VideoAnnEx Annotation Tool

The VideoAnnEx annotation tool assists authors in the task of annotating video sequences with MPEG-7 metadata. Each shot in the video sequence can be annotated with static scene descriptions, key object descriptions, event descriptions, and other lexicon sets. The annotated descriptions are associated with each video shot and are stored as MPEG-7 descriptions in an output XML file. VideoAnnEx can also open MPEG-7 files in order to display the annotations for the corresponding video sequence. The annotation tool also allows customized lexicons to be created, saved, downloaded, and updated.

VideoAnnEx takes an MPEG video sequence as the required input source. The tool also requires a corresponding shot segmentation file, where the input video sequence is segmented into smaller units called video shots by detecting the scene cuts, dissolves, and fades. This shot file can be loaded into the tool from other sources or generated when the input video is first opened. After VideoAnnEx performs shot detection on a video, the shot file can be saved in MPEG-7 schema for later use. As an alternative, the shot file can also be generated by the IBM CueVideo Shot Detection Toolkit.

The VideoAnnEx annotation tool is divided into four graphical sections as illustrated in Figure 1. On the upper right-hand corner of the tool is the Video Playback window with shot information. On the upper left-hand corner of the tool is the Shot Annotation with a key frame image display. On the bottom portion of the tool is two different Views Panel of the annotation preview. A fourth component, not shown in Figure 1, is the Region Annotation pop-up window for specifying annotated regions. These four sections provide interactivity to assist authors of the annotation tool.