(Press-News.org) Video cameras that people wear to record daily activities are creating a novel form of creative and informative media. But this footage also poses a challenge: how to expeditiously edit hours of raw video into something watchable. One solution, according to Disney researchers, is to automate the editing process by leveraging the first-person viewpoints of multiple cameras to find the areas of greatest interest in the scene.
The method they developed can automatically combine footage of a single event shot by several such "social cameras" into a coherent, condensed video. The algorithm selects footage based both on its understanding of the most interesting content in the scene and on established rules of cinematography.
"The resulting videos might not have the same narrative or technical complexity that a human editor could achieve, but they capture the essential action and, in our experiments, were often similar in spirit to those produced by professionals," said Ariel Shamir, an associate professor of computer science at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel, and a member of the Disney Research Pittsburgh team.
The Disney Research Pittsburgh scientists will present their findings at ACM SIGGRAPH 2014, the International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, Aug. 10-14, in Vancouver, Canada.
Whether attached to clothing, embedded in eyeglasses or held in hand, social cameras capture a view of daily life that is highly personal but also frequently rough and shaky. As more people begin using these cameras, however, videos from multiple points of view will be available of parties, sporting events, recreational activities, performances and other encounters.
"Though each individual has a different view of the event, everyone is typically looking at, and therefore recording, the same activity – the most interesting activity," said Yaser Sheikh, an associate research professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. "By determining the orientation of each camera, we can calculate the gaze concurrence, or 3D joint attention, of the group. Our automated editing method uses this as a signal indicating what action is most significant at any given time."
In a basketball game, for instance, players spend much of their time with their eyes on the ball. So if each player is wearing a head-mounted social camera, editing based on the gaze concurrence of the players will tend to follow the ball as well, including long passes and shots to the basket.
The algorithm chooses which camera view to use based on which has the best quality view of the action, but also on standard cinematographic guidelines. These include the 180-degree rule – shooting the subject from the same side, so as not to confuse the viewer by the abrupt reversals of action that occur when switching views between opposite sides.
Avoiding jump cuts between cameras with similar views of the action and avoiding very short-duration shots are among the other rules the algorithm obeys to produce an aesthetically pleasing video.
The computation necessary to achieve these results can take several hours. By contrast, professional editors using the same raw camera feeds took an average of more than 20 hours to create a few minutes of video.
The algorithm also can be used to assist professional editors tasked with editing large amounts of footage.
Other methods available for automatically or semi-automatically combining footage from multiple cameras appear limited to choosing the most stable or best lit views and periodically switching between them, the researchers observed. Such methods can fail to follow the action and, because they do not know the spatial relationship of the cameras, cannot take into consideration cinematographic guidelines such as the 180-degree rule and jump cuts.
INFORMATION:
In addition to Sheikh and Shamir, the research team included Jessica Hodgins, VP of Disney Research and a professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon; Hyun
Soo Park, then a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and Ido Arev, a computer science student at Herzliya and a Disney Research Pittsburgh intern.
For more information and a video, visit the project home page at http://www.disneyresearch.com/project/automatic-social-editing/.
About Disney Research
Disney Research is a network of research laboratories supporting The Walt Disney Company. Its purpose is to pursue scientific and technological innovation to advance the company's broad media and entertainment efforts. Vice Presidents Jessica Hodgins and Markus Gross manage Disney Research facilities in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Zürich, and Boston and work closely with the Pixar and ILM research groups in the San Francisco Bay Area. Research topics include computer graphics, animation, video processing, computer vision, robotics, wireless & mobile computing, human-computer interaction, displays, behavioral economics, and machine learning.
Disney Research method automatically edits footage from cameras into coherent videos
Shared focus of attention from multiple cameras identifies most interesting content
2014-08-08
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Living organisms in oil
2014-08-08
Oil might not, at first sight, seem like an inhabited terrain. Within the oil, however, are tiny, suspended water droplets. "Inside them we found complex microbial communities, which play an active part in oil degradation in situ," says first author Prof. Rainer Meckenstock from the Helmholtz Zentrum München (HMGU).
Previously it was assumed that microbial oil degradation only occurred at the oil-water interface. The team headed by Prof. Meckenstock from the Institute of Groundwater Ecology and the Department of Biogeochemistry at HMGU along with international colleagues ...
Disney Research's interactive method synchronizes multiple videos
2014-08-08
Disney Research Zurich has developed a new tool to help video editors synchronize multiple video clips based on the visual content of the videos, rather than relying on timecodes or other external markers. Current editing tools include a "snapping" interface that aligns video clips based on start-and-end times; by contrast, Disney Research's VideoSnapping method is based on an analysis of the content of the video. This makes it easier to synchronize multiple clips without such cues as global timecodes or audio, and even when clips are shot at different trajectories and ...
Which Structure has optimal resistive switching characteristics?
2014-08-08
Resistance switching of random access memory has been widely explored due to its potential for replacement of flash memory in the next-generation nonvolatile memory applications.
One of the problems with resistive switching materials is the variations of switching parameters, which will deteriorate the device endurance.
How do we solve this problem?
Many methods have been tried to improve the resistive switching performances, such as doping in the insulator film, using appropriate electrodes and inserting interlayer between the electrode and the insulator ...
Work-related stress is a risk factor for type 2 diabetes
2014-08-08
Workplace stress can have a range of adverse effects on health with an increased risk of cardio-vascular diseases in the first line. However, to date, convincing evidence for a strong association between work stress and incident Type 2 diabetes mellitus is missing.
Risk of diabetes about 45 percent higher
As the team of scientists headed by Dr. Cornelia Huth and Prof. Karl-Heinz Ladwig has now discovered that individuals who are under a high level of pressure at work and at the same time perceive little control over the activities they perform face an about 45 percent ...
Northern Pacific's tropical anoxic zone might shrink from climate change
2014-08-08
A commonly held belief that global warming will diminish oxygen concentrations in the ocean looks like it may not be entirely true. According to new research published in Science magazine, just the opposite is likely the case in the eastern tropical northern Pacific, with its anoxic zone expected to shrink in coming decades because of climate change.
An international team of scientists came to that surprising conclusion after completing a detailed assessment of changes since 1850 in the eastern tropical northern Pacific Ocean's oxygen minimum zone (OMZ). An ocean layer ...
How we form habits and change existing ones
2014-08-08
Much of our daily lives are taken up by habits that we've formed over our lifetime. An important characteristic of a habit is that it's automatic-- we don't always recognize habits in our own behavior. Studies show that about 40 percent of people's daily activities are performed each day in almost the same situations. Habits emerge through associative learning. "We find patterns of behavior that allow us to reach goals. We repeat what works, and when actions are repeated in a stable context, we form associations between cues and response," Wendy Wood explains in her session ...
What does 'diversity' mean to you? The answer may depend on your race
2014-08-08
Diversity in the workplace has been a contentious issue for many employers. In May 2014, Google disclosed that 70% of its employees are male, and in terms of racial diversity, the company is 61% White, 30% Asian, 3% Hispanic and 2% Black. Does that breakdown sound diverse to you? If not, what would an ideal diverse team look like? A study publishing in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin sheds light on the complexity in defining diversity. Previous research has shown that higher levels of diversity are associated with more trust, increased feelings of safety and ...
What's the best way to brush teeth? Even dentists and dental associations don't agree
2014-08-08
Advice on how we should brush our teeth from dental associations and toothpaste companies is 'unacceptably inconsistent', finds new UCL (University College London) research.
The study, published in the British Dental Journal, looked at the brushing advice given by dental associations across ten countries, toothpaste and toothbrush companies and in dental textbooks. They found a wide range of recommendations on what brushing method to use, how often to brush and for how long.
The researchers found no clear consensus between the various sources, and a 'worrying' lack ...
Study measures steep coastal costs of China's GDP growth
2014-08-08
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A new study by a team of Chinese and American conservation biologists quantifies the serious consequences of China's recent economic growth on its coastal ecosystems.
By several measures, 1978 was the beginning of a hugely successful surge in the nation's ability to produce economic value, but that surge brought accelerated degradation in the vitality of its coastal ecosystems.
The combined analysis of economic growth, human activities and impacts, and environmental quality data appears in the journal Scientific Reports. It shows ...
Electrons moving in a magnetic field exhibit strange quantum behavior
2014-08-08
The dynamic behavior of electrons in magnetic fields is crucial for understanding physical processes, such as the quantum Hall effect, which are important in many areas of solid state physics, including electrical conductivity. Yet, there is much that remains unknown about exactly how electrons behave in a magnetic field.
In research published today in Nature Communications, researchers Franco Nori and Konstantin Bliokh from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in Japan, in collaboration with an experimental team in Austria, have made the first direct observations ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
Global trends and cross-country inequalities of acute hepatitis E in the elderly, 1990–2021
New catalyst enables triple-efficiency decomposition of ammonia for clean hydrogen
FAU Harbor Branch receives $1M grant to study gulf’s mesophotic coral habitats
WSU study provides detailed look at the declining groundwater in regional aquifer system
Creatine may help the brain, not just muscles
Teams develop CO₂ capture-conversion tandem system adaptable to a wide range of CO₂ concentrations
Endocrine Society proposes research efforts to improve treatment options for people with type 1 diabetes
In menopause, sleep is vitally important for women’s long-term heart health, study finds
Why do some brain regions resist Alzheimer’s?
Like humans, monkeys are attracted to videos showing conflict
Dr. Richard M. Peterson elected 39th president of American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery
Addressing “spay-neuter syndrome" with testosterone restoration for neutered male dogs
The ACMG releases 2025 update to secondary findings gene list; SF v3.3
More rural, minoritized people get amputations – AI gets closer to why
First look at defects in single-crystal indium gallium zinc oxide could fix persistent display instability
Understanding childhood maltreatment and its effect on biological aging
Turning step-growth into chain-growth with click polymerization
Researchers find surgical technique reduced risk of early preterm birth for patients with cervical insufficiency
Novel nanostructures in blue sharks reveal their remarkable potential for dynamic colour-change
People with ‘young brains’ outlive ‘old-brained’ peers, Stanford Medicine scientists find
Make-your-own weight-loss drug using an innovative genome editing approach
Cancer is extremely rare in turtles, finds a new study
AI used to create protein that kills E. coli
Major autism study uncovers biologically distinct subtypes, paving the way for precision diagnosis and care
Study shows how AI could help pathologists match cancer patients to the right treatments—faster and more efficiently
Implantable device could save diabetes patients from dangerously low blood sugar
Need a new 3D material? Build it with DNA
New study reveals subclasses of autism by linking traits to genetics
The right mix and planting pattern of trees enhance forest productivity and services
Coral calcification benefits from human hormone injections
[Press-News.org] Disney Research method automatically edits footage from cameras into coherent videosShared focus of attention from multiple cameras identifies most interesting content