk with 3 minutes for questions. At least 1 minute must be left for questions.
• VIS Short Papers: the maximum length of your talk is 10 minutes, including questions. We recommend a 8 minute talk with 2 minutes for questions. At least 1 minute must be left for questions
• Associated Events: please consult your associated event for information.

Recorded Videos Format

Recorded videos played during your event (e.g., paper presentations) must be formatted and named following the VIS talk recording guidelines.

To make full use of the 16x9 video aspect ratio we recommend using the 16x9 wide format Powerpoint template that can be used for your presentation. Feel free to download the template with imperial measurements or metric measurements.

All video submissions must meet the following requirements:

• 1920x1080 resolution at 30FPS
• Maximum Size:
  • 50MB for Video Previews
  • 500MB for VIS Full and Short papers
  • Associated event talk sizes and lengths may vary, please see your associated event for details
• MPEG-4 using H.264 encoding (file extension is .mp4)
• Audio: We discourage salient music to focus viewers’ attention on the content. If you want to have music, you must certify that any audio is free from copyright or that you are licensed to use it.
• Verification:
  • To encode/re-encode your video in the right format, you can use the free software Handbrake
  • To check that your video is in the right format, you can use the free software MediaInfo

Recording Your Talk

We recommend using OBS Studio to record your presentation, which is free and cross-platform. If you are familiar with other recording software please feel free to use it instead. Watch our tutorial on Youtube or via direct download for a guide on how to use OBS Studio to record your talk, should you choose to use it. Please also see our guide for information on recording a compelling and high-quality talk. We do not recommend using Powerpoint’s built in recording since the recording is done per-slide, so if you speak during a slide transition the audio will not be recorded. These issues can be tough to catch and fix.

After recording your talk, please rewatch it to ensure the video and audio are recorded correctly.

Mandatory: Providing Subtitles with Your Video

There are a number of tools that are available to generate captions for you, which you can download and include with your video. Among the free options, YouTube, Veed.io, and Facebook, for example, have free tools that automatically create closed captions and make it possible to download these.

Please note two important things for this:

• 1) in general it takes some time to generate the files and needs correction (particularly with uncommon words or terminology), so you should take this into account so that the video is finished before the deadline;
• 2) if you use a social media platform to generate subtitles, please do not publish the video completely (not even private or unlisted) as it will interfere with the conference and will increase the work on the student volunteers and might lead to delays.

There are also a number of paid services that enable the transcription of videos, such as Amberscript. Lastly, it is also possible to manually create the subtitles using for example the YouTube captioning tool, Adobe Premiere Pro, or Amara. Regardless of the tool you are using, please make sure that the subtitles are accurate and correctly timed for the benefit of all attendees. Videos containing subtitles have a considerably higher engagement and retention rate than one’s without.

After the captions have been created (automatically or by hand), you can download them by going to the subtitles page when editing your video information in YouTube Studio. You can then click the three dots next to the subtitles you want to download and select download from the menu to download the .sbv or .srt file containing your subtitles. Make sure that you manually correct the generated subtitles for errors by directly editing the .srt file in a text editor. Include this file with your video, following the same naming convention: [EventPrefix]_[PaperID]_[FirstAuthorLastName]_<Presentation|Preview>.sbv or [EventPrefix]_[PaperID]_[FirstAuthorLastName]_<Presentation|Preview>.srt. This process is also demonstrated in our talk recording tutorial on Youtube or via direct download.

You can test your subtitles by playing your video in VLC with the .sbv file in the same directory so that VLC will find it. Then right-click the VLC window and select the subtitle menu item to pick your subtitles to play during your video. During the conference, your video will be played using the “small” subtitle size setting in VLC.

If you create the captions using a different software package, subtitles in the .srt format are also acceptable.

Conference Track and Associated Event Prefixes

Additional event prefixes will be added shortly. If your track is not listed, please check for updates later as all track chairs are finalizing their decisions.

For questions or more information, please email tech@ieeevis.org.

Technical Committee

• Will Usher, SCI Institute, University of Utah
• Alexander Bock, Linköping University
• Micha Schwab, Google