Semi-automatic video object segmentation by advanced manipulation of segmentation hierarchies

For applications that require very accurate video object segmentations, semi-automatic algorithms are typically used, which help operators to minimize the annotation time, as off-the-shelf automatic segmentation techniques are still far from being precise enough in this context. This paper presents a novel interface based on a click-and-drag interaction that allows to rapidly select regions from state-of-the-art segmentation hierarchies. The interface is very responsive, allows to obtain very accurate segmentations, and is designed to minimize the human interaction. To evaluate the results, we provide a new set of object video ground truth data.