Serve receive-to-attack period extraction and histogram-based player localization in broadcast volleyball videos

Serve receive-to-attack (SR2A) is the most principal way to gain points in volleyball games. In addition, the positions of players on the court reveal informative clues about both offensive and defensive formations. Hence, in this paper, we propose an effective system capable of extracting SR2A periods from long broadcast volleyball videos (taken from a pan-tilt-zoom camera), and then locating the players using a novel histogram-based approach. Enriched visual presentation can be provided to give the audience or professional players/coaches a further sight into the game. The proposed system consists of four major processing modules, including court detection, SR2A period extraction, camera calibration, and histogram-based player localization. The experiments conducted on broadcast volleyball videos show promising results.