Algorithms and system for segmentation and structure analysis in soccer video

In this paper, we present a novel system and effective algorithms for soccer video segmentation. The output, about whether the ball is in play, reveals high-level structure of the content. The first step is to classify each sample frame into 3 kinds of view using a unique domain-specific feature, grass-area-ratio. Here the grass value and classification rules are learned and automatically adjusted to each new clip. Then heuristic rules are used in processing the view label sequence, and obtain play/break status of the game. The results provide good basis for detailed content analysis in next step. We also show that low-level features and mid-level view classes can be combined to extract more information about the game, via the example of detecting grass orientation in the field. The results are evaluated under different metrics intended for different applications; the best result in segmentation is 86.5%.