StoryGraphs: Visualizing Character Interactions as a Timeline

We present a novel way to automatically summarize and represent the storyline of a TV episode by visualizing character interactions as a chart. We also propose a scene detection method that lends itself well to generate over-segmented scenes which is used to partition the video. The positioning of character lines in the chart is formulated as an optimization problem which trades between the aesthetics and functionality of the chart. Using automatic person identification, we present StoryGraphs for 3 diverse TV series encompassing a total of 22 episodes. We define quantitative criteria to evaluate StoryGraphs and also compare them against episode summaries to evaluate their ability to provide an overview of the episode.