Establishment Shot Detection Using Qualitative Motion

In this paper, we developed a technique to detect a special kind of shot, namely establishment shot, which is used to introduce a new scene to the audience or remind the audience of a known environment. The detection of establishment shot aids in various middle-level issues such as analyzing the story units of a movie. An establishment shot is usually realized by using camera motions such as panning, tilting or lateral translation. As it possesses similar motion features to those of another kind of shot called object-tracking shot, the two can be easily confused. An object-tracking shot is important for indexing on its own; it keeps the target of interest in the field of view. In this paper, we developed a technique to differentiate these two kinds of shots. The technique developed does not require accurate egomotion estimation, and can handle arbitrary camera movement including zoom as well as multiple independent motions.