Multi-scale video cropping

TitleMulti-scale video cropping
Publication TypeConference Papers
Year of Publication2007
AuthorsEl-Alfy H, Jacobs DW, Davis LS
Conference NameProceedings of the 15th international conference on Multimedia
Date Published2007///
PublisherACM
Conference LocationNew York, NY, USA
ISBN Number978-1-59593-702-5
Keywordsshortest path algorithm, Surveillance, video cropping
Abstract

We consider the problem of cropping surveillance videos. This process chooses a trajectory that a small sub-window can take through the video, selecting the most important parts of the video for display on a smaller monitor. We model the information content of the video simply, by whether the image changes at each pixel. Then we show that we can find the globally optimal trajectory for a cropping window by using a shortest path algorithm. In practice, we can speed up this process without affecting the results, by stitching together trajectories computed over short intervals. This also reduces system latency. We then show that we can use a second shortest path formulation to find good cuts from one trajectory to another, improving coverage of interesting events in the video. We describe additional techniques to improve the quality and efficiency of the algorithm, and show results on surveillance videos.

URLhttp://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1291233.1291255
DOI10.1145/1291233.1291255