Convert TensorFlow CRNN Model

This tutorial explains how to convert a CRNN model to Intermediate Representation (IR).

On GitHub*, you can find several public versions of TensorFlow* CRNN model implementation. This tutorial explains how to convert the model from the https://github.com/MaybeShewill-CV/CRNN_Tensorflow repository to IR. If you have another implementation of CRNN model, you can convert it to IR in similar way: you need to get inference graph and run the Model Optimizer on it.

To convert this model to the IR:

Step 1. Clone this GitHub repository and checkout the commit:

  1. Clone repository:

    git clone https://github.com/MaybeShewill-CV/CRNN_Tensorflow.git
  2. Checkout necessary commit:

    git checkout 64f1f1867bffaacfeacc7a80eebf5834a5726122

Step 2. Train the model using framework or use the pre-trained checkpoint provided in this repository.

Step 3. Create an inference graph:

  1. Go to the CRNN_Tensorflow directory with the cloned repository:

    cd path/to/CRNN_Tensorflow
  2. Add CRNN_Tensorflow folder to PYTHONPATH.

    • For Linux* OS:

      export PYTHONPATH="${PYTHONPATH}:/path/to/CRNN_Tensorflow/"
    • For Windows* OS add /path/to/CRNN_Tensorflow/ to the PYTHONPATH environment variable in settings.

  3. Open the tools/test_shadownet.py script. After saver.restore(sess=sess, save_path=weights_path) line, add the following code:

    import tensorflow as tf
    from tensorflow.python.framework import graph_io
    frozen = tf.compat.v1.graph_util.convert_variables_to_constants(sess, sess.graph_def, ['shadow/LSTMLayers/transpose_time_major'])
    graph_io.write_graph(frozen, '.', 'frozen_graph.pb', as_text=False)
  4. Run the demo with the following command:

    python tools/test_shadownet.py --image_path data/test_images/test_01.jpg --weights_path model/shadownet/shadownet_2017-10-17-11-47-46.ckpt-199999

    If you want to use your checkpoint, replace the path in the --weights_path parameter with a path to your checkpoint.

  5. In the CRNN_Tensorflow directory, you will find the inference CRNN graph frozen_graph.pb. You can use this graph with the OpenVINO toolkit to convert the model into IR and run inference.

Step 4. Convert the model into IR:

mo --input_model path/to/your/CRNN_Tensorflow/frozen_graph.pb