Summarizing video using a shot importance measure and a frame-packing algorithm

This paper presents methods of generating compact pictorial summarizations of video. By calculating a measure of shot importance video can be summarized by de-emphasizing or discarding less important information, such as repeated or common scenes. In contrast to other approaches that present keyframes for each shot, this measure allows summarization by presenting only the most important shots. Selected keyframes can also be resized depending on their relative importance. We present an efficient packing algorithm that constructs a pictorial representation from differently-sized keyframes. This results in a compact and visually pleasing summary reminiscent of a comic book.