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The Narrative Paradox is a theory that describes interaction and narrative cohesion as being in tension, and asserts that the structure of a narrative is disrupted by user adaptivity, leading to possible incoherence as the system accounts for interaction.

The Narrative Paradox is a theory that describes interaction and narrative cohesion as being in tension, and asserts that the structure of a narrative is disrupted by user adaptivity, leading to possible incoherence as the system accounts for interaction.

"Machinations is the browser-based platform to design, balance and simulate game systems"

The edit decision list (EDL) system allows you to automatically skip or mute sections of videos during playback, based on a movie specific EDL configuration file. This is useful for those who may want to watch a film in "family-friendly" mode. You can cut out any violence, profanity, Jar-Jar Binks .. from a movie according to your own personal preferences. Aside from this, there are other uses, like automatically skipping over commercials in video files you watch. The EDL file format is pretty bare-bones. There is one command per line that indicates what to do (skip/mute) and when to do it (using pts in seconds).

"A team of researchers at EPFL have developed a prototype that uses in-car cameras to analyse drivers' facial expressions to detect emotion, in particular irritation."

Recent Royal College of Art (RCA) design graduate David Hedberg's Smile TV is more than a loving homage to the good old 'campfire inside the living room.' Made from an open frame CRT monitor and equipped with a computer vision system, the unsuspecting television set turns the medium's engagement pattern on its head: instead of making you smile at on-screen silliness, you have to "smile to watch." Only when you do - and for as long as you do - will Smile TV reveal its otherwise scrambled broadcast. "This project grew out from experimenting with facial recognition and image manipulation," Hedberg explains over email.

Video games have been making use of surround sound for years now but surround lighting? That's new. Indie game Chariot is the world's first to flick the switch on, partnering with Philips for its "connected lighting" system Hue.

"Amazon's new system will cut the royalties for self-published authors who fail to hold a reader's attention until the final page "

"Did you ever wonder what it would be like to own a car like KITT from the "Knight Rider" TV series? It would come standard with the most advanced navigation system to date and wouldn't require safety features like anti-theft devices."

"Interactive narrative systems attempt to tell stories to players capable of changing the direction and/or outcome of the story. Despite the growing importance of multiplayer social experiences in games, little research has focused on multiplayer interactive narrative experiences. We performed a preliminary study to determine how human directors design and execute multiplayer interactive story experiences in online and real world environments. Based on our observations, we developed the Multiplayer Storytelling Engine that manages a story world at the individual and group levels. Our flexible story representation enables human authors to naturally model multiplayer narrative experiences. An intelligent execution algorithm detects when the author's story representation fails to account for player behaviors and automatically generates a branch to restore the story to the authors' original intent, thus balancing authorability against robust multiplayer execution."

The engine of a non-linear video editor that can be used in all sorts of apps, not just desktop video editors. MLT is an open source multimedia framework, designed and developed for television broadcasting. It provides a toolkit for broadcasters, video editors, media players, transcoders, web streamers and many more types of applications. The functionality of the system is provided via an assortment of ready to use tools, XML authoring components, and an extensible plug-in based API.

"Video is better when the codec and transport work together. Salsify is a new design for real-time Internet video that jointly controls a video codec and a network transport protocol. Current systems (Skype, Facetime, WebRTC) run these components independently, which produces more glitches and stalls when the network is unpredictable. "

"The move towards end-to-end IP between media producers and audiences will make new broadcasting systems vastly more agnostic to data formats and to diverse sets of consumption and production devices. In this world, object-based media becomes increasingly important; delivering efficiencies in the production chain, enabling the creation of new experiences that will continue to engage the audience and giving us the ability to adapt our media to new platforms, services and devices."

S3A is a major new five-year UK research collaboration between internationally leading experts in 3D audio and visual processing, the BBC and UK industry. The partnership aims to unlock the creative potential of 3D sound to provide immersive experiences to the general public at home or on the move. S3A will pioneer a radical new listener centred approach to 3D sound production that can dynamically adapt to the listeners' environment and location to create a sense of immersion. Current 3D sound systems rely upon fixed loudspeaker arrangements and acoustically treated rooms that are not practical for home use. S3A will change the way audio is produced and delivered to enable practical high-quality 3D sound reproduction based on listener perception.

"TensorFlow™ is an open source software library for numerical computation using data flow graphs. Nodes in the graph represent mathematical operations, while the graph edges represent the multidimensional data arrays (tensors) communicated between them. The flexible architecture allows you to deploy computation to one or more CPUs or GPUs in a desktop, server, or mobile device with a single API. TensorFlow was originally developed by researchers and engineers working on the Google Brain Team within Google's Machine Intelligence research organization for the purposes of conducting machine learning and deep neural networks research, but the system is general enough to be applicable in a wide variety of other domains as well."

One system, unlimited creativity: Gem provides an entirely new way to develop and manage interactive narratives. "

Future Macs may adjust their audio depending on where you're sitting or standing - and based on how many folks are in a room. Apple has filed for a patent (number 20170249122) for "devices with enhanced audio." The patent involves a system for enhancing audio including a Mac and an output device. The Mac includes a sensor configured to determine a user location relative to the computer. The sensor is also configured to gather environment data corresponding to an environment of the computer.

A new world is coming. It's scary. Freaky. Over the freaky line, if you will. But it is coming. Investors like Ron Conway and Marc Andreessen are investing in it. Companies from Google to startups you've never heard of, like Wovyn or Highlight, are building it. With more than a couple of new ones already on the way that you'll hear about over the next six months.