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Sports Highlights via AI 129

Posted by michael from the sportscenter-replaced-by-small-shell-script dept.
nazarijo writes "Found via Brian Chin's Weblog, it looks like scientists and researchers at Microsoft are working on ways to automatically discover game highlights. This article in the New Scientist discusses several research groups, some in Europe, working to make these ideas a reality. Microsoft research is doing this, too, with highlights from the Mariner's shown as examples. A choice quote from the end of the MSR piece: 'By hitting the highlights of baseball games, we get to view only the best parts of multimedia life. And who knows what's next? Maybe political speeches will become shorter, or the eleven o'clock news will last only 5 minutes, the witty banter between news anchors edited out.'"
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Sports Highlights via AI More

Sports Highlights via AI

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  • They have this now...! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) * on Saturday July 10, 2004 @04:03PM (#9662723) Homepage
    Maybe political speeches will become shorter, or the eleven o'clock news will last only 5 minutes, the witty banter between news anchors edited out.'

    They have this now. It's called the internet. news.google.com is a great example. Pick the news that you want it, when you want it - without the witty banter!
    • I much as I like google news, you only get a very small crossection of the news. Personally, I like to read through a couple of news sites to get a broader view of whats going on in the world.
      • Oh, come on!

        Asserting that the news.google.com is a small cross-section of the news might be true, but the 11 o'clock news is a much smaller cross section then.

        Anyway, I think the 11 o'clock news (which lasts one hour) already is 5 minutes if you deduct all the time spent on adverts. If you run it through the highlights alg. you will end up with:

        CIA - nucular - evil - kerry.

        That is 3 seconds at most.
        • I think the future of news will be through products such as this [violet.net] with siple colour coded displays such as red for "news are bad" or green for "news are good". The details of the news are irrelevant anyway.
          • I always figure that news was singular, as in the New York Times statement "All the news that's fit to print" of course being a contraction of "that is". Having written that, dictionary.com [reference.com] tells me that it is a plural noun used with a singular verb. That seems to me to be an overly pedantic classification since I would probably say "The news today states blah blah but it is usually biased that way." However, seeing as how you are a non-American English speaker, you would also pronounce schedule startin
            • Actually, despite my being a non US, non American and non UK English speaker, in short having English as my second language, I wholeheartedly agree with you in that "news" is basically singular (or at least invariant). I probably should have written "news today is bad".

              Although now that I think a bit more about it, I meant news as "the sum of all of today's news". Would it still be singular then ? Now I'm confused.
    • news.google.com has a bad habit of spotlighting articles from al-Jazeera and other sources whose objectivity is highly questionable.

      • Re:They have this now...! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Somehow i feel it wouldn't be a problem if Fox or CNN's newsoutlets were the top ones at Google.
      • news.google.com has a bad habit of spotlighting articles from al-Jazeera and other sources whose objectivity is highly questionable.

        Why is al-Jazeera news "highly questionable"? Do you have an example of a misreported story, or is it just that they are based in the "Axis of Evil" and have no office in Atlanta.

      • Admit it, you just miss the "fox news alerts" about the peterson trial and/or m jackson. ;->
    • "Maybe political speeches will become shorter"

      For the last 4 years our president has said nothing more meaningful than the "word of the day" printed on the banner behind him.

      At least on Sesame Street they also have a number and letter of the day too.

      In the 19th century Lincoln would give very long speeches that actual served to inform and convince. Sadly our soundbite world has replaced thought with 5 second bits with no context or depth.

      Nobody should be in too much of a hurry to think for themselves. Fo

      • Yet how interesting it is, that Lincoln's most memorable speech, even in its own day, is also one of his shortest.

        Oh, and if you're trying to blame Bush for whatever's under your craw, you might check your math. Bush has been President for three years and six months. Sesame Street also has two letters each day, but I guess you can't count that high.

  • A really long time ago (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 10, 2004 @04:04PM (#9662735)
    Apple had this "summarize" feature that was going to be incorporated into Sherlock that could take a document and "summarize" it in a few paragraphs. I remember it being uncannily good at picking out what the most important sentences from a document were. Like I remember in one demo they fed it the text of "hamlet" and it spit out about four lines of dialogue from various points in the play that actually did a pretty good job of highlighting what happens over the course of the play...

    Unfortunately this feature was never given a proper interface and eventually kind of disappeared into the midst of time. What happened there?

  • potential of abuse (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cRueLio ( 679516 ) <cruelio@@@msn...com> on Saturday July 10, 2004 @04:08PM (#9662765) Homepage Journal
    dont mean to sound paranoid, but couldnt people controlling these systems control the media? people that could censor shit even more than it is today?

    • Re:potential of abuse (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Right now the media controls the media. Maybe someday your Tivo will control the media...

      This isn't that bad. If your Tivo is controlling what you see and hear, you can turn the Tivo *off*. If what you see and hear is limited to what CNN feels like reporting on, you're screwed. You can't turn CNN's biases off.
    • I don't know about you, but I trust a hypothetical automated system far more than I trust the CNNs and Jayson Blairs of the world.
    • The highlight reel is nice when you have no time and want "just the facts, ma'am", but at what point do you cross over into Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 territory? As a society, are we sure we want just soundbytes, especially when those soundbytes can be presented out of context. No, i didn't RTFA, just speculating here. On saturday night, no less.
      • Judging by the success of the absurd Fahrenheit 9/11, it's clear that society DOES want just soundbytes, even when presentired entirely out of context in a misleading and incorrect fashion.
        • How is that different than CSPAN where what the reps say isn't what goes in the congressional record? When they say "reserve the right to revise and extend" that means that they can, at some point in the future, change totally what they said on the floor. IOW, what they say for the cameras isn't what is recorded in the official record.
    • That is a possiblity, but to me this sounds like a good technology to put in a set top box, so that it can discard any (so-called) "witty banter", thus saving space.

  • sudden crowd noise = key events (Score:5, Insightful)

    by keyshawn632 ( 726102 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @04:11PM (#9662779) Journal

    Usually during big plays and events worthy of next morning's [espn] sportscenter; the crowd usually gets extremely loud, in a short burst of time. They [software makers] could use this to their advantage, and record footage when the db level is above a certain amount, say 100 [give or take 15 secs. ,before and after, the length of time of the desired db level.

    • Re:sudden crowd noise = key events (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What if the big play is by the road team? And there are other times the crowd gets silent so detecting changes in the crowd noise probably wouldn't help too much.
    • You could be onto something here.

      The times when the fans chatter isn't such quite, but disorganised - during lulls in play, when people's minds begin to wander, these dont need recording.

      But when the crowd does something in unison - all hush up, the roar after a goal, the collective intake of breath - whatever it actually is doesn't matter, its that it caught the attention of most of the audience, so you sitting at home should also pay attention.
    • Yeah, but then how are they going to get highlights from Expos games?
  • Maybe political speeches will become shorter, or the eleven o'clock news will last only 5 minutes, the witty banter between news anchors edited out.

    I don't know about everyone else, but I only watch the news on television because of the hot anchor eye candy [trb.com]. Take that away and TV news has no advantage over reading news on the web at all.

    Yes, I do have a thing for asian chicks.

    • Re:No witty banter?!?! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Ark42 ( 522144 )

      Well if it doesn't exist yet, look for a cross between a bonzi buddy, clippy, desktop girl, asian chick, and windows narrator comming soon.

    • Re:No witty banter?!?! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Scaba ( 183684 ) <joe.joefrancia@com> on Saturday July 10, 2004 @04:29PM (#9662875)
      Yes, I do have a thing for asian chicks.

      And Asian chicks have a thing for you, too - it's called a restraining order.

    • I don't know about everyone else, but I only watch the news on television because of the hot anchor eye candy.

      You do have a point.
      The "highlights" depend upon what a person considers to be of interest.
      Do we get only the parts of the news which are done by a particular reporter or anchor person?
      Do the highlights of a car race include the first turn, pit stops, strategy development, crashes, last lap... or not? (Indy 500: 312 laps of green light racing by car 27)
      "The Terminator" highlight options, choos

  • maybe (Score:5, Funny)

    by blue_adept ( 40915 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @04:12PM (#9662788)
    the eleven o'clock news will last only 5 minutes, the witty banter between news anchors edited out.

    oh oh, this technology could wipe out the slashdot comments section entirely!
  • I remember playing BattleTech a number of years ago before WotC made its huge decline. After the game it would print out a summary of how you did in the game on a piece of paper and a number of TVs would replay the game, selecting the most interesting action at the time to be shown.

    I imagine it was a lot easier to do with BattleTech because all the variables are already in the computer and it knows exactly what happened. It must be harder to do with video or whatever (sorry, I didn't RTFA) because the comp

  • Or.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by soliaus ( 626912 )
    Or Microsoft will stop trying to control the content available to the target audience?

    Ok, doesnt really make sense, but consider this. How many people want software deciding what is important to see and what is not? During WWII, if the ENIAC decided whether I was to recieve medical treatment on the battlefield over some other person, I would be quite pissed...even if I was chosen to recieve treatment.

    Basically, I view this as another method of limiting something we are already freely available to do, b

  • Baseball highlights? (Score:5, Funny)

    by payndz ( 589033 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @04:18PM (#9662816)
    Wouldn't the highlights to a baseball game be:

    "Yer out! Home run! Home run! Yer out! Yer out! Home run! Thank you, and goodnight!"

    • They do this in Arizona already, actually (according to my old roommate). They'll cut everything but the action, and can fit a complete baseball game into a half-hour to an hour's broadcast. Never having been to Arizona, I can't testify to the truth of this. Anyone wanna chime in?
      • They don't just do this in Arizona, it happens on ESPN (or maybe it was FOX) all the time (or did a few years ago).

        But, this really misses the point of a good baseball game, and people who don't like baseball will never understand that the slowness of the game is a plus, there is a lot of stategy in baseball, and it gives you time to puzzle it all out.

        There is also a wonderful antisipation that comes along with baseball. It is the only sport I follow. I used to watch the pitch-only games when I'd miss t
    • But Who's on first?
    • but because it's a MS product, it would be more like

      "Yer out! Home run! Home run! Yer out! Yer out! Ho-" Warning: Unrecoverable Error. System Halted.

      Of course this is a feature since you no longer need to listen to that annoying microsoft sam's voice.

  • Great, great (Score:4, Funny)

    by Jesrad ( 716567 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @04:21PM (#9662828) Journal
    I can totally see this helping with the never-stopping shrinking of attention span.

    [This comment kept short so it can be read in less than 8 seconds]

  • Oh, God. No! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Mad Martigan ( 166976 )
    I could definately do without the witty banter on the news (yet another reason to get your news online from Google, the NY Times, the BBC, whomever), but I am greatly troubled by the idea that political speeches could get even shorter. Short political speeces are the worst aspect of politics in my opinion. Why deliver a twenty minute oratory that fully explores and explains your views on an issue, when you can just repeat some trite soundbyte that will fit into the alloted 20 seconds on the news? Seriously

    • Re:Oh, God. No! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Scrameustache ( 459504 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @04:51PM (#9662978) Homepage Journal
      I am greatly troubled by the idea that political speeches could get even shorter.

      It'd be great!

      Bush: Terrorists! 9/11! God!
      Kerry: I'm not Bush!

      See, all of their points, neatly summerised. Saves everyone time. : )
      • Of course all the politicians automatically flag the important bits of their speeches these days with that annoying loud, slow, word-enuniciating voice:

        "The terrorists are trying to ruin our way of life. But we will fight to keep our way of life and the terrorists will know that AMERICA! WILL! NEVER! GIVE! UP!"

        Seriously, do they really need to speak like that? And has anybody else noticed that that style of speech seems to be growing... It used to be confined to the state of the union address but thes

      • Kerry: I'm not Bush!

        Don't you mean:

        Kerry: I'm not Bush!
        Kerry: No, wait. I am Bush!
        Kerry: N, wait. I'm not Bush!

  • too bad all the mariners highlights (Score:3, Funny)

    by omicronish ( 750174 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @04:24PM (#9662847)
    Too bad all the Mariners highlights this year will probably be of the opposing team :/
  • A 3 day test match in 30 minutes!

    • Re:How about Cricket (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jfengel ( 409917 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @04:29PM (#9662878) Homepage Journal
      Like baseball, I've always assumed that the length of a cricket match was one of the beloved features to its devotees. As baseball fanatic George Will has pointed out, baseball is the only major team sport without a clock.

      If you cut a baseball game to its "highlights", you're really missing the game. I assume it must be the same way in cricket. It's gotta be, because the game utterly baffles me.
      • totally right... baseball's a game of suspense, not highlights. If you want the highlights, just skim the scorecard afterwards.
      • Like baseball, I've always assumed that the length of a cricket match was one of the beloved features to its devotees.

        Well, for baseball, it gives you time to get good and drunk and then sober up...

        For cricket, I believe that the lenght is so everyone has time to figure out what the HELL is going on. Takes about 3 days per match...
      • If you cut a baseball game to its "highlights", you're really missing the game.

        If someone wants to watch a quick game of baseball, go watch some kids play. But don't watch the teams that have tryouts, watch houseleague games.

        The best game I ever saw was the championship for a small tournament at the local park. I believe the kids were 7-9 years old. Here, pitching for younger kids is done with a pitching machine (used to be the coaches but the pitching machine gives the kids some accuracy). The game went
      • There was an interesting piece on NPR a while ago. The guy was arguing that the popularity of Nascar was due to the increasing computerization of work. Guys like to watch Nascar because it's still mostly mechanical. Most of them worked on cars in their youth, not computers.

        Going back, people who grew up on farms and moved in to the cities got factory jobs in cramped spaces with a tyrranical clock. Baseball is played in fields, with no clock pressures. A lot of slow paced standing around with bursts of acti

    • Look, if the game has finished two days short, you'll have plenty of spare time to watch the highlights.

      (For the non-cricket followers, an international match of proper cricket - there are shorted fast-food versions -is scheduled to last 5 days, though many will finish in 4. If it's over in 3, someone got seriously stuffed.)

      I have to agree with the basefall fans below. The time it all takes is part of the fun. Like any drama has a natural pace; the unbelieveable tension that can be created on the 5th da

  • Track Tivo (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Needles ( 132340 )
    This is easy, simply track what segments of the game everyone rewinds in Tivo. We know they can already do this! They anounce how many times Janets Breast was reviewed!

  • Hmm (Score:3, Funny)

    by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @04:26PM (#9662860) Journal
    Microsoft and sports on Slashdot.. isn't that like an African american at a KKK meeting?
  • In a previous post, I mentioned how I thought it was a bad idea for most content to be further compressed, especially politics. I wonder what this trend does to the field of journalism? More and more it seems that the job of a news person is to play back a choice clip of some event rather than to analyze it and provide context.
    • I agree, there is a problem here.
      I think it is quite scary that people consider "good news" is supposed to come from reuters or google news in blurt form "without witty banter".
      That is not good news, that is insipid, and usually uninteresting information! Whatever happened to investigative journalism, well argued opinion pieces and editorials!
      Contrast articles on the guardian [guardian.co.uk] for example and stuff found on google from AP or reuters, or even the online edition of BBC news (which is becoming more borin
      • >> not as interesting as seeing how a whole game progressed, say, in football (soccer).

        Indeed. Without seeing the 98% of the game where the ball hangs around midfield, I wouldn't know what's going on!

        • no you wouldn't, actually; the ball is doesn't hang midfield, it's being founght for--and usually there are differences in strength and tactics that make that part fun.
          A game can be tense or relaxed, one-sided or evenly played--and when a goal happens, it can be a direct consequence of 30 minutes of pressure, or a complete surprise.
          Some games, of course, can be incredibly boring--but that is part of it too. The Italian team for example is/was famous for its oft-criticised safe defensive "boring" game, w
      • "iraq "sexed up dossier"

        Sounds like "Sell Sell Sell" by Barenaked Ladies; the part where the subject, an actor, is now a news reporter (note how good they were at predicting the future in 2000):

        We choose a foreigner to hate,
        The new Iraq gets more irate
        We really know nothing about them, and no one cares
        Aladdin and the forty thieves
        Enhanced by brand new special effects
        Saddam and his cow disease spiced up
        With some gratuitous sex

  • computer football (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @04:33PM (#9662897) Homepage
    I saw this in Front Page Sports Football '95. The game would pick out 5 plays from each game and save them as highlights. This even worked for the games you simulated between computer-controlled teams. It was pretty predictable stuff, long passes and 1-yard runs for TDs. The computer had a real predilection for fumbles, though, which irked me. Once in a while you'd get an actual interesting one, like a trick play that worked, or career-ending injury. Heh. Career-ending injuries. Too bad that franchise went downhill fast after '95...a few years later they were refunding people's money because the company publically admitted they'd shipped a crappy product.
  • cliff notes for real life:
    Coming soon: "The 50 Minute Friendship" (highlights only) and "Best of Marriage" for the professional on the go (includes 40 hours of heart to hearts, 60 hours of distilled personal growth, and 260 minutes of orgasms)

  • This isn't a job for automation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by voidstin ( 51561 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @04:40PM (#9662929)
    Isn't this a job much better accomplished by a person? A well trained person at that.

    For example, on DirecTV, the NFL Sunday Ticket package delivered 3-5 minute highlights for every game. However, the highlights on NFL primetime (also about 3-5 minutes per game) were edited with so much more flare, personality, and smart analysis that there was no comparison. Same game, often the same shots, but the human factors made all the difference.

    For events broadcast to wide audiences, why would you not want a talented editor to cut the footage? Is the technology going to be cheaper than a good editor? I doubt it.
    • Are these the same editors that show 9 minutes of LA Lakers highlights, and 1 minute of Detroit Pistons highlights, despite the fact that the Lakers got their asses handed to them on a platter?

      Media people have personal biases, which they let show through in their work. It's a fact. An automated system would curtail this.

  • when the sound of the crowd peaks rewind 15 seconds and there you go. i can't think of many other ways of doing this and there can't be much fault behind this way.
  • These dudes are using AI to capture a hockey game and record the highlights. The game can then be made into icons and replayed on your mobile phone. The print artcile was better because they showed some screenshots.

    http://www.eetimes.com/issue/tech/showArticle.jht m l?articleId=21401293&kc=6265 [eetimes.com]

    --
    3 more Gmail invitations availiable [retailretreat.com]
  • ...changes things over time....

    So the real question is: how often will you need an upgrade to get the highlights..... or..... how long untill everything is written to trigger off the highlight function?

    The way to make something not real is to let everyone in on it..... like countering the damage of the Black-Scholes Formula and the trillion dollar bet loss...

  • the crowd (Score:2, Redundant)

    by itzdandy ( 183397 )
    how about measure the volume of the crowd and the 'tone' for cheering or booing, add 5 seconds before the cheering or booing, and thats your highlight.

    the crowd get excited so it must be good, if the crowd is bored then i'll be bored.

    works for sports, but not the news.

  • We have a weiner (Score:3, Informative)

    by sacrilicious ( 316896 ) <qbgfynfu.opt@recursor.net> on Saturday July 10, 2004 @05:32PM (#9663133) Homepage
    From Simpsons 1F15:

    At the KBBL studios, Bill and Marty's boss gives them a dressing-down.

    Boss: Look, our ratings are down, and the station is being swamped
    with angry calls and letter-bombs.
    [A few letter-bombs explode in a pile]
    And it's all your fault!
    Bill: Yes it is, ma'am.
    Boss: This is the DJ 3000. It plays CDs automatically, and it has
    three distinct varieties of inane chatter.
    [presses a button]
    DJ 3000: [stilted] Hey, hey. How about that weather out there?
    Woah! _That_ was the caller from hell.
    Well, hot dog! We have a weiner.
    Bill: Man, that thing's great!
    Marty: _Don't_ praise the machine!
    Boss: If you don't get that kid an elephant by tomorrow, the DJ 3000
    gets your job.
    [Marty punches it]
    DJ 3000: Those clowns in congress did it again. What a bunch of clowns.
    Bill: [laughs] How does it keep up with the news like that?
  • But the witty banter is what makes watching news fun! Edit out commercials and worthless news-that's how it should work.
  • I could do with a similar interface for conversing in general......like a stimulus to inform me when i'm actually supposed to be kicking my brain into gear.
  • Slashdot News Before Filter:
    nazarijo writes "Found via Brian Chin's Weblog, it looks like scientists and researchers at Microsoft are working on ways to automatically discover game highlights. This article in the New Scientist discusses several research groups, some in Europe, working to make these ideas a reality. Microsoft research is doing this, too, with highlights from the Mariner's shown as examples. A choice quote from the end of the MSR piece: 'By hitting the highlights of baseball games, we get t

  • Who controls who controls the content? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mirkon ( 618432 ) <`mirkon' `at' `gmail.com'> on Saturday July 10, 2004 @07:22PM (#9663558) Homepage
    Automatically picking out highlights? Cool.

    But the "political speeches will become shorter" idea scares the hell out of me. Hiding behind an "artificially" intelligent program would be the perfect way for someone to censor broadcasted information to their own ends.
    • I can see it now.
      (watching futurama)
      TV: This interuption is part of the emergency broadcast system
      (President George W. Bush is sitting in his oval office)
      Bush: Americans, today ... this act of terrorism ... Launch major overseas offensive ... get me a balogna sandwich on white bread with mayo only
  • Hell, they can edit out most of the so-called "news" while they're at it.
  • Removing the commercials will do the trick.
  • Anytime the software detects motion other than just grass growing, crotch scratching and tobacco spitting - that's a highlight. This will still make for a very brief highlight reel for any given game.

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