People and object tracking for video annotation

Abstract

Object tracking is a thoroughly researched problem, with a body of associated literature dating at least as far back as the late 1970s. However, and despite the development of some satisfactory real-time trackers, it has not yet seen widespread use. This is not due to a lack of applications for the technology, since several interesting ones exist. In this document, it is postulated that this status quo is due, at least in part, to a lack of easy to use software libraries supporting object tracking. An overview of the problems associated with object tracking is presented and the process of developing one such library is documented. This discussion includes how to overcome problems like heterogeneities in object representations and requirements for training or initial object position hints. Video annotation is the process of associating data with a video’s content. Associating data with a video has numerous applications, ranging from making large video archives or long videos searchable, to enabling discussion about and augmentation of the video’s content. Object tracking is presented as a valid approach to both automatic and manual video annotation, and the integration of the developed object tracking library into an existing video annotator, running on a tablet computer, is described. The challenges involved in designing an interface to support the association of video annotations with tracked objects in real-time are also discussed. In particular, we discuss our interaction approaches to handle moving object selection on live video, which we have called “Hold and Overlay” and “Hold and Speed Up”. In addition, the results of a set of preliminary tests are reported.