Multiple change-point audio segmentation and classification using an MDL-based Gaussian model

This study presents an approach for segmenting and classifying an audio stream based on audio type. First, a silence deletion procedure is employed to remove silence segments in the audio stream. A minimum description length (MDL)-based, Gaussian model is then proposed to statistically characterize the audio features. Audio segmentation segments the audio stream into a sequence of homogeneous subsegments using the MDL-based Gaussian model. A hierarchical threshold-based classifier is then used to classify each subsegment into different audio types. Finally, a heuristic method is adopted to smooth the subsegment sequence and provide the final segmentation and classification results. Experimental results indicate that for TDT-3 news broadcast, a missed detection rate (MDR) of 0.1 and a false alarm rate (FAR) of 0.14 were achieved for audio segmentation. Given the same MDR and FAR values, segment-based audio classification achieved a better classification accuracy of 88% compared to a clip-based approach.