Motion feature extraction scheme for content-based video retrieval

This paper proposes the extraction scheme of global motion and object trajectory in a video shot for content-based video retrieval. Motion is the key feature representing temporal information of videos. And it is more objective and consistent compared to other features such as color, texture, etc. Efficient motion feature extraction is an important step for content-based video retrieval. Some approaches have been taken to extract camera motion and motion activity in video sequences. When dealing with the problem of object tracking, algorithms are always proposed on the basis of known object region in the frames. In this paper, a whole picture of the motion information in the video shot has been achieved through analyzing motion of background and foreground respectively and automatically. 6-parameter affine model is utilized as the motion model of background motion, and a fast and robust global motion estimation algorithm is developed to estimate the parameters of the motion model. The object region is obtained by means of global motion compensation between two consecutive frames. Then the center of object region is calculated and tracked to get the object motion trajectory in the video sequence. Global motion and object trajectory are described with MPEG-7 parametric motion and motion trajectory descriptors and valid similar measures are defined for the two descriptors. Experimental results indicate that our proposed scheme is reliable and efficient.