Robust Localization of Interpolated Frames by Motion-Compensated Frame Interpolation Based on an Artifact Indicated Map and Tchebichef Moments

Motion-compensated frame interpolation (MCFI), a frame-interpolation technique to increase the motion continuity of low frame-rate video, can be utilized by counterfeiters for faking high bitrate video or splicing videos with different frame rates. For existing MCFI detectors, their performances are degraded under real-world scenarios such as H.264/AVC compression, noise, or blur. To address this issue, a robust MCFI detector is proposed to locate interpolated frames. By analyzing the distribution of residual energies within interpolated frames, we observe that there exist strong correlations between artifact regions and high residual energies. Thus, an artifact indicated map is introduced to select candidate artifact regions. Then, Tchebichef moments (TMs) are exploited to characterize the blurring effects or deformed structures among these regions. Specifically, the mean value of absolute high-order TMs of selected regions is used to model these temporal inconsistencies. Finally, a sliding window is adopted to locate interpolated frames, which are further refined by three post-processing operations. Chrominance information is also integrated with luminance information for robust identification of interpolated frames. Extensive experimental results show that compared with the state-of-the-art MCFI detectors, the proposed approach is more robust for compressed videos under various real-world scenarios.