# Markerless Augmented Advertising for Sports Videos

## TL;DR

This paper introduces an automated, markerless augmented reality system for sports videos that seamlessly overlays advertisements onto textures of interest, eliminating the need for manual editing or commercial breaks.

## Contribution

It presents a novel pipeline that automatically detects suitable textures, builds a 3D scene, and tracks advertisements in real-time with perspective correctness during video playback.

## Key findings

- Successfully overlays ads in live sports videos without manual intervention
- Maintains perspective and natural appearance during camera motion and shot changes
- Reduces reliance on post-production editing and skilled artists

## Abstract

Markerless augmented reality can be a challenging computer vision task, especially in live broadcast settings and in the absence of information related to the video capture such as the intrinsic camera parameters. This typically requires the assistance of a skilled artist, along with the use of advanced video editing tools in a post-production environment. We present an automated video augmentation pipeline that identifies textures of interest and overlays an advertisement onto these regions. We constrain the advertisement to be placed in a way that is aesthetic and natural. The aim is to augment the scene such that there is no longer a need for commercial breaks. In order to achieve seamless integration of the advertisement with the original video we build a 3D representation of the scene, place the advertisement in 3D, and then project it back onto the image plane. After successful placement in a single frame, we use homography-based, shape-preserving tracking such that the advertisement appears perspective correct for the duration of a video clip. The tracker is designed to handle smooth camera motion and shot boundaries.