Automatic Recognition of Film Genres

Film genres in digital video can be detected automatically. In a three-step approach we analyze first the syntactic properties of digital films: color statistics, cut detection, camera motion, object motion and audio. In a second step we use these statistics to derive at a more abstract level film style attributes such as camera panning and zooming, speech and music. These are distinguishing properties for film genres, e.g. newscasts vs. sports vs. commercials. In the third and final step we map the detected style attributes to film genres. Algorithms for the three steps are presented in detail, and we report on initial experience with real videos. It is our goal to automatically classify the large body of existing video for easier access in digital video-on-demand databases. 1