Graham J. Reynolds

Automatic detection of 'Goal' segments in basketball videos

Advances in the media and entertainment industries, for example streaming audio and digital TV, present new challenges for managing large audio-visual collections. Efficient and effective retrieval from large content collections forms an important component of the business models for content holders and this is driving a need for research in audio-visual search and retrieval. Current content management systems support retrieval using low-level features, such as motion, colour, texture, beat and loudness. However, low-level features often have little meaning for the human users of these systems, who much prefer to identify content using high-level semantic descriptions or concepts. This creates a gap between the system and the user that must be bridged for these systems to be used effectively. The research presented in this paper describes our approach to bridging this gap in a specific content domain, sports video. Our approach is based on a number of automatic techniques for feature detection used in combination with heuristic rules determined through manual observations of sports footage. This has led to a set of models for interesting sporting events-goal segments-that have been implemented as part of an information retrieval system. The paper also presents results comparing output of the system against manually identified goals.

A standard model for multimedia synchronization: PREMO synchronization objects

Abstract. This paper describes an event-based synchronization mechanism, which is at the core of the inter-media synchronization in the upcoming standard for multimedia presentation, PREMO. The synchronization mechanism of PREMO is a powerful tool, based on a small number of concepts, and on cooperation among active objects, and represents a synthesis of various synchronization models described in the literature. This model can serve as a basis for the implementation of complex synchronization patterns in multimedia presentations, both purely event-based, as well as time-based.

PREMO: an ISO standard for presentation environment for multimedia objects

PREMO is a major new ISO/IEC standard for graphics and multimedia, which addresses many of the concerns that have been expressed about existing graphics standards. In particular, it addresses the issues of configuration, extension, and interoperation of and between PREMO implementations. This paper gives an overview of PREMO and highlights its most significant features.

Premo: An Emerging Standard for Multimedia Presentation Part I: Overview and Framework

Developers needing to realize high-level multimedia applications are essentially left on their own. Only a few programming tools allow the creation of multimedia effects based on a more general model than multimedia documents. No currently available ISO standard encompasses these needs. A standard in this area should focus more on the presentation aspects of multimedia and less on the coding, transfer, or hypermedia document aspects, which are covered other standards. It should also concentrate on programming tools rather than multimedia document format. These are exactly the main concerns of the Premo (Presentation Environment for Multimedia Objects) standard, the subject of the article. Premos major features can be briefly summarized as follows: Premo is a presentation environment that aims to provide a standard programming environment in a very general sense, one that helps promote portable multimedia applications; Premo targets multimedia presentation, whereas earlier SC24 standards concentrated either on synthetic graphics or image-processing systems; Premo is object oriented. This means that, through standard object-oriented techniques, a Premo implementation becomes extensible and configurable. Object-oriented technology also provides a framework to describe distribution in a consistent manner.

Formal methods in the development of PREMO

Abstract ISO/IEC JTC1/SC24 are developing a standard for the presentation of multimedia objects, called Premo (Presentation Environments for Multimedia Objects). Premo is a multipart standard, the most well-defined parts of which, at the time of writing, are at the stage of Committee Draft. This paper describes how formal description techniques are being used in the development of the Premo standard, shadowing the development of the standard itself. The approach taken uses a combination of Z and Object-Z. The motivation and merits of this approach are discussed, and illustrated with a description of some fundamental concepts of the Premo object model.

An Object Model for Multimedia Programming.

The development of multimedia applications is a complex task. Much of this complexity stems from requirements associated with programming multiple media objects and the control of dependences and inter‐relationships between these media objects and the user(s). It is clearly necessary to have a basic framework on which to build multimedia applications in the face of such complexities. Such a conceptual model is what we have called an object model and it is the main subject of this paper. The MADE object model represents a novel approach to multimedia application programming that is founded on the two principal concepts of active objects and delegation. Although these concepts are not novel in themselves, we believe that their combined use in a multimedia development environment represents a substantial enhancement to more traditional approaches to programming in this area.

PREMO ‐ An Initial Approach to a Formal Definition

Many descriptions of multimedia programming systems are starting to appear in the literature, but little work has yet been done on how to formally specify and reason about such systems. This paper is a contribution on the use of formal description techniques for the specification of multimedia systems and explores a style in which the Object‐Z notation from the University of Queensland can be used to specify some of the properties and functionality of such systems. The work has been carried out with reference to the role of formal description techniques in the presentation of ISO/IEC International Standards and in particular to the Premo project in ISO/IEC JTCl/SC24.

Replay Detection in Sports Video Sequences

In many sports, the majority of highlights are confined to relatively short durations of intense action. In some sense these segments capture the essence of a game and summarize the moments of important action. Automatic detection of these highlights could provide an important browsing mechanism in a video library of sports games. In this paper, we present efficient algorithms, operating in the MPEG domain, for detecting two kinds of replay from sports video sequences. These replays often correspond to highlights in a game and can be used as indices of a sports video. The first algorithm detects exact replays while the second algorithm detects slow motion replays. Both algorithms operate directly on MPEG-1/MPEG-2 video data and thus they are very efficient because the expensive decoding operation is unnecessary. Experimental results on several video sequences show that the proposed algorithms are effective in detecting replays in most sports video sequences.

The open inventor toolkit and the PREMO standard

PREMO is an emerging international standard for the presentations of multimedia objects including computer graphics. Open Inventor™ is a commercially available “de facto” standard for interactive computer graphics packaged as a library of objects. In this paper, we consider whether the concepts and objects of PREMO are sufficient to represent a professional quality system, such as Open Inventor.

The ARGOSI Classification Scheme for Graphics and Networking Applications

ARGOSI is a project concerned with the relationship between standards for graphics and networking, as rejected in its full title: Applications Related Graphics and OSI Standards Integration. It is a collaborative project between eleven European organizations and is funded under the Esprit‐Il programme of the Commission of the European Community.