Guidance for Videos at ETRA 2021

This guide provides information for preparing and submitting any video material for presentation at ETRA 2021. This includes:

    • Video Presentations of Full Papers are 8-minute pre-corded videos that substitute the on-site presentation at the conference. These videos will be introduced in a live session by the presenter, and followed by Q&A. They will also be made available on an ACM youtube channel and/or the ACM Digital Library.
    • Video Presentations that substitute on-site presentation of other types of contribution, including 30-second teaser videos that provide an “elevator pitch” of Short Papers.
    • Videos submitted as supplementary material of your submission.
    • And, of course, videos submitted to the Demo & Video Track.

Technical Requirements

The following technical requirements apply to all video submissions at ETRA. 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:

    • File names should only have alphanumeric characters, and no spaces or special characters.
    • Resolution must be at precisely 1080p (1920 x 1080)
    • All videos must be encoded as MP4 using the H.264 codec (file format .mp4). Encode your video using square pixels for the pixel aspect ratio to avoid your movie looking stretched when projected.
    • Videos must be in a 16:9 aspect ratio.
    • Accompanying closed caption file must be in .srt or .sbv format.

If you compress your video with unusual software or codecs you risk that it will not be accepted for presentation. Before submitting, we suggest you upload your video to a private Youtube channel to check that it plays correctly.

Video length and File Size

Upper limits for video material are as follows:

    • Video Presentation of Full Papers: 8 minutes, and up to 200 MB
    • Demos & Videos Track: 5 minutes, 100 MB
    • Teaser videos of Short Papers: 30 seconds, 20 MB
    • (Optional) Presentation videos of Short Papers: 3 minutes, 100 MB

General Guidelines for Video Presentations

Video presentations should include a video of the presenter. This can for example be a full-screen screencast of the slides, with a picture-in-picture video of the presenter, or slides and speaker video side-by-side. Other presentation formats can also be used, for example including a short demo in the presentation, just as you might have used in an onsite presentation at the conference.

You must include the Title, Authors and Affiliations at the beginning of the video. This can be a title shot or an overlay text, and must be shown for long enough to be read.

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.

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/).

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.


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.