Hybrid algorithm for detecting abrupt transition effects based on edge and chromatic information

Abrupt video edition effects (mainly called scene cuts) are transitions in which the image changes globally from one frame to the following one. The automatic detection of this set of effects is a research area widely analyzed, which has produced a number of working technique families. Two of these families are the methods based on geometric features of the images (basically, edges and contours) and the ones based on intensity or chromaticity of the images. Feature-based techniques are highly reliable for cut detection, but they are sometimes unfeasible due to the time spent to obtain results. Intensity-based techniques are not so accurate to detect cuts, although they work very fast. Thus a new hybrid technique is proposed. This method has been stated by combining both techniques. The intensity-based method is used to locate 'probable cuts' with a considerable speed and then the edge-based method is applied to check whether each 'probable cut' actually exists or not. This way, a great time reduction is achieved with little or no loss of accuracy. Results of five well-known algorithms for automatic cut detection are shown. Besides, the results of the proposed method are given and all of them are compared, obtaining the new technique very good results.