Patent ID: 8237800

Claim:
A main face choosing device comprising: a face detection unit adapted to detect faces of human figures from video signal having a plurality of frames; an association unit adapted to associate faces of the same human figure among faces detected in the present frame and a preceding frame in which a face was most recently detected; a calculation unit adapted to calculate a degree of priority for each face detected in a frame based on at least one of size and position in the frame of each detected face; a main face choosing unit adapted to choose a main face from among the detected faces based on the degree of priority calculated for each detected face; a determination unit adapted to determine as the main face of the present frame, from among the faces detected in the present frame, a face which is associated with a face that was chosen as the main face by the main face choosing unit from among the most recently detected faces; a comparison unit adapted to compare the degree of priority calculated for the main face in the present frame and the degrees of priority calculated for faces other than the main face in the present frame; and a counting unit adapted to count, for a plurality of frames and for each of the faces other than the main face, a number of times of which the degrees of priority exceed the degree of priority calculated for the main face, wherein when, the number of times counted for one of the faces other than the main face exceeds a preset threshold value, the main face choosing unit is arranged to choose the one of the faces as a new main face.