Robust time recognition of video clock based on digit transition detection and digit-sequence recognition

This paper presents an algorithm for robust time recognition of video clock. The existing OCR algorithms cannot recognize time properly due to digits of time are in very low resolution and blur. To confront the challenges of time recognition, our algorithm employs three techniques. The first one is a digit transition detection, which identifies SECOND transit frames. The second is a digit-sequence recognition, which uses the property that digits in clock appear in cycle of 0 to 9 to form digit sequence. The third is an on-the-fly template creation. Informally, the robustness of our algorithm benefits from the facts that both digit transition detection and digit-sequence recognition are more reliable than direct character recognition. Experimental results show that our algorithm can achieve a high accuracy in recognizing time.