A generic news story segmentation system and its evaluation

The paper presents an approach to segmenting broadcast TV news programmes automatically into individual news stories. We first segment the programme into individual shots, and then a number of analysis tools are run on the programme to extract features to represent each shot. The results of these feature extraction tools are then combined using a support vector machine trained to detect anchorperson shots. A news broadcast can then be segmented into individual stories based on the location of the anchorperson shots within the programme. We use one generic system to segment programmes from two different broadcasters, illustrating the robustness of our feature extraction process to the production styles of different broadcasters

Robust Transmission of H.264/AVC Streams Using Adaptive Group Slicing and Unequal Error Protection

We present a novel scheme for the transmission of H.264/AVC video streams over lossy packet networks. The proposed scheme exploits the error-resilient features of H.264/AVC codec and employs Reed-Solomon codes to protect effectively the streams. A novel technique for adaptive classification of macroblocks into three slice groups is also proposed. The optimal classification of macroblocks and the optimal channel rate allocation are achieved by iterating two interdependent steps. Dynamic programming techniques are used for the channel rate allocation process in order to reduce complexity. Simulations clearly demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method over other recent algorithms for transmission of H.264/AVC streams

Content-based access to digital video: the Físchlár system and the TREC video track

This short paper presents an overview of the Físchlár system - an operational digital library of several hundred hours of video content at Dublin City University which is used by over 1,000 users daily, for a variety of applications. The paper describes how Físchlár operates and the services that it provides for users. Following that, the second part of the paper gives an outline of the TREC Video Retrieval track, a benchmarking exercise for information retrieval from video content currently in operation, summarising the operational details of how the benchmarking exercise is operating

Video summarisation: A conceptual framework and survey of the state of the art

This is the post-print (final draft post-refereeing) version of the article. Copyright @ 2007 Elsevier Inc.Video summaries provide condensed and succinct representations of the content of a video stream through a combination of still images, video segments, graphical representations and textual descriptors. This paper presents a conceptual framework for video summarisation derived from the research literature and used as a means for surveying the research literature. The framework distinguishes between video summarisation techniques (the methods used to process content from a source video stream to achieve a summarisation of that stream) and video summaries (outputs of video summarisation techniques). Video summarisation techniques are considered within three broad categories: internal (analyse information sourced directly from the video stream), external (analyse information not sourced directly from the video stream) and hybrid (analyse a combination of internal and external information). Video summaries are considered as a function of the type of content they are derived from (object, event, perception or feature based) and the functionality offered to the user for their consumption (interactive or static, personalised or generic). It is argued that video summarisation would benefit from greater incorporation of external information, particularly user based information that is unobtrusively sourced, in order to overcome longstanding challenges such as the semantic gap and providing video summaries that have greater relevance to individual users

A Study on the Usage of Cross-Layer Power Control and Forward Error Correction for Embedded Video Transmission over Wireless Links

Cross-layering is a design paradigm for overcoming the limitations deriving from the ISO/OSI layering principle, thus improving the performance of communications in specific scenarios, such as wireless multimedia communications. However, most available solutions are based on empirical considerations, and do not provide a theoretical background supporting such approaches. The paper aims at providing an analytical framework for the study of single-hop video delivery over a wireless link, enabling cross-layer interactions for performance optimization using power control and FEC and providing a useful tool to determine the potential gain deriving from the employment of such design paradigm. The analysis is performed using rate-distortion information of an embedded video bitstream jointly with a Lagrangian power minimization approach. Simulation results underline that cross-layering can provide relevant improvement in specific environments and that the proposed approach is able to capitalize on the advantage deriving from its deployment

3-D Center-Weighted Vector Directional Filters for Noisy Color Sequences

This paper focuses on a noise filtering in color image sequences, where a new class of center-weighted vector directional filters is provided. According to high dimensionality of color image sequences, where besides the spatial frequencies in the frames it is necessary to consider the temporal correlation of an image sequence and the correlation between color channels too, the processing of color image sequences represents very important and interesting problem. Clearly, the color image sequences represent three-dimensional (3-D) vector-valued image signals and thus, the 3-D vector filters provide optimal approach, only. Novelty of this paper lies in the impulse noise suppression by a new class of center-weighted vector directional filters, where the influence of the filter parameter to filter performance is analyzed. The interesting behavior of a new filter class is illustrated by a number of experimental results and comparisons with the well-known filtering algorithms for color image sequences