MIME-Version: 1.0 Server: CERN/3.0 Date: Monday, 25-Nov-96 00:16:59 GMT Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 2651 Last-Modified: Thursday, 19-Oct-95 19:59:12 GMT
Until now we could view mpegs just like we could watch movies. Unfortunately, we were unable to take the advantage of digital format: I have not seen mpeg players allowing user to skip to arbitrary frame, fast forward, rewind, etc.
Even more importantly, the video was basically a sequence of frames with no structure. But it is obvious that video higher structure than frames: we can partition video into shots, scenes and larger chunks, like movies, tv shows, etc. We can also partition the video accoding to the content, for example we might want to select a segment of video in which a particular actor appears.
Mpeg_browse provides an interface for browsing video. User can play video, stop at arbitrary point, fast forward. What is the advantage of MPEG Browse over other video players? MPEG Browse adds a very limited, yet useful structure to the video: it partitions the video into shots. Based on these information, the browser can skip to the next shot, much like a CD player can skip to the next song. The scene break algorithm was developed by Ramin Zabih, Justin Miller, and Kavin Mai. For more details about the algorithm see .....href......
Mpeg_browse works in two modes: preprocessing and browsing. Preprocessing is necessary for two reasons: the algorithm for detecting scene breaks doesn't run in real time, and the decoder is not fast enough (which means that in order to skip to some place in the movie, the user would have to wait about as long as it would take to play the sequence). Preprocessing is madatory, since the information generated is essential to the work of browser. The preprocessing has to be done only once: the information for each mpeg file is saved on the disk, in file filename.inf, where the filename is the name of the mpeg.
In addition to video browsing mpeg_browse supports a wide variety of options, both command line and menu. Most options have no effect after the start of the video, but future releases will allow change of many options (like dithering, frame rate, or skiping frames) at arbitrary times.
Mpeg_browse runs on Linux, SunOS, Solaris, and probably any machine other which has wish and can compile Berkeley mpeg_play.
Download distribution of MPEG Browse
Send comments and suggestions to Robert Szewczyk (szewczyk@cs.cornell.edu)