Implanting Virtual Advertisement into Broadcast Soccer Video Changsheng Xu, Kong Wah Wan, Son Hai Bui, and Qi Tian Institute for Infocomm Research, 21 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Singapore 119613 {xucs,kongwah,stushb,tian}@i2r.a-star.edu.sg Abstract. In this paper, we propose a novel method to implant virtual advertisements into broadcast soccer video without disturbing audience’s view experience. The salient objects are first detected from broadcast soccer video. These objects include static regions, central ellipse, goal mouth, and field boundary. Based on these objects, we identify suitable locations in the video for virtual advertisement implantation. The adver- tisement implantation can be done in real time. The proposed method allows a non-intrusive means to incorporate additional virtual content into a video presentation, facilitating an additional channel of commu- nications to enhance greater video interactivity. It also creates a new business model for broadcast and advertising industry. 1 Introduction The field of multimedia communications has seen tremendous growth over the past decade, leading to vast improvements that allow real-time computer-aided digital effects such as advertising image/video to be introduced into video pre- sentations. Advertising revenues for sports sites will top USD$6.27 billion by 2005[1]. Because sport events are often played at a stadium, coliseum or other predictable playing environment, people would expect to see predictable regions in the viewable background of a camera view that is capturing the event from a fixed position. Such regions include billboard spaces, the arena terraces, specta- tor stands, areas of the field, etc. Traditional advertising model in sports video is to put the advertisements in the billboards or play them during the breaks of a game. If we can create a service to dynamically implant the virtual advertise- ments into sports video without disturbing the view to the end viewers, it will greatly increase the advertising revenues. The virtual advertisements are implanted in a fashion to retain a realistic view to the end viewers, so that the advertisements may be seen as appearing to be part of the scene. Once the target regions for implantation are selected, the advertisements may be selectively chosen for insertion. Audiences watching the same video broadcast in different geographical regions may then see different advertisements, advertising businesses and products that relevant to the local context. There are several prior arts [2],[3],[4] that allow advertisements to be inserted over pre-defined fixed regions in a video broadcast. However, these approaches K. Aizawa, Y. Nakamura, and S. Satoh (Eds.): PCM 2004, LNCS 3332, pp. 264–271, 2004. c  Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004