Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation have developed a high-precision moving picture search technology that can flawlessly identify the precise frames used in an edited video from a large collection of video data. This new technology can reduce manual visual comparisons in the moving picture production workflow and thus dramatically improve the efficiency of cinema and television production process. The technology involves a system that extracts two types of feature data with different densities from video data in advance; these two types of feature data are then used separately as part of a multistage search process for narrowing down the search space.
The technology can also be applied to audio data: by comparing feature data extracted from audio signals, it can identify sections containing the same audio data. NTT started conducting field tests of this technology in July 2013 in collaboration with Pixsystem, whose clients include major Hollywood movie studios. The field tests evaluated the speed and accuracy with which this technology could find edited sequences from daily movie footage to assess its practicality within practical production workflows. NTT will continue to conduct field tests and develop technology for making moving picture production workflows more efficient.
