Patent ID: 6628710
Filing Date: 2003-09-30
Classification: G06F,G11B,H04N

Abstract:
A method for an automatic extraction of the structure of a video sequence that corresponds to successive frames, comprising the following steps:(1) a shot detection step, provided for detecting the boundaries between consecutive shotsâ€”a shot being a set of contiguous frames without editing effectsâ€”and using a similarity criterion based on a computation of the mean displaced frame difference curve and the detection of the highest peaks of said curve; (2) a partitioning step, provided for splitting each shot into sub-entities, called micro-segments; (3) a clustering step, provided for creating a final hierarchical structure of the processed video sequence; wherein said detection step includes an additional segmentation sub-step, applied to said means displaced frame difference curve and comprising the following operations:(a) a first filtering operation, based on a structuring element removing the negative peaks the length of which is less than a predefined value (min); (b) a second filtering operation, based on a contrast filter removing the positive peaks that have a positive contrast lower than a predefined value c; (c) a marker extraction operation; (d) a marker propagation operation.