Dynamic Video Annotation via Timestamped Metadata Overlay
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional Intelligent Video Analytics (IVA) systems face challenges in efficiently annotating video streams across distributed computing architectures, leading to storage demands and visually cluttered images due to the need for multiple pre-processed, pre-annotated video copies with varying annotations.
Innovation Solution
The system stores video data and metadata separately with timestamps, allowing for on-demand annotation by retrieving relevant frames and metadata across different data stores, enabling flexible metadata overlay on video streams based on user requests, reducing the need for pre-processed copies and minimizing storage requirements.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If multiple copies of video streams are generated with different annotations for each analytics engine, then users can view specific types of annotations, but storage demands increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments video data and metadata into separate storage units. Video frames are stored in a video data store while corresponding metadata is stored in a metadata data store, with timestamps linking them. This allows the system to store one version of the video and selectively combine it with different metadata subsets to create customized annotated views without generating multiple full video copies.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary analysis and generates all possible metadata from the video stream in advance, storing it separately. When a user requests specific annotations, the system quickly retrieves the base video and combines it with the pre-generated relevant metadata, avoiding the need to pre-render multiple annotated video copies while still providing fast customized annotation delivery.
2Quantity of substance
If more annotations are included in the same video stream, then fewer video copies are needed, but the visual clutter increases and usefulness diminishes
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements dynamic annotation composition where the set of annotations displayed is not fixed but adapts based on user requests. The annotation overlay is constructed dynamically by selecting and combining only the relevant metadata subsets needed for the specific analytics type requested, allowing the same video base to support multiple different annotation configurations without visual clutter.
3Power
If video streams are processed across distributed devices, then processing capability increases, but coordinating annotations across devices becomes complex
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces a centralized metadata management layer that acts as an intermediary between distributed video processing devices and the annotation composition function. Each distributed device generates metadata and stores it with timestamps in the centralized metadata data store. When annotation is needed, the system retrieves the appropriate metadata from this centralized store and combines it with the video, eliminating the complexity of coordinating annotations across multiple distributed devices.
Data Source
AI summary
In various examples, cloud computing systems may store frames of video streams and metadata generated from the frames in separate data stores, with each type of data being indexed using shared timestamps. Thus, the frames of a video stream may be stored and/or processed and corresponding metadata of the frames may be stored and/or generated across any number of devices of the cloud computing system (e.g., edge and/or core devices) while being linked by the timestamps. A client device may provide a request or query to dynamically annotate the video stream using a particular subset of the metadata. In processing the request or query, the timestamps may be used to retrieve video data representing frames of the video stream and metadata extracted from those frames across the data stores. The retrieved metadata and video data may be used to annotate the frames for display on the client device.