Visual search in a SMASH system

The European Community (EC) sponsored project SMASH is investigating the needs and technological possibilities for multimedia storage device "at the home". Key frame extraction is an important preprocessing step for visual searching tools in image and video information. We describe two novel components of a key frame extraction system. Assuming that shot detection has taken place and that a frame-to-frame action measure is given, we propose a global key frame allocation method, which needs as input the user defined key frame rate, and an estimate for the average cumulative action. After assigning a number of key frames to a shot, an algorithm is proposed that distributes the key frames over the shot such that an optimal L/sub 1/ approximation of the cumulative action function is obtained.