Efficient Video Search Using Image Queries

We study the challenges of image-based retrieval when the database consists of videos. This variation of visual search is important for a broad range of applications that require indexing video databases based on their visual contents. We present new solutions to reduce storage requirements, while at the same time improving video search quality. The video database is preprocessed to find different appearances of the same visual elements, and build robust descriptors. Compression algorithms are developed to reduce system's storage requirements. We introduce a dataset of CNN broadcasts and queries that include photos taken with mobile phones and images of objects. Our experiments include pairwise matching and retrieval scenarios. We demonstrate one order of magnitude storage reduction and search quality improvements of up to 12% in mean average precision, compared to a baseline system that does not make use of our techniques.