Gradual transition detection in historic film material—a systematic study

Abstract

The segmentation of films and videos into shots requires the detection of gradual transitions such as dissolves and fades. There are two types of approaches: unified approaches, that is, one detector for all gradual transition types, and approaches that use specialized detectors for each gradual transition type. We present an overview on existing methods and extend an existing unified approach for the detection of gradual transitions in historic material. In an experimental study, we evaluate the proposed approach on complex and low-quality historic material as well as on contemporary material from the TRECVid evaluation. Additionally, we investigate different features, feature combinations, and fusion strategies. We observe that the historic material requires the use of texture features, in contrast to the contemporary material that, in most of the cases, requires the use of color and luminance features.