Semi-automatic video segmentation algorithm using virtual blue screens

In order to support the object-based coding in the MPEG-4 video coding standard, we need to represent each video frame in terms of video object planes (VOPs). Segmentation is an essential operation to generate such VOPs. In this paper, we propose a semi-automatic segmentation algorithm using a concept of the virtual blue screen (VBS) that is defined as an image where its background is colored by a particular value, such as blue. After we extract moving objects in the first frame using VBS, we predict locations of the moving objects in the following frames via VBS. Experiment results show that the proposed method reduces the computational complexity significantly, while providing reasonably good segmentation results under an assumption that the video sequence has a still background.