High visual quality sprite generator using automatic segmentation and intelligent blending

Abstract

This paper presents a sprite generator using automatic segmentation and intelligent blending. Unlike the sprite generator introduced in MPEG-4, which requires manually segmentation masks provided by user, the proposed sprite generator segments a video frame automatically into the background and moving objects called masks first. The segmentation masks increase the fidelity of the generated sprite. The automatically segmented masks are then used to generate sprite. The experimental result shows that the generated sprite using the automatically segmented masks close to the generated sprite using manually segmented masks. An intelligent blending method is also proposed to remove ghostlike shadows in the generated sprite caused by imperfect segmentation. The intelligent blending removes the shadows effectively without PSNR degradation, and the fidelity of the generated sprite is raised.