A two-level queueing system for interactive browsing and searching of video content

This paper presents a two-level queueing system for dynamic summarization and interactive searching of video content. Video frames enter the queueing system; some insignificant and redundant frames are removed; the remaining frames are pulled out of the system as top-level key frames. Using an energy-minimization method, the first queue removes the video frames that constitute the gradual transitions of video shots. The second queue measures the content similarity of video frames and reduces redundant frames. In the queueing system, all key frames are linked in a directed-graph index structure, allowing video content to be accessed at any level-of-detail. Furthermore, this graph-based index structure enables interactive video content exploration, and the system is able to retrieve the video key frames that complement the video content already viewed by users. Experimental results on four full-length videos show that our queueing system performs much better than two existing methods on video key frame selection at different compression ratios. The evaluation on video content search shows that our interactive system is more effective than other systems on eight video searching tasks. Compared with the regular media player, our system reduces the average content searching time by half.