Rapid estimation of camera motion from compressed video with application to video annotation

As digital video becomes more pervasive, efficient ways of searching and annotating video according to content will be increasingly important. Such tasks arise, for example, in the management of digital video libraries for content-based retrieval and browsing. In this paper, we develop tools based on camera motion for analyzing and annotating a class of structured video using the low-level information available directly from MPEG-compressed video. In particular, we show that in certain structured settings, it is possible to obtain reliable estimates of camera motion by directly processing data easily obtained from the MPEG format. Working directly with the compressed video greatly reduces the processing time and enhances storage efficiency. As an illustration of this idea, we have developed a simple basketball annotation system which combines the low-level information extracted from an MPEG stream with the prior knowledge of basketball structure to provide high-level content analysis, annotation, and browsing for events such as wide-angle and close-up views, fast breaks, probable shots at the basket, etc. The methods used in this example should also be useful in the analysis of high-level content of structured video in other domains.