Patent ID: 8363960

Claim:
A method for temporal segmentation of a sequence of successive video pictures into shorter video sections that comprise little visual variation, comprising: determining a measurable picture property for each video picture; applying a clustering to the video pictures without taking into consideration the temporal order of the video pictures, by using the measurable picture property of the video pictures, in order to assign each video picture to a respective one of different cluster labels in accordance with their measurable picture property, and so as to obtain a sequence of cluster labels sequentially ordered in accordance with the temporal order of the video pictures; filtering, by means of a majority vote filter, the sequence of cluster labels so that a number of changes in cluster labeling is reduced along the temporal order of the video pictures, and after the filtering, placing segment boundaries between video pictures corresponding to locations where the cluster labeling changes in the filtered sequence of cluster labels, wherein the applying is performed such that the clustering involves a k-means algorithm or hierarchical clustering according to which a measurable picture property of the video pictures and a distance function therebetween is defined, and the clustering merely depends on distances between the measurable picture properties in order to determine clusters with, relating to the number of clusters, minimum average distance between the measurable picture properties within the respective clusters.