In the previous sections, we briefly discussed OpenVINO Model Zoo and how we can use OpenVINO IE with OpenCV. In this section, we will learn more about Model Zoo and what it offers.

OpenVINO Model Zoo is a collection of optimized pre-trained models that can be directly imported into OpenVINO for inference. The importance of this feature lies in the fact that one of the major reasons behind OpenVINO's speedup is the optimized model file that it takes for inference. The underlying inference principle is still the same as most deep learning inference toolkits and languages, such as OpenCV. OpenCV's dnn module uses this speedup principle of OpenVINO by using it as the default backend for all inference tasks.

While it is possible to convert the model files into .xml and .bin files, it's not very easy. There are mainly two problems...