An algorithm for highlights identification and summarization of broadcast soccer videos

Abstract

This paper presents an algorithm that aims to perform automatic summarization in broadcast soccer videos. The summarization considers identifying and keeping only the highlights of the match. A situation that could be considered a highlight is defined as one with high convergence of players to a spot. Our approach considers velocities and positions of the players, and an inferred movement of the TV camera as basic features to be extracted. The movement of the TV cameras are approximated using the movement of all the players in the image. A motion field is computed over the image in order to analyze aspects of the match. The algorithm was tested with real data of a soccer match and results are promising considering the approach uses as input broadcast videos only, and it has no a priori knowledge of cameras positions or other fixed parameters. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.