Fast edge map extraction from MPEG compressed video data for video parsing

For the last few years, shot boundary detection has been recognized as an important research issue on video retrieval. Also, as a preliminary step for the task, it is essential to extract salient features from videos. Recently, it has become common to perform the two tasks in compressed domain to alleviate their computational costs. In this paper, we propose novel shot boundary detection technique, which uses two feature images, or DC and edge images, extracted directly from MPEG compressed video. While a DC image can be easily obtained, edge image extraction usually requires considerable computational burden. For fast edge image extraction, we suggest to utilize only a few AC coefficients of each DCT block in motion compensated P-frames and B-frames as well as I-lames. This drastically reduces the computational burden compared to edge extraction in the spatial domain. In order to further reduce the computational burden, another edge image extraction technique is also suggested on the basis of AC prediction using DC images. By using the edge energy diagram obtained from edge images and histograms from DC images, shot boundaries such as abrupt transitions, fades, and dissolves are detected automatically. simulation results show that the proposed techniques are fast and effective.