Fine-Tuning Video Transformers for Word-Level Bangla Sign Language: A Comparative Analysis for Classification Tasks

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Shawon, Jubayer Ahmed Bhuiyan, Mahmud, Hasan, Hasan, Kamrul
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Shawon, Jubayer Ahmed Bhuiyan
Mahmud, Hasan
Hasan, Kamrul
author_facet Shawon, Jubayer Ahmed Bhuiyan
Mahmud, Hasan
Hasan, Kamrul
contents Sign Language Recognition (SLR) involves the automatic identification and classification of sign gestures from images or video, converting them into text or speech to improve accessibility for the hearing-impaired community. In Bangladesh, Bangla Sign Language (BdSL) serves as the primary mode of communication for many individuals with hearing impairments. This study fine-tunes state-of-the-art video transformer architectures -- VideoMAE, ViViT, and TimeSformer -- on BdSLW60 (arXiv:2402.08635), a small-scale BdSL dataset with 60 frequent signs. We standardized the videos to 30 FPS, resulting in 9,307 user trial clips. To evaluate scalability and robustness, the models were also fine-tuned on BdSLW401 (arXiv:2503.02360), a large-scale dataset with 401 sign classes. Additionally, we benchmark performance against public datasets, including LSA64 and WLASL. Data augmentation techniques such as random cropping, horizontal flipping, and short-side scaling were applied to improve model robustness. To ensure balanced evaluation across folds during model selection, we employed 10-fold stratified cross-validation on the training set, while signer-independent evaluation was carried out using held-out test data from unseen users U4 and U8. Results show that video transformer models significantly outperform traditional machine learning and deep learning approaches. Performance is influenced by factors such as dataset size, video quality, frame distribution, frame rate, and model architecture. Among the models, the VideoMAE variant (MCG-NJU/videomae-base-finetuned-kinetics) achieved the highest accuracies of 95.5% on the frame rate corrected BdSLW60 dataset and 81.04% on the front-facing signs of BdSLW401 -- demonstrating strong potential for scalable and accurate BdSL recognition.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_04367
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Fine-Tuning Video Transformers for Word-Level Bangla Sign Language: A Comparative Analysis for Classification Tasks
Shawon, Jubayer Ahmed Bhuiyan
Mahmud, Hasan
Hasan, Kamrul
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Sign Language Recognition (SLR) involves the automatic identification and classification of sign gestures from images or video, converting them into text or speech to improve accessibility for the hearing-impaired community. In Bangladesh, Bangla Sign Language (BdSL) serves as the primary mode of communication for many individuals with hearing impairments. This study fine-tunes state-of-the-art video transformer architectures -- VideoMAE, ViViT, and TimeSformer -- on BdSLW60 (arXiv:2402.08635), a small-scale BdSL dataset with 60 frequent signs. We standardized the videos to 30 FPS, resulting in 9,307 user trial clips. To evaluate scalability and robustness, the models were also fine-tuned on BdSLW401 (arXiv:2503.02360), a large-scale dataset with 401 sign classes. Additionally, we benchmark performance against public datasets, including LSA64 and WLASL. Data augmentation techniques such as random cropping, horizontal flipping, and short-side scaling were applied to improve model robustness. To ensure balanced evaluation across folds during model selection, we employed 10-fold stratified cross-validation on the training set, while signer-independent evaluation was carried out using held-out test data from unseen users U4 and U8. Results show that video transformer models significantly outperform traditional machine learning and deep learning approaches. Performance is influenced by factors such as dataset size, video quality, frame distribution, frame rate, and model architecture. Among the models, the VideoMAE variant (MCG-NJU/videomae-base-finetuned-kinetics) achieved the highest accuracies of 95.5% on the frame rate corrected BdSLW60 dataset and 81.04% on the front-facing signs of BdSLW401 -- demonstrating strong potential for scalable and accurate BdSL recognition.
title Fine-Tuning Video Transformers for Word-Level Bangla Sign Language: A Comparative Analysis for Classification Tasks
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.04367