Retrieval of commercials by semantic content: The semiotic perspective

Video information processing and retrieval is a key aspect of future multim edia technologies and applications. Commercial videos encode several planes of expression through a rich and dense use of colors, editing effects, vie wpoints and rhythms, which are exploited together to attract potential purc hasers. Databases of commercials can be accessed in order to analyze how a commercial has been developed, retrieve commercials similar to an example, catalog commercials according to the kind of message conveyed to the user. In this paper, we present a system allowing the retrieval of commercial str eams based on their salient semantics. Semantics is regarded from the semio tics perspective: collections of signs and semantic features like colors, e diting effects, motion, etc. are used as basic blocks with which the meanin g of a commercial is constructed. In our system, it is possible to retrieve commercials according to both the meaning they convey and to their similar ity to examples.