Content-based retrieval of compressed videos

The fast evolution of technology has led to a growing demand for video data, increasing the amount of research into efficient systems to manage video material. Most of existing systems for video retrieval rely on algorithms and methods which are computationally expensive, in terms of both time and space, limiting their application to the academic world or big companies. Contrary to this trend, the market has shown a growing demand for mobile and embedded devices. In this scenario, it is imperative the development of effective and efficient techniques in order to make such technologies available to a larger public. In this context, this PhD thesis introduces five novel approaches for the analysis, indexing, and retrieval of digital videos. All these contributions are combined to create a computationally fast system for content-based video retrieval, which is able to achieve a quality level superior to current solutions. Keywords-digital video; multimedia systems; information retrieval; databases; image processing;