Video shot boundary detection: seven years of TRECVid activity

Shot boundary detection (SBD) is the process of automatically detecting the boundaries between shots in video. It is a problem which has attracted much attention since video became available in digital form as it is an essential pre-processing step to almost all video analysis, indexing, summarisation, search, and other content-based operations. Automatic SBD was one of the tracks of activity within the annual TRECVid benchmarking exercise, each year from 2001 to 2007 inclusive. Over those seven years we have seen 57 different research groups from across the world work to determine the best approaches to SBD while using a common dataset and common scoring metrics. In this paper we present an overview of the TRECVid shot boundary detection task, a high-level overview of the most significant of the approaches taken, and a comparison of performances, focussing on one year (2005) as an example

The Effectiveness of Concept Based Search for Video Retrieval

In this paper we investigate how a small number of high-level concepts\ud derived for video shots, such as Sport. Face.Indoor. etc., can be used effectively for ad hoc search in video material. We will answer the following questions: 1) Can we automatically construct concept queries from ordinary text queries? 2) What is the best way to combine evidence from single concept detectors into final search results? We evaluated algorithms for automatic concept query formulation using WordNet based concept extraction, and we evaluated algorithms for fast, on-line combination of concepts. Experimental results on data from the TREC Video 2005 workshop and 25 test users show the following. 1) Automatic query formulation through WordNet based concept extraction can achieve comparable results to user created query concepts and 2) Combination methods that take neighboring shots into account outperform more simple combination methods

The scholarly impact of TRECVid (2003-2009)

This paper reports on an investigation into the scholarly impact of the TRECVid (TREC Video Retrieval Evaluation) benchmarking conferences between 2003 and 2009. The contribution of TRECVid to research in video retrieval is assessed by analyzing publication content to show the development of techniques and approaches over time and by analyzing publication impact through publication numbers and citation analysis. Popular conference and journal venues for TRECVid publications are identified in terms of number of citations received. For a selection of participants at different career stages, the relative importance of TRECVid publications in terms of citations vis a vis their other publications is investigated. TRECVid, as an evaluation conference, provides data on which research teams ‘scored’ highly against the evaluation criteria and the relationship between ‘top scoring’ teams at TRECVid and the ‘top scoring’ papers in terms of citations is analysed. A strong relationship was found between ‘success’ at TRECVid and ‘success’ at citations both for high scoring and low scoring teams. The implications of the study in terms of the value of TRECVid as a research activity, and the value of bibliometric analysis as a research evaluation tool, are discussed

Large scale evaluations of multimedia information retrieval: the TRECVid experience

Information Retrieval is a supporting technique which underpins a broad range of content-based applications including retrieval, filtering, summarisation, browsing, classification, clustering, automatic linking, and others. Multimedia information retrieval (MMIR) represents those applications when applied to multimedia information such as image, video, music, etc. In this presentation and extended abstract we are primarily concerned with MMIR as applied to information in digital video format. We begin with a brief overview of large scale evaluations of IR tasks in areas such as text, image and music, just to illustrate that this phenomenon is not just restricted to MMIR on video. The main contribution, however, is a set of pointers and a summarisation of the work done as part of TRECVid, the annual benchmarking exercise for video retrieval tasks

The aceToolbox: low-level audiovisual feature extraction for retrieval and classification

In this paper we present an overview of a software platform that has been developed within the aceMedia project, termed the aceToolbox, that provides global and local lowlevel feature extraction from audio-visual content. The toolbox is based on the MPEG-7 eXperimental Model (XM), with extensions to provide descriptor extraction from arbitrarily shaped image segments, thereby supporting local descriptors reflecting real image content. We describe the architecture of the toolbox as well as providing an overview of the descriptors supported to date. We also briefly describe the segmentation algorithm provided. We then demonstrate the usefulness of the toolbox in the context of two different content processing scenarios: similarity-based retrieval in large collections and scene-level classification of still images

High-level feature detection from video in TRECVid: a 5-year retrospective of achievements

Successful and effective content-based access to digital video requires fast, accurate and scalable methods to determine the video content automatically. A variety of contemporary approaches to this rely on text taken from speech within the video, or on matching one video frame against others using low-level characteristics like colour, texture, or shapes, or on determining and matching objects appearing within the video. Possibly the most important technique, however, is one which determines the presence or absence of a high-level or semantic feature, within a video clip or shot. By utilizing dozens, hundreds or even thousands of such semantic features we can support many kinds of content-based video navigation. Critically however, this depends on being able to determine whether each feature is or is not present in a video clip. The last 5 years have seen much progress in the development of techniques to determine the presence of semantic features within video. This progress can be tracked in the annual TRECVid benchmarking activity where dozens of research groups measure the effectiveness of their techniques on common data and using an open, metrics-based approach. In this chapter we summarise the work done on the TRECVid high-level feature task, showing the progress made year-on-year. This provides a fairly comprehensive statement on where the state-of-the-art is regarding this important task, not just for one research group or for one approach, but across the spectrum. We then use this past and on-going work as a basis for highlighting the trends that are emerging in this area, and the questions which remain to be addressed before we can achieve large-scale, fast and reliable high-level feature detection on video

K-Space at TRECVID 2008

In this paper we describe K-Space’s participation in TRECVid 2008 in the interactive search task. For 2008 the K-Space group performed one of the largest interactive video information retrieval experiments conducted in a laboratory setting. We had three institutions participating in a multi-site multi-system experiment. In total 36 users participated, 12 each from Dublin City University (DCU, Ireland), University of Glasgow (GU, Scotland) and Centrum Wiskunde and Informatica (CWI, the Netherlands). Three user interfaces were developed, two from DCU which were also used in 2007 as well as an interface from GU. All interfaces leveraged the same search service. Using a latin squares arrangement, each user conducted 12 topics, leading in total to 6 runs per site, 18 in total. We officially submitted for evaluation 3 of these runs to NIST with an additional expert run using a 4th system. Our submitted runs performed around the median. In this paper we will present an overview of the search system utilized, the experimental setup and a preliminary analysis of our results

K-Space at TRECVid 2008

In this paper we describe K-Space’s participation in TRECVid 2008 in the interactive search task. For 2008 the K-Space group performed one of the largest interactive video information retrieval experiments conducted in a laboratory setting. We had three institutions participating in a multi-site multi-system experiment. In total 36 users participated, 12 each from Dublin City University (DCU, Ireland), University of Glasgow (GU, Scotland) and Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI, the Netherlands). Three user interfaces were developed, two from DCU which were also used in 2007 as well as an interface from GU. All interfaces leveraged the same search service. Using a latin squares arrangement, each user conducted 12 topics, leading in total to 6 runs per site, 18 in total. We officially submitted for evaluation 3 of these runs to NIST with an additional expert run using a 4th system. Our submitted runs performed around the median. In this paper we will present an overview of the search system utilized, the experimental setup and a preliminary analysis of our results

Multimedia search without visual analysis: the value of linguistic and contextual information

This paper addresses the focus of this special issue by analyzing the potential contribution of linguistic content and other non-image aspects to the processing of audiovisual data. It summarizes the various ways in which linguistic content analysis contributes to enhancing the semantic annotation of multimedia content, and, as a consequence, to improving the effectiveness of conceptual media access tools. A number of techniques are presented, including the time-alignment of textual resources, audio and speech processing, content reduction and reasoning tools, and the exploitation of surface features