  In recent years, a variety of proposed methods based on deep convolutional
neural networks (CNNs) have improved the state of the art for large-scale
person re-identification (ReID). While a large number of optimizations and
network improvements have been proposed, there has been relatively little
evaluation of the influence of training data and baseline network architecture.
In particular, it is usually assumed either that networks are trained on
labeled data from the deployment location (scene-dependent), or else adapted
with unlabeled data, both of which complicate system deployment. In this paper,
we investigate the feasibility of achieving scene-independent person ReID by
forming a large composite dataset for training. We present an in-depth
comparison of several CNN baseline architectures for both scene-dependent and
scene-independent ReID, across a range of training dataset sizes. We show that
scene-independent ReID can produce leading-edge results, competitive with
unsupervised domain adaption techniques. Finally, we introduce a new dataset
for comparing within-camera and across-camera person ReID.
