A New Large Scale Dynamic Texture Dataset with Application to ConvNet Understanding

We introduce a new large scale dynamic texture dataset. With over 10,000 videos, our Dynamic Texture DataBase (DTDB) is two orders of magnitude larger than any previously available dynamic texture dataset. DTDB comes with two complementary organizations, one based on dynamics independent of spatial appearance and one based on spatial appearance independent of dynamics. The complementary organizations allow for uniquely insightful experiments regarding the abilities of major classes of spatiotemporal ConvNet architectures to exploit appearance vs. dynamic information. We also present a new two-stream ConvNet that provides an alternative to the standard optical-flow-based motion stream to broaden the range of dynamic patterns that can be encompassed. The resulting motion stream is shown to outperform the traditional optical flow stream by considerable margins. Finally, the utility of DTDB as a pretraining substrate is demonstrated via transfer learning on a different dynamic texture dataset as well as the companion task of dynamic scene recognition resulting in a new state-of-the-art.