Generic Event Detection in Sports Video using Cinematic Features

This paper presents real-time, or near real-time, probabilistic event detection methods for broadcast sports video using cinematic features, such as shot classes and slow-motion replays. Novel algorithms have been developed for probabilistic detection of soccer goal events and basketball play-break events in a generic framework. The proposed framework includes generic algorithms for automatic dominant (field) color region detection and shot boundary detection, and domain-specific shot classification algorithms for soccer and basketball. Finally, the detected goal events in soccer and play events in basketball are employed to generate summaries of long games. The efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed system and the algorithms have been shown over more than 13 hours of sports video captured by the broadcasters from different regions around the world.