In this paper, a method for extraction of important players in soccer videos based on link analysis is proposed. In a soccer match, players perform shoot tackles, assistance, and covering. Furthermore, the soccer tactics are defined the formation of players based on various relationships between players. The proposed method extracts the important players, in order to obtain information for understanding the soccer matches for various audiences. Specifically, our method notes that relationship between players, who cooperate with each other by the pass and the covering, is similar to relationship between web pages which are connected by links. First, the proposed method obtains player networks based on relationship between players in each team. The relationships are defined based on player positions and the possibility of the pass or the covering between players. Finally, in the proposed method, by applying the link analysis to the obtained player networks, important players are extracted. By realizing this approach, important players are extracted from the player networks based on the possibility of the pass or the covering between players. In the last of this paper, the above link analysis-based method was applied to actual soccer matches to show the reasonability of our method.
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