This week is the mad rush for completing all the required work we need to complete before next Wednesday! We have to do up a powerpoint, poster, video, demo and personal reflection. And I am tasked with mainly the powerpoint and the design of the poster.
On Monday, Yong Chun, me and Xu Liang met with our TA to discuss on our progress as well as what we should work on. We showed him the first draft of our report which was done mainly by Keith and explained to him our concept of the what the final algorithm should look like. We also showed him the demo done by me and Xu Liang. He quickly read through the report and notified us of certain aspects that we should improve on such as the video skim transitions as well as including more elaboration as the entire process then still was not very clearly stated leaving him quite lost if he were to just read the report alone without the help of our explanation. Following which, he told us that the though flow of how the algorithm works seems to be fine and that he will discuss with Professor Sun to see if he thinks it is alright. Lastly, on the demo, he said that the final abstracted video was way too long and advised us to shorten it especially if we were to present it during the presentation. He also advised that the abstracted video should have guiding words so that the viewer will not be lost as he felt quite lost watching the abstracted video.
Following his advice, we got to work each on our respective sections, where Xu Liang further improved on the aesthetics of the demo while I worked on improving the abstracted video and Yong Chun focused on refining the report together with Keith. Following which, on Thursday, we had a theme meeting again to catch up on each other’s progress as well as to decide how we intend to do up the video. Yong Chun came up with a simple storyboard as the foundation of the video before we started the meeting. This meeting was also mainly for the TA to convey to us what the professor thought about our project thus far. After the TA discussed with professor Sun, he told us that professor Sun is ok with our algorithm process, however, he suggested that for the demo, we made it more interactive by adding an editing section after the abstracted video is completed. This editing section is recommended by making a reference to Alibaba Wood, where Alibaba has an online interface allowing us to produce simple short videos by inputting a Taobao product url. This editing section will only be providing simple add-ons and editing features such as changing the order of the video skims as well as inputting words/subtitles. As such, there would be a manual aspect to it such that users can review and ensure that the output is of a certain quality.
We then split the work after discussing, where Xu Liang will continue working on the demo making the editing aspect a reality while Keith works on finishing up the report. Yong Chun and Matthew will then work on the video while I work on the powerpoint. Finally, the poster will be left to whoever finishes their work first. For the next few days, I have been thinking of many different ways to present our idea such that the logic flows properly and that the audience would be able to understand our algorithm to a certain extent. I would not say that the work is particularly hard, however the animations in the powerpoint together with writing the script took a significant portion of my time. As such, I was not able to help out much with the poster before Monday.
However, I did manage to find some free time to destress as well as to enjoy the time here. I went to a few Korean restaurants with fantastic food, a Mexican store with amazing burrito and a burger store that sells black burgers. They were all amazing dishes and gave me a good time off the stressful rush for completing the deliverables. Overall, this week has been pretty satisfying and I am looking forward to next week with the final presentation coming up.
