VideoBook: an experiment in characterization of video

We present a framework for content based query and retrieval of information from large video databases. This framework enables content based retrieval of video sequences by characterizing the sequences using motion, texture and colorimetry cues. This characterization is biologically inspired and results in a compact parameter space where every segment of video is represented by an 8 dimensional vector. Searching and retrieval is done in real-time with high accuracy in this parameter space. The present version of the VideoBook has 165 video sequences, each 15 seconds long at 30 frames a second representing storage of 65 Giga bytes. The VideoBook is able to search and retrieve video sequences with 92% accuracy in real-time. Experiments thus demonstrate that the characterization is capable of extracting higher level structure from raw pixel values.