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This paper presents three empirical studies that unravel how the devices of multimodal cohesion support viewers' narrative interpretation of scene transitions in film. The linguistics-informed method of cohesion analysis in film uncovers the establishment of cohesive ties between characters, objects, settings and characters' actions. Previous studies using eye-tracking and comprehension tests already indicate the significance of multimodal cohesion in people's comprehension of background settings within a continuous scene. The present paper investigates further whether film cohesion impacts viewers' story comprehension across different scenes and settings. Moreover, it also explores whether the spatio-temporal relations between scenes is a significant factor, along with cohesive devices, in viewers' scene comprehension. Methodologically, we create contrasting film situations by manipulating cohesion structures and spatio-temporal orders of scenes. Our comparative analyses of viewers' comprehension of these different film situations reveal that the presence of cohesive cues significantly can influence viewers' accurate scene comprehension. Through testing the inter-relation of cohesion, spatio-temporal order, characters' intention and viewers' time perception, this paper offers new avenues for further exploration of space, time and coherence in film.

The unnatural panoramic image transition between two adjacent viewpoints reduces the immersion and interactive experiences of 360° panoramic walkthrough systems. In this paper, a dynamic panoramic image rendering and smooth transition algorithm for adjacent viewpoints is proposed. First, the feature points of adjacent view images are extracted, a robust matching algorithm is used to establish adjacent point pairs, and the matching triangles are formed by using the homonymous points. Then, a dynamic transition model is formed by the simultaneous linear transitions of shape and texture for each control triangle. Finally, the smooth transition between adjacent viewpoints is implemented by overlaying the dynamic transition model with the 360° panoramic walkthrough scene. Experimental results show that this method has obvious advantages in visual representation with distinct visual movement. It can realize the smooth transition between two indoor panoramic stations with arbitrary station spacing, and its execution efficiency is up to 50 frames per second. It effectively enhances the interactivity and immersion of 360° panoramic walkthrough systems.

In the current study, we examined how the saccadic system responds when visual information changes dynamically in our environment. Previous studies, using the double-step task, have shown that (a) saccade plans could overlap, such that saccade preparation to an object started even while the saccade preparation to another object was ongoing, and (b) saccade plans could be cancelled before they were completed. In these studies, saccade targets were restricted to a few, experimenter-defined locations. Here, we examined whether saccade plan overlap and cancellation mechanisms could be observed in free-viewing conditions. For each trial, we constructed sets of two images, each containing five objects. All objects have unique positions. Image 1 was presented for several fixations, before Image 2 was presented during a fixation, presumably while a saccade plan to an object in Image 1 was ongoing. There were two crucial findings: (a) First, the saccade immediately following the transition was sometimes executed towards objects in Image 2, and not an object in Image 1, suggesting that the earlier saccade plan to an Image 1 object had been cancelled. Second, analysis of the temporal data also suggested that preparation of the first post-transition saccade started before an earlier saccade plan to an Image 1 object was executed, implying that saccade plans overlapped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Error concealment, a decoder based technique, attempts to reconstruct the corrupted regions of a video frame, using spatial and/or temporal correlation. For sequences with high temporal correlations, the performance of Temporal Error Concealment (TEC) techniques are better than Spatial Error Concealment (SEC) techniques in terms of PSNR of the reconstructed frames. However, the performance of TECs deteriorate drastically at the scene boundary due to low temporal correlation with the reference frame. In this paper, we propose a novel encoder controlled transition detection scheme which would facilitate selection of concealment strategy, that makes a choice between our newly proposed edge-direction based SEC technique and a TEC scheme. Exploiting Motion Vector (MV), Sum of Absolute Difference (SAD), and Motion Compensated Histogram Difference (MCHD), scene transition is detected at the encoder. A single bit transition status flag per frame is then sent to the decoder as a part of the header information to select the concealment policy between TEC and SEC. The present work also proposes a new edge-directed spatial error concealment, termed as 'Directional Edge Based Spatial Error Concealment' (DEBSEC), which outperforms existing techniques in terms of PSNR and SSIM of the concealed frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unnatural panoramic image transition between two adjacent viewpoints reduces the immersion and interactive experiences of 360° panoramic walkthrough systems. In this paper, a dynamic panoramic image rendering and smooth transition algorithm for adjacent viewpoints is proposed. First, the feature points of adjacent view images are extracted, a robust matching algorithm is used to establish adjacent point pairs, and the matching triangles are formed by using the homonymous points. Then, a dynamic transition model is formed by the simultaneous linear transitions of shape and texture for each control triangle. Finally, the smooth transition between adjacent viewpoints is implemented by overlaying the dynamic transition model with the 360° panoramic walkthrough scene. Experimental results show that this method has obvious advantages in visual representation with distinct visual movement. It can realize the smooth transition between two indoor panoramic stations with arbitrary station spacing, and its execution efficiency is up to 50 frames per second. It effectively enhances the interactivity and immersion of 360° panoramic walkthrough systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have shown that saccade plans during natural scene viewing can be programmed in parallel. This evidence comes mainly from temporal indicators, i.e., fixation durations and latencies. In the current study, we asked whether eye movement positions recorded during scene viewing also reflect parallel programming of saccades. As participants viewed scenes in preparation for a memory task, their inspection of the scene was suddenly disrupted by a transition to another scene. We examined whether saccades after the transition were invariably directed immediately toward the center or were contingent on saccade onset times relative to the transition. The results, which showed a dissociation in eye movement behavior between two groups of saccades after the scene transition, supported the parallel programming account. Saccades with relatively long onset times (>100 ms) after the transition were directed immediately toward the center of the scene, probably to restart scene exploration. Saccades with short onset times (<100 ms) moved to the center only one saccade later. Our data on eye movement positions provide novel evidence of parallel programming of saccades during scene viewing. Additionally, results from the analyses of intersaccadic intervals were also consistent with the parallel programming hypothesis.