A unified approach to gradual shot transition detection

Nowadays, content-based retrieval of video material is based on the availability of meta-data linked to it. Current approaches to automatically extract these data start from a temporal segmentation of the audio-visual material, that is, a location of the camera shot transitions. Although abrupt transition detection is a problem almost solved, success on gradual transition detection is still very low. We present a detector for all types of gradual transitions (chromatic, geometric, and mixed), based on in depth modelling of the patterns that these transitions generate on a specific frame distance. Results are presented over a representative sample of more than 250 gradual transitions, which belong to a significant part (200´) of the MPEG-7 testing material, achieving a recall (percentage of effects correctly detected) and a precision (percentage of non-false positives in the set of detection) notably higher than the ones reported so far