Microsoft edits video from a single shot
Wednesday 13 August 2008 9:36 AM
New software could make adding special effects to video as simple as editing a single digital photograph claims Microsoft. The company presented a new research project at the SIGGRAPH conference which takes a video and builds from it a 2D representation of the main subject, called an "unwrap mosaic". This mosaic can then be edited as a simple digital image, before being implanted back into the video, where any changes will be applied to each and every frame. In the demonstration video, footage taken of a man's head is altered with facial hair and rosy cheeks, simply by editing one 2D mosaic constructed from the original video. In the edited footage these changes accurately map to the head and appear seamless, as if every frame was edited individually. "Many editing operations can be performed on the unwrap mosaic, and then re-composited into the original sequence, for example resizing objects, repainting textures, copying/cutting/pasting objects, and attaching effects layers to deforming objects," explains the Microsoft Research website. The software has been developed in a collaboration between Microsoft Research in Cambridge and the Weizmann institute of Science, but no details have yet been released as to whether the project will see a commercial release. Written by Matthew Sparkes pcpro.co.uk
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