An affective movie rating system

Modern media recommendation systems work based on the content of videos previously seen. While this may work for the habitual viewer, it is not always appropriate for many users whose tastes change based on their moods. A lot can be gathered from a person's facial expression while they are engaged in an activity, for example by observing someone as they view a film, we can likely tell if they enjoyed it or not. While a content providing company may not have the resources to employ human observers to watch audiences (or the inclination to do so, because it is not a very appealing idea), an automatic system that does this would be more feasible. Photoplethysmography is a field in which a person's physiological details can be gathered optically without requiring any physical contact with that person. By monitoring the intensity of light on a patch of the viewer's skin, we can accurately estimate their heart rate [Poh et al. 2011]. Our system combines heart rate measurement and facial expressions to quantify how much a user enjoys a video.