Archiving, indexing, and retrieval of video in the compressed domain

Fast and efficient storage, indexing, browsing, and retrieval of video is a necessity for the development of various multimedia database applications. This can be achieved by analyzing the video directly in the compressed domain, thereby avoiding the overhead of decompressing video into individual frames in the pixel domain. Our compressed domain parsing of video performs shot change detection and motion detection using the data readily accessible from MPEG, with minimal decoding. Key frames are identified and are used for indexing, retrieval, and browsing. In this paper, we describe feature extraction and key frame indexing and retrieval techniques that are directly applicable to compressed video. The features are derived form the available DCT, macroblock, and motion vector information and the techniques enable fast parsing and archiving of video.