Tracking-optimal pre- and post-processing for H.264 compression in traffic video surveillance applications

The compression of video can reduce the accuracy of automated tracking algorithms. This is problematic for centralized applications such as transportation surveillance systems, where remotely captured and compressed video is transmitted to a central location for tracking. In typical systems, the majority of communications bandwidth is spent on representing events such as capture noise or local changes to lighting. We propose a pre- and post-processing algorithm that identifies and removes such events of low tracking interest, significantly reducing the bitrate required to transmit remotely captured video while maintaining comparable tracking accuracy. Using the H.264/AVC video coding standard and a commonly used state-of-the-art tracker we show that our algorithm allows for up to 90% bitrate savings while maintaining comparable tracking accuracy.