Patent ID: 8718444

Claim:
A video search device comprising: a playback unit operable to play back a content composed of a plurality of frames; a reception unit operable to, while the playback unit plays back the content, receive, from a user, a plurality of inputs each specifying an object contained in a different one of the frames of the content; a detection unit operable to, each time the reception unit receives an input, detect an object specified by the received input; an assignment unit operable to assign, to each of the objects detected by the detection unit, a weight value adjusted based on a time-series feature of the frame containing the object and indicating an importance of the object among the objects; and a search unit operable to perform search for an object using the objects, which are contained in the frames of the content and specified by the plurality of inputs received from the user, based on the objects each having the weighted value assigned thereto, wherein the assignment unit includes: a link subunit operable to link two or more of the detected objects to each other, based on the time-series feature of each of the frames containing the respective two or more objects; and an increment subunit operable to increment the weight value of each of the two or more linked objects relative to the weight value of each of one or more of the detected objects that are not linked, the video search device further comprises a storage unit operable to store therein a plurality of objects and feature information of each of the objects, the detection unit extracts feature information of each of the detected objects, the assignment unit assigns a weight value to each of the stored objects, and with respect to each of the detected objects, the search unit (i) compares feature information between the detected object and each of the stored objects, thereby to calculate a primary similarity between the detected object and each of the stored objects, and (ii) adds a product of the primary similarity and the weight value of the detected object to a product of a primary similarity between an object that is linked to the detected object and each of the stored objects and a weight value of the linked object, thereby to calculate a secondary similarity between the detected object and each of the stored objects.