Video preprocessing for audiovisual indexing

We address the problem of detecting shots of subjects that are interviewed in news sequences. This is useful since usually these kinds of scenes contain important and reusable information that can be used for other news programs. In a previous paper, we presented a technique based on a priori knowledge of the editing techniques used in news sequences which allowed a fast search of news stories (see Albiol, A. et al., 3rd Int. Conf. on Audio and Video-based Biometric Person Authentication, p.366-71, 2001). We now present a new shot descriptor technique which improves the previous search results by using a simple, yet efficient, algorithm, based on the information contained in consecutive frames. Results are provided which prove the validity of the approach.