<title>Improving scene detection by using gradual shot transitions as cues from film grammar</title>

Abstract

The types of shot transitions used by film editors in video are not randomly chosen. Cuts, dissolves, fades, and wipes are devices in film grammar used to structure video. In this work knowledge of film grammar is used to improve scene detection algorithms. Three improvements to known scene detection algorithms are proposed: (1) The selection of key-frames for shot similarity measurement should take the position of gradual shot transitions into account. (2) Gradual shot transitions have a separating effect. It is shown how this local cue can be used to improve the global structuring into logical units. (3) Gradual shot transitions also have a merging effect upon shots in their temporal proximity. It is shown how coherence values and shot similarity values used during scene detection have to be modified to exploit this fact. The proposed improvements can be used together with a variety of scene detection approaches. Experimental results with time adaptive grouping indicate that considerable improvements in terms of precision and recall are achieved.© (2008) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.