An Automatic Key Video Object Plane Selection Scheme for MPEG-4 Video

Abstract

In this study, an automatic key video object plane selection scheme for MPEG-4 video is proposed. The objective is to extract a predetermined number (L) of key VOPs (video object planes) so that a video object can be described compactly by the L key VOPs and some auxiliary information. In the proposed approach, the shape information and the DC sequence of the video object are first extracted from the video sequence. Initially, the first and last VOPs are selected as the key VOPs of the video object. Next, within each iteration, the VOP having the maximum distance with its nearest neighboring selected key VOPs is selected as the new key VOP of the video object. The above procedure is iterated until the predetermined number (L) of key VOPs are obtained. The proposed distance measure between two VOPs is obtained by combining the shape, edge, and intensity histogram information derived from the DC sequence of the video object. Based on the simulation results obtained in this study, the key VOPs selected by the proposed approach for the video object are better and more “representative” than that selected by the two existing approaches for comparison.