A novel tracking-by-encoding scheme based on linear programming matching

In this paper, we present a new object tracking scheme. Different from conventional tracking process, the proposed method is combined with video encoding and can be easily embedded into video encoding system. The only information the tracker need is Summed Absolute Difference (SAD) generated by motion estimation during encoding. These SADs are used as soft votes in a fast Hough-Transform (HT) algorithm in parameter space of translation. This can be much faster than conventional tracking algorithm such as particle filter and more accurate than recent compress-domain approaches. Taking the advantage of HT, this approach is also robust to unstable camera, background moving and partial occlusion. The parameter space can be also extended to affine transform space with those soft votes to track scale change and partially rotation moving. We solve the latter multi-parameter problem by Linear Programming (LP) algorithm. The tracking result can also direct encoding behavior: detecting Region of Interest (ROI), adjusting QP, and etc.