Adobe researchers Hailin Jin and Aseem Agarwala*, collaborating with U.Wisconsin prof. Michael Gleicher & Feng Liu, have unveiled their work on “Content-Preserving Warps for 3D Video Stabilization.” In other words, their tech can give your (and my) crappy hand-held footage the look of a Steadicam shot.
Check out the demonstration video, shot at & around Adobe’s Seattle office. (Hello, Fremont Lenin!) It compares the new technique to what’s available in iMovie ’09 and other commercial tools.
As with all research papers/demos, I should point out making technology ready for real-world use can require plenty of additional work & tuning. Still, these developments are encouraging. [Via]
[Previously: Healing Brush & Content-Aware Scaling on (really good) drugs.]
* If you’ve created a panorama using Photoshop, you’ve used Hailin’s (image alignment) and Aseem’s (image blending) work.
I would love to see this in After Effects CS5. I know you guys can do it.
The last time I saw an impressive tech demo like this was the smart scaling of images. That Adobe now supplies in Photoshop CS4.
There is obviously some significant cropping that takes place. While the cropping is reasonable and expected, it can limit the applicability of the technique to video shot wide enough to eliminate the possibility of cropping important elements of the subject. The real leap would be to be implement this in-camera in a device that has a sensor whose area significantly exceeds that of the output frame.
Very cool! Thanks for the post. This rocks!
Here’s some more on Siggraph papers:
http://aeportal.blogspot.com/2009/06/seam-carving-cloning-video-cutouts.html
http://aeportal.blogspot.com/2009/06/siggraph-2009-technical-papers-video.html
[Shhh, I’m dribbling out the info it little increments, and you’re blowing my cover. 😉 No, seriously, thanks for the links. I find it hard to know exactly when things get posted publicly. –J.]
Hi, this off topic, but are there plans to expand the subscription version of CS4 to the United States?
I would have died for something like this a few years ago. Some people go to extreme measures in other to stabilize their footage.
[That wheelchair looks like a pretty sweet ride! –J.]
The rate of advancement in this field is amazing. I think I’m getting used to being mesmerized by those Siggraph demonstrations. I could almost anticipate the sound of my jaw hitting the flour right before clicking the link.
[Heh–well said. –J.]
This looks fantastic! I can see this maturing into a game-changing technology.
but.
Something caught my eye at around 3:52 during the demonstration of the “low-pass” filter test… is it just me, or does that shadow look like it’s being cast by someone wearing a steady-cam or glide-cam rig? 🙂
[Oh noes–busted! 😉 –J.]
There’s many commercial applications for this techology; a niche that may have mass appeal may be the creation of virtual loops from video clips so that video-capable photo frames could show the “endless movie” of relatively static scenes. e.g. a ‘living’ portrait, landscape with wind blowing flora etc. I would not think large background changes could be accommodated, but it does seem that there would be tremendous demand from users of image frames for this style of applet…