Semi-automatic news video annotation framework for Arabic text

In this paper, we present a semi-automatic news video annotation tool. The tool and its algorithms are dedicated to artificial Arabic text embedded in video news in the form of static text as well as scrolling one. It is performed at two different levels. Including specificities of Arabic script, the tool manages a global level which concerns the entire video and a local level which concerns any specific frame extracted from the video. The global annotation is performed manually thanks to a user interface. As a result of this step, we obtain the global xml file. The local annotation at the frame level is done automatically according to the information contained in the global metafile and a proposed text tracking algorithm. The main application of our tool is the ground truthing of textual information in video content. It is being used for this purpose in the Arabic Text in Video (AcTiV) database project in our lab. One of the functions that AcTiV provides, is a benchmark to compare existing and future Arabic video OCR systems.