This guide provides information for preparing a supplementary digital video for submission to any of the CHI venues where videos are accepted.
These requirements and general guidelines apply to Video Figures, Video Previews and Video Showcase submissions.
Videos are at the core of CHI: they help explaining and promoting your research within the community and to the general public. It is important to understand the different kind of videos that can be submitted to CHI venues:
- Video Figures are supplementary material of your submission and illustrate the key aspects of the work you submitted to a venue (such as Papers). They usually last up to 5 minutes, and whether they are mandatory or optional depends on each venue. Video Figures of accepted submissions are archived in the ACM Digital Library as part of their associated publication.
- Note: Originally, this page stated that a 5 minute Video Figure could be submitted with accepted Late Breaking Work submissions. This is not the case. A 5 minute Video Figure will not appear in the ACM Digital Library for LBW papers.
- Video Previews are 30-second summaries of your publication, an “elevator pitch” of your work. Only authors of accepted submissions are invited to submit a Video Preview, which are later published on Youtube to help attendees plan their conference. Video Previews also appear in the ACM Digital Library next to your publication’s abstract. Selected Video Previews are featured in the conference Teaser Video.
- Video Showcase is a stand-alone venue: the submitted video must be its own contribution, and will be shown in a theater-style setting at the conference. Accepted submissions are archived in the ACM Digital Library and published in a dedicated playlist on SIGCHI’s Youtube channel.
Also see:
Technical Requirements
The following technical requirements apply to all video submissions at CHI.
Format
- Resolution must be at precisely 1080p (1920 x 1080)
- All videos must be encoded as an MP4 using the H.264 codec.
- Videos must be in a 16:9 aspect ratio.
File Size
- For Video Figures: 100 MB. Paper submissions are maximum 120MB in total: paper + video.
- For Video Previews: up to 20MB
- For Video Showcase submissions: up to 100MB
Handbrake provides good compression results and is available for OSX, Windows and Ubuntu.
Encoding to MPEG-4/H.264 (.mp4)
The Video Previews require MPEG-4 encoding using the H.264 codec (file format .mp4). Most video editing software (such as iMovie, Adobe Premiere, Camtasia, and Final Cut Pro) provides an exporting option to MPEG-4/H.264. There are also a number of free encoding solutions you can use:
- x264 can encode any video into H.264.
- For Windows users, Freemake Video Converter and Handbrake both provide good results.
- For OSX users, we recommend Handbrake and other free converters available through the Apple App Store (e.g. Miro Video Converter).
- For Linux users, FFmpeg is a well-known transcoding solution.
Important: Encode your video using square pixels for the pixel aspect ratio to avoid your movie looking stretched when projected.
Note: We do not endorse or are responsible for the use of any of the software mentioned in this guide.
If you compress your video with unusual software or codecs you risk the possibility that reviewers will not be able to watch your video, and it may need to be re-encoded for the ACM Digital Library. CHI does not accept software applications or digital video clips requiring a specific computing platform or additional software to play. Before submitting, we also invite you to check the compliance of your file using the CHI Video Checker. You can also upload your video to Youtube (private) and check that it plays correctly.
General Guidelines
Opening Title
You must include the Title, Authors of the work and affiliations at the beginning of the video, either as a title shot or as an overlay text. Make sure that you leave the title for long enough of a duration to be read (up to 10 seconds for Video Figures, and up to 4 seconds for Video Previews).
Captions and Subtitles
All spoken dialog must be closed captioned (subtitled) to improve accessibility. You should include subtitles or captions to your video to guarantee that it can be consumed in places with ambient noise, where sound is unacceptable, and by hearing-impaired individuals.
A closed-captioning file, in .srt or .sbv format should be submitted along the video. There are several free, easy ways to caption your videos. We recommend uploading your video to YouTube and use the provided captioning tools; You can keep the video private or unlisted and delete it immediately after. You have the choice to manually create all captions, or let YouTube automatically generate captions and manually correct them. Afterwards, you can download the .sbv file. A step-by-step tutorial is available here.
The following examples demonstrate good practices for captions and subtitles: bottom banner, top banner and full part of the visual support.
Important note: Your captions do not necessarily have to stick to the voice over. Importantly, your video must be understandable without the sound. Here is an excellent example of a video preview that is equally understandable with or without the sound, while the captions are not subtitles.
Meta-Data
Please remember to review the meta-data properties of your digital file.
For submission to an anonymized venue, all meta-data that could identify the authors should be removed. For non-anonymized venues or camera-ready versions, Please remember to review the meta-data properties of your digital file and insert appropriate identifying comments at the submission time: Author, Title, and Copyright information.
The camera-ready version of your video submission should contain a title slide with the title, authors, and affiliations. Titles and credits should last no more than 10 seconds (and no more than 3-4 seconds for Video Previews).
Third-party material and Copyright
Authors retain copyright to videos, but ACM requires that you sign an agreement allowing ACM to distribute the material.
It is very important that you have the rights to use all the material that is contained in your submission, including music, video, images, etc. Attaining permissions to use video, audio, or pictures of identifiable people or proprietary content rests with the author, not the ACM or the CHI conference. You are encouraged to use Creative Commons content, for example music available at ccMixter or Newgrounds. If you need to use copyrighted protected work, you are required to review and comply to ACM’s Copyright and Permission Policy and ACM’s Requirements about 3rd party material. In addition, YouTube’s copyright education website provides useful information on reusing 3rd party material.
Note: You will be asked to confirm that you agree with these policies on the final submission form.
Accepted Video Showcase submissions and Video Previews will be uploaded to YouTube. YouTube will show advertisements with videos that contain monetized audio content, regardless of what copyright is associated with that content. To ensure that your video can show without advertisements, we recommend that you upload your video to YouTube in advance before submission, set to “private”, to check whether it is used for monetization.
Sanity check
Please ensure that content is appropriate in terms of rights and taste, does not contain inappropriate language, viewpoints or imagery and is unlikely to cause offence to any individuals or groups either present at the conference or beyond.
This document draws and simplifies heavily on the Guides for Submission written by previous CHI and CSCW video chairs, originally published on the CHI’99 Conference website.
