Long transition analysis for digital video sequences

Video indexing is a technique used to extract objects within a video sequence and index them so that they can be used for future retrieval. In many video sequences, special effects such as fade and wipe are incorporated, and in some cases, it is desirable to be able to include objects within such effects for indexing. In this paper, we introduce an automatic process that determines the type of transition and extracts information from it, so that this information can be used in object extraction. Such a process consists of four stages: shot boundary refinement, shot type determination, frame reconstruction for soft transitions, and shot classification for hard transitions. In this paper, we will give the implementation, timing, and performance analysis for each stage. Long transition analysis bridges the gap between shot boundary detection and object tracking and smoothes the process of automatic video indexing for video databases.