Constraint Satisfaction Programming for Video Summarization

This paper addresses the problem of automatic video summarization. The proposed solution relies on constraint satisfaction programming (CSP). Summary generation rules are expressed as constraints and the summary is created using the CSP solver given the input video, its audio-visual features and possibly user parameters (like the desired duration). The solution clearly separates production rules from the generation algorithm, which in practice allows users to easily express their constraints and preferences and also to modify them w.r.t. the target application. The solution is extensively evaluated in the context of tennis match summarization.