Videozoom: A Spatio-temporal video browser for the Internet

Abstract

We describe a system for browsing and interactively retrieving video sequences over the Internet at multiple spatial and temporal resolutions. Each video sequence is decomposed into a hierarchy of video view elements that are retrieved in a progressive fashion. The client browser builds the views of the video sequence by retrieving, caching and assembling the view elements, as needed. This allows the user to quickly browse the video over the Internet by starting with a coarse, low-resolution view and by selectively zooming-in along the temporal and spatial dimensions. We demonstrate that the video view element method is able to represent and deliver the video in a compact form while significantly speeding up the access and progressive retrieval over the Internet.