Multi-script text versus non-text classification of regions in scene images

Text versus non-text region classification is an essential but difficult step in scene-image analysis due to the considerable shape complexity of text and background patterns. There exists a high probability of confusion between background elements and letter parts. This paper proposes a feature-based classification of image blocks using the color autocorrelation histogram (CAH) and the scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) algorithm, yielding a combined scale and color-invariant feature suitable for scene-text classification. For the evaluation, features were extracted from different color spaces, applying color-histogram autocorrelation. The color features are adjoined with a SIFT descriptor. Parameter tuning is performed and evaluated. For the classification, a standard nearest-neighbor (1NN) and a support-vector machine (SVM) were compared. The proposed method appears to perform robustly and is especially suitable for Asian scripts such as Kannada and Thai, where urban scene-text fonts are characterized by a high curvature and salient color variations

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”