General Overview

We are going to use Gathertown as the virtual platform for the conference.  The oral sessions will occur in special rooms, designated for a particular session.  The poster sessions will take place in a poster room, with individual poster easels for each poster presenter.

Oral Presentation Instructions

Oral presenters will have 15 minutes to present, followed by 4 minutes for questions, and 1 minute for speaker change.  The 15-minute presentation will be pre-recorded and the video or a link to the video must be uploaded to https://forms.gle/nV9NSe8bE7cokmc3A by Sept 17.  The pre-recorded presentation will be played by the organizing committee.  At the end of the presentation, the video will be stopped and the 4-minute question session will begin.  This portion of the presentation will be live on Zoom and one of the authors is requested to be present.  

Poster Instructions

You will have a poster station set up.  Your station will include your embedded pdf poster and a short video about your work so that the participants can get to know your work at any time. The pre-recorded portion will be a 8-min video poster presentation, as if to a live audience.  Some options for the pre-recorded presentation: using the Poster itself as the backdrop and zooming into relevant sections or translating the poster into a short set of slides and advancing as the poster presentation progresses.

 

Please submit a 1-page poster PDF with 16:9 ratio (landscape) and the video or a link to your video by Sept 17 to https://forms.gle/nV9NSe8bE7cokmc3A

 

For your poster, an image with the following characteristics is also welcome:

  • .png,  .jpg, .webp format
  • at least 1000px for the width
  • at least 600px for the height
  • max 3MB in size
  • We recommend a minimum DPI of 72, but this is not a requirement. 

 

Technical Requirements for Uploaded Videos

The following technical requirements apply to all video submissions at ACII. Please note that videos that do not adhere to these guidelines may not be processed. It is your responsibility to ensure these requirements are met.

Format recommendations

  • Recommended: full-screen screencast of the slides, with a picture-in-picture video of the presenter.
  • Acceptable Alternatives: full screen of slides with audio of speaker or slides and speaker video side-by-side.
  • Other presentation formats can be used (e.g., include a short demo in the presentation), keeping in the spirit of what kind of presentation you would have delivered at the conference.

See A Remote Video Presentation Guide for more details.

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).

Captions

All pre-recorded conference presentation videos must be closed captioned. Allow time to prepare this, especially if using an AI-based service. Submit a closed-captioning file in .srt or .sbv format with the video. Here are two examples of closed captioning done well: Example 1, Example 2.

YouTube provides free tools for generating closed captions (instructions for using YouTube), either starting from a transcript of the dialog (recommended), or using their automated speech recognition and correcting the result. YouTube will add the timings to sync it to the audio. Download the .sbv or .srt file and delete your video when you are finished.  Zoom also provides this functionality.

Filename

The file names should have only alphabets and numeric characters with no spaces or special characters. 

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.
  • Accompanying closed caption file in .srt or .sbv format.

File Size

Please ensure that the videos are no larger than:

  • For Video Presentations: up to 200MB
  • For Teaser Video: up to 30MB

Handbrake provides good compression results and is available for OSX, Windows and Ubuntu.

Encoding to MPEG-4/H.264 (.mp4)

All the videos should use 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. ACII does not accept software applications or digital video clips requiring a specific computing platform or additional software to play. You can also upload your video to Youtube (private) and check that it plays correctly.

Accessibility Considerations

In addition to providing closed captions, use the tips for creating an accessible presentation in this 5 minute video. Remember that some people will not be able to see your slides, so the presentation should be understandable from the script alone.

Please avoid using effects in your video that could trigger an adverse reaction. For example, flashing lights can induce seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy. Avoid using animations (simple appear/disappear is ok), unsteady camera work, flashing strobe lights, loud sounds, or repetitive alarms. If you include components, such as police car lights and sirens, consider warning viewers at the start of the video or right before the content so they can look away or mute their computers. The Trace Center offers an analysis tool to help authors assess whether their video is safe for people with photosensitive epilepsy (https://trace.umd.edu/peat/).

Third-party material and Copyright

Authors retain copyright to videos, but the AAAC requires that you sign an agreement allowing the ACII to distribute the material. Please fill in this form and upload the signed agreement via https://forms.gle/nV9NSe8bE7cokmc3A so that they can present their work at ACII 2021.

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 ACII conference. You are encouraged to use Creative Commons content, for example music available at ccMixter or Newgrounds. In addition, YouTube’s copyright education website provides useful information on reusing 3rd party material.

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.