Fade-in and fade-out temporal segments

A method for performing content-based temporal segmentation of video sequences comprising the steps of:

• (a) transmitting the video sequence to a processor;
• (b) detecting a plurality of shot boundary locations, wherein a frame color histogram difference and a frame pixel difference are computed for the video sequence, and a clustering operation is used to generate two distinct classes of shot boundary and non-shot boundary locations;
• (c) identifying within the video sequence a plurality of groups of uniform frames by analyzing color properties of temporal frames;
• (d) detecting the content of a plurality of adjacent uniform frames, and refining the plurality of groups of uniform frames to detect a plurality of uniform intensity temporal segments;
• (e) analyzing the color properties of temporal frames starting from an endpoint of the uniform intensity temporal segments to detect fade-in and fade-out temporal segments;
• (f) detecting within the video sequence dissolve temporal segments;
• (g) refining and combining individual temporal segment locations to produce a single list of the individual temporal segment locations contained in the video sequence;
• including:
• (g1) removing from a list of shot boundary locations any frame that has been detected as a shot boundary and that also has been flagged as part of a uniform intensity segment, a fade segment, or a dissolve segment;
• (g2) dropping adjacent shot boundaries that are closer than a predefined number of frames;
• (g3) eliminating detected spurious shot boundaries resulting from sudden increases in frame luminance characteristics;
• and
• (h) outputting the single list of individual temporal segment locations within the video sequence including the detected shot boundary locations fade-in and fade-out temporal segment locations, uniform intensity segment locations, and dissolve segment locations.