6,523 research outputs found
Circulant temporal encoding for video retrieval and temporal alignment
We address the problem of specific video event retrieval. Given a query video
of a specific event, e.g., a concert of Madonna, the goal is to retrieve other
videos of the same event that temporally overlap with the query. Our approach
encodes the frame descriptors of a video to jointly represent their appearance
and temporal order. It exploits the properties of circulant matrices to
efficiently compare the videos in the frequency domain. This offers a
significant gain in complexity and accurately localizes the matching parts of
videos. The descriptors can be compressed in the frequency domain with a
product quantizer adapted to complex numbers. In this case, video retrieval is
performed without decompressing the descriptors. We also consider the temporal
alignment of a set of videos. We exploit the matching confidence and an
estimate of the temporal offset computed for all pairs of videos by our
retrieval approach. Our robust algorithm aligns the videos on a global timeline
by maximizing the set of temporally consistent matches. The global temporal
alignment enables synchronous playback of the videos of a given scene
Taking the bite out of automated naming of characters in TV video
We investigate the problem of automatically labelling appearances of characters in TV or film material
with their names. This is tremendously challenging due to the huge variation in imaged appearance of each character and the weakness and ambiguity of available annotation. However, we demonstrate that high precision can be achieved by combining multiple sources of information, both visual and textual. The principal novelties that we introduce are: (i) automatic generation of time stamped character annotation by aligning subtitles and transcripts; (ii) strengthening the supervisory information by identifying
when characters are speaking. In addition, we incorporate complementary cues of face matching and clothing matching to propose common annotations for face tracks, and consider choices of classifier which can potentially correct errors made in the automatic extraction of training data from the weak textual annotation. Results are presented on episodes of the TV series ‘‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer”
D-touch: A Consumer-Grade Tangible Interface Module and Musical Applications
We define a class of tangible media applications that can be implemented on consumer-grade personal computers. These applications interpret user manipulation of physical objects in a restricted space and produce unlocalized outputs. We propose a generic approach to the implementation of such interfaces using flexible fiducial markers, which identify objects to a robust and fast video-processing algorithm, so they can be recognized and tracked in real time. We describe an implementation of the technology, then report two new, flexible music performance applications that demonstrate and validate it
Co-Localization of Audio Sources in Images Using Binaural Features and Locally-Linear Regression
This paper addresses the problem of localizing audio sources using binaural
measurements. We propose a supervised formulation that simultaneously localizes
multiple sources at different locations. The approach is intrinsically
efficient because, contrary to prior work, it relies neither on source
separation, nor on monaural segregation. The method starts with a training
stage that establishes a locally-linear Gaussian regression model between the
directional coordinates of all the sources and the auditory features extracted
from binaural measurements. While fixed-length wide-spectrum sounds (white
noise) are used for training to reliably estimate the model parameters, we show
that the testing (localization) can be extended to variable-length
sparse-spectrum sounds (such as speech), thus enabling a wide range of
realistic applications. Indeed, we demonstrate that the method can be used for
audio-visual fusion, namely to map speech signals onto images and hence to
spatially align the audio and visual modalities, thus enabling to discriminate
between speaking and non-speaking faces. We release a novel corpus of real-room
recordings that allow quantitative evaluation of the co-localization method in
the presence of one or two sound sources. Experiments demonstrate increased
accuracy and speed relative to several state-of-the-art methods.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure
Acoustical Ranging Techniques in Embedded Wireless Sensor Networked Devices
Location sensing provides endless opportunities for a wide range of applications in GPS-obstructed environments;
where, typically, there is a need for higher degree of accuracy. In this article, we focus on robust range
estimation, an important prerequisite for fine-grained localization. Motivated by the promise of acoustic in
delivering high ranging accuracy, we present the design, implementation and evaluation of acoustic (both
ultrasound and audible) ranging systems.We distill the limitations of acoustic ranging; and present efficient
signal designs and detection algorithms to overcome the challenges of coverage, range, accuracy/resolution,
tolerance to Doppler’s effect, and audible intensity. We evaluate our proposed techniques experimentally on
TWEET, a low-power platform purpose-built for acoustic ranging applications. Our experiments demonstrate
an operational range of 20 m (outdoor) and an average accuracy 2 cm in the ultrasound domain. Finally,
we present the design of an audible-range acoustic tracking service that encompasses the benefits of a near-inaudible
acoustic broadband chirp and approximately two times increase in Doppler tolerance to achieve better performance
Word matching using single closed contours for indexing handwritten historical documents
Effective indexing is crucial for providing convenient access to scanned versions of large collections of historically valuable handwritten manuscripts. Since traditional handwriting recognizers based on optical character recognition (OCR) do not perform well on historical documents, recently a holistic word recognition approach has gained in popularity as an attractive and more straightforward solution (Lavrenko et al. in proc. document Image Analysis for Libraries (DIAL’04), pp. 278–287, 2004). Such techniques attempt to recognize words based on scalar and profile-based features extracted from whole word images. In this paper, we propose a new approach to holistic word recognition for historical handwritten manuscripts based on matching word contours instead of whole images or word profiles. The new method consists of robust extraction of closed word contours and the application of an elastic contour matching technique proposed originally for general shapes (Adamek and O’Connor in IEEE Trans Circuits Syst Video Technol 5:2004). We demonstrate that multiscale contour-based descriptors can effectively capture intrinsic word features avoiding any segmentation of words into smaller subunits. Our experiments show a recognition accuracy of 83%, which considerably exceeds the performance of other systems reported in the literature
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