Relative Flow Estimates for Shot Boundary Detection

This paper proposes a simple approach based on Relative Flow Estimates (RFE) for shot cut detection. The property of Relative flow estimates can be used for abrupt cut detection and a correction mechanism for gradual camera-shot transition detection (e.g., fade-in and fade-out, dissolves, wipes). The exacted feature vector in each frame can be mapped into a 3-D space along the continuous time axis, and these feature data can be treated as a virtually constructed pipe with fluid flowing in the 3-D axis. Compared with existing approaches, the new RFE-based algorithm can directly detect shot cut. A wide range of test videos are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The experimental results show that the new scheme can produce promising results.