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 Preview, and Video Presentations.
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.
- Video Previews are 30-second summaries of your publication, an “elevator pitch” of your work. Only authors of accepted submissions in the following tracks are invited to submit a Video Preview: technical papers, case studies, alt.chi, interactivity and late-breaking work. The video previews 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 Presentations are 5-minute pre-recorded videos that substitute the onsite presentations at the conference. This video presentation will be archived in the ACM Digital Library alongside your research paper, as well as on the SIGCHI YouTube channel. They will be also stored on the online conference platform and played during live streaming.
Also see:
Technical Requirements
The following technical requirements apply to all video submissions at CHI. Please note that videos that do not adhere to these guidelines may not be processed, and may not appear in the ACM DL or SIGCHI YouTube channel. It is your responsibility to ensure these requirements are met.
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
- For Video Figures: 100 MB. Paper submissions are maximum 120MB in total: paper + video.
- For Video Previews: up to 20MB
- For Video Presentations: up to 200MB
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, 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
Presentation Format (Video Presentations only)
- 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 for Video Figures, and up to 4 seconds for Video Previews).
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.
If you use automatic speech recognition, or other AI-based captioning tools (e.g. otter.ai), it is essential to review your closed captions and correct any errors.”
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 their video is safe for people with photosensitive epilepsy (https://trace.umd.edu/peat/).
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.
Video Previews may 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.