SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR SELECTING KEY-FRAMES OF VIDEO DATA

A system and method for selecting key-frames to generate a content-based visual summary of video and facilitate digital video browsing and indexing, which provides a real-time approach for key-frame selection irrespective of the available computation power. A method for selecting key-frames according to one aspect of the present invention is based on quantifiable measures such as the amount of motion and behavior of curves defined statistically or non-statistically, i.e. by finding the monotonically increasing segments of a curve, instead of thresholding the statistically defined image dissimilarity measures. In one aspect of the present invention, a method for selecting key-frames from video data comprises the steps of: partitioning video data into segments; generating a temporal activity curve for dissimilarity measures based on one of frame differences, color histograms, camera motion, and a combination thereof, for each segment; and sampling the temporal activity curve to select at least one key-frame for each segment.