Automatic generation of video summaries for historical films

A video summary is a sequence of video clips extracted from a longer video. Much shorter than the original, the summary preserves its essential messages. In the ECHO (European Chronicles On-line) project, a system was developed to store and manage large collections of historical films for the preservation of cultural heritage. At the University of Mannheim, we have developed the video summarization component of the ECHO system. We discuss the particular challenges the historical film material poses, and how we have designed new video processing algorithms and modified existing ones to cope with noisy black-and-white films.