More
See all Show me
3. Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene
2 years ago
*Thanks to everyone for all the kind comments. They are really encouraging.*

The work presents a system for automatically producing a wide variety of video enhancements and visual effects. Unlike traditional visual effects software (e.g., After Effects, Shake, Boujou, etc), the system is completely automatic and no manual labor is required from the user. The major limitation of the work is that it can currently handle only videos of static scenes (i.e., videos shot with a moving camera but containing no moving objects in the scene). Efforts are being made to lift this restriction in future work.

Applications of the system include:
High resolution/definition video,
High dynamic range video,
Removing objects from a video,
Creating painterly (NPR) videos,
Video stabilization,
Easy video editing

Project website:
grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/videoenhancement/

Followup work for dynamic scenes:
vimeo.com/2937785
  • dalas verdugo staff 2 years ago
    v.cool
  •  
  • dalas verdugo staff 2 years ago
    How close do you have to get the lenses for this to work? ie Do you have to closely match a 50mm video lens to the digital SLR equivalent?
  • pro 2 years ago
    The video camera and the SLR don't have be very close spatially or in the type of lens used. To figure out where the cameras are relative to each other and to recover the lens properties a 'structure from motion' algorithm is used. The same algorithm that was used by my friend and coauthor, Noah Snavely, in the phototourism project - youtube.com/watch?v=IgBQCoEfiMs
  • dalas verdugo staff 2 years ago
    Amazing. MATH!
  •  
  • Monday Sunnlinn plus 2 years ago
    well slap my mamma....

    i'm stunned, when can i buy it?
    ;-)
  •  
  • kahve 2 years ago
    simple, original and useful. so this is an invent on cinema. this idea and project is brillant. bravo.
  •  
  • Thomas Lew plus 2 years ago
    This is insane. Genius work.
  •  
  • Rusty Rogers plus 2 years ago
    Freakin' Amazing!
  •  
  • Frango Ssauro 2 years ago
    this work... is just...amazing. You guys are doing things that i think that was just not possible...

    When the software will be released? :B
  •  
  • John Holdun 2 years ago
    Saw this a week or two ago on 1000dollarfilm. RIDICULOUSLY exciting for the future of low-budget videography!
  •  
  • Nemesis Films 2 years ago
    I wanna be a beta-tester!! :)
  •  
  • pro 2 years ago
    Unfortunately, all the software written for this project is research quality code. There is no UI, no error checking, and it's slow. I need to put in the engineering effort to create a user-friendly system around the research software and release it as an open-source beta. But that is going to be hard to do with the new research projects I'm working on.

    However, the details on how to implement the software/algorithms have been published in an EGSR paper which is available from the project website. Ideally, a product team like Adobe would carry the torch from here on and create a professional quality implementation of the ideas presented in this work.
  • Joachim Bengtsson 2 years ago
    @pro I'm a nerd and coder, and this video blows my mind away, both with the quality you've achieved and with ideas of how this could be used. I'm especially excited by the possibility to use this in SLAMming and similar, although it sounds from your comments like this is a long, long way from even being possible in real-time...

    I don't care how horrible the code or the UI is, you will make my day -- no, year -- if you release your code :)
  • pro 2 years ago
    The code has now been released on the project website.
  •  
  • Mihai Bîrsan 2 years ago
    Excellent work! I'm dazzled.
  •  
  • digitalquestions 2 years ago
    would you give the blender foundation the permission to use your algoriths ?

    we as a community can make things happen.
  • pro 2 years ago
    This work comes from academic research. It's not patented. The technical details are open for all to read. I would be happy if some community took on this work.

    In fact how about I release my code under gpl license this weekend. I cant release Noah's structure from motion code. Though he plans to release it soon too. So dont expect the code to be an usable product. But it can serve as a great reference for people who want to implement these algorithms.
  • Sunnan 2 years ago
    That would be great!
  •  
  • Jim Belfiore 2 years ago
    Very impressive.
  •  
  • Pierre 2 years ago
    This is so mind-bending it's creepy!
    Does it take long to implement the effects in it's current state?
  •  
  • Benjamin Taylor 2 years ago
    That is an awesome use of technology.
  •  
  • Hannu Hoffrén 2 years ago
    This is unbelievable! I'd really use one in my projects. The amounts of time it would save.... even if it is slow.
  •  
  • MILapse plus 2 years ago
    Hey Pravin! great to see your work highlighted here. I can't wait to see it implemented in some sort of product as well... Best, Jay
  •  
  • Is this a joke... ? Sounds unbelievable...
  •  
  • Kent-Erik Sjursen 2 years ago
    This is truly amazing. This gives extreme possibilities. What plans do you have for this project? Feature in After Effects? Will it be a plug-in? A stand-alone suite?

    How is it with color-matching/color-space? For example, can different SLR's be used, say download hi-res photos online for enhancing own video? What about shadows. Can the system extrapolate details if the lighting differs between pictures?

    What about complex geometry, say the Eiffel tower?
  • pro 2 years ago
    The depth computation is reasonably robust to changes across images due to different cameras and different illuminations. If you see the very first example in the demo video, the input video is over exposed and it is captured with uneven sun light. The photographs were captured later in the day when the lighting was more pleasant and ambient. Also, the photos were taken in auto mode so there is exposure variations across images but the renderer manages to make the video look coherent (spacetime fusion).

    However, using internet photos captured with vastly different lighting conditions would be harder. I'm actively working on this problem.

    As far as complex geometry goes... If you notice the depths for the first example (shown in grayscale) in the demo video are actually not that good. The depths dont have to be great as long as you have a stronger renderer to hide the artifacts. The flower shop scene has pretty complex geometry. But that is probably the most complex geometry I have tried this algorithm on.
  • Harry Bardak 2 years ago
    Hi Pro !
    Nice work !

    Quick question. In the video you are presenting, your footage got a large amount of parallax. That make easier the depth computation. what happen if you got try your algorithm on footage that contain less parallax ?

    Do you use your still images to introduce parallax ?
    Can you apply this with non static scene ?

    Usually we are doing the same kind of work by hand ( 3d space reconstruction and image based modelling and texturing ) Having a software doing that automatically will be a time saver !
  • pro 2 years ago
    There seems to be some confusion about this. All photos and video frames in the input data are used to compute the depths in a global optimization. A connected graph is built over these images (video frames + photos) to allow information to flow through the entire graph. If there is no parallax between any pair of images then the system can't do anything. But if there is some parallax in the input data the system uses the structure from motion data to connect each image to nearby images in the graph with sufficient parallax to compute depths.
  •  
  • Rudolf Olah 2 years ago
    This is amazing stuff. Wow, just wow. When is this going to be released to the general public? :p
  •  
  • Carolyn Russell 2 years ago
    Very nice! I am a pro photographer -- still photography, color digital and B&W medium format -- and would like to produce a "video" to share here. What software did you use, or is it a proprietary application? Thank you!
  •  
  • Reid Young 2 years ago
    *ties his point and shoot to his camcorder and sets them both to 'auto'*
  •  
  • fortschritt.tv 2 years ago
    «running man» style «digital matte tracking» as in tinyurl.com/at2m15 has finally arrived. OK it's still static though but it's damn close.
  •  
  • Cris Edwards 2 years ago
    So, where do I buy it?! :)
  •  
  • Troy Simpson 2 years ago
    Genius stuff... It'd be nice if the Blender Foundation does pick it up.
  •  
  • RDJim plus 2 years ago
    Wow, this is magic. Will you marry my daughter and bring your video spells over to my house for holidays?
  •  
  • francis57 2 years ago
    Vraiment impressionnant
    Impatient de voir la suite de ces recherches et leur application dans un software .
  •  
  • Jeremy Powlus plus 2 years ago
    please allow me to give you money for this product.
    please...
  •  
  • Eric Iverson 2 years ago
    Yeah, enhance the Zapruder film and then restore the newly discovered footage of Fritz Lang's Meropolis.
  •  
  • Brad Miller 2 years ago
    HDR for video has amazing potential!

    That was amazing how the sign was able to be removed.
  •  
  • Carlo 2 years ago
    Adobe will love this stuff, at least for 3 more versions of After Effects. You really need to develop a UI.

    Congratulations !
  •  
  • Willms 2 years ago
    The best use of these techniques I've ever seen.
  •  
  • Danny Cohen 2 years ago
    100% incredible. I give much money for super math.
  •  
  • Mike Flynn plus 2 years ago
    Wow.

    Have fun working at Apple when they call you to add this to Final Cut!
  •  
  • Torrey Meeks 2 years ago
    Brilliant. Can't wait until this research finds its way into accessible editing suites.

    It's going to be a godsend for budget film makers, and further blur the lines between the pros and the amateurs. It'll put film-resolution quality into the hands of people with editing and directing skills, but who lack access to thousands of dollars in equipment.

    Particularly if it's upgraded to support dynamic movement in a scene.

    Sincere thanks for developing this, and a sincere plea to not completely move on from the project before algorithms that support dynamic movement are created (though I appreciate your time constraints).

    Maths FTW.

    -Torrey
  •  
  • Samuel Febres 2 years ago
    that is freakin' amazing. I love it.
  •  
  • Julian Schrader 2 years ago
    Holy ****, this is amazing.

    I'd totally buy this software. ;-)
  •  
  • Winfried Hoffmann 2 years ago
    wow, this is awesome stuff, but I'm sure it requires a significant amount of computational power...
  •  
  • Stikka 2 years ago
    Pleeeeeaaasssseee release it as open source code so someone can cook up an UI and we can all use it this is MASSIVE for low budget producing! F*ck Adobe Open Source is the way to go(d)!
  •  
  • You guys are incredible. The future looks fantastic
  •  
  • Jeff Cedeno 2 years ago
    Pro, do you have any interest in pursuing a contact at Apple about this concept? Considering they have a lot more capital to burn than Avid and have a vested interest in video I would think they'd find your demo very intriguing.
  •  
  • Frank Goertzen 2 years ago
    Wow... very impressive even at 5min/frame. Manually making these changes would take much longer .
  •  
  • Kyle Lowe 2 years ago
    Holy hot cakes, Batman! That's incredible!
  •  
  • JJ 2 years ago
    Boo apple. Yes Zapruder Film.

    Yes I hope to see this in (better) working state someday (soon), I have already thought of a few tests to try.
  •  
  • Trevor Lee 2 years ago
    I just got back from the SIGGRAPH show where I saw some of the best industry software for post production effects work, and this video still blows me away. I can't wait till this is in some sort of product. looks to be the basis of a great tool.
  •  
  • Joe Moya plus 2 years ago
    Your video stabilization seems to add a new aspect to post-stabilization of camera movement... if I looked at it correctly... it stablized in the z-axis (not rotation only) and takes out movements toward and away from the subject matter. That's pretty impressive...
  • pro 2 years ago
    That is correct. Traditional video stabilization does not compute scene depths. So it can only do 2D or what is sometimes called 2.5D stabilization. But for static scenes our system can recover scene depths, which allows it to simply smooth out the input jittery camera path and render the scene from the new smooth camera path. This gives you full 3D stabilization. Also, unlike traditional stabilization the system does not have to crop edges of the video to accommodate the stabilization. As long as that part of the scene was seen in some video frames the system does not produce any holes - so no need for cropping.
  • Joe Moya plus 2 years ago
    So what makes this stabilization methodology so different than typical stabilization software is that...

    ... an entire new smooth camera path is created rather than correcting the existing camera path.

    It appears the scene depth aspect is much more of an important element of film correction and/or changes than most applications give credit. Hmmm.... it seems this would also explain the intensive need for processing power and extended rendering time.

    Excellent application development...

    Joe Moya
  •  
  • Ben Henretig 2 years ago
    This blows my dome. I really hope that someone brings this to market soon.
  •  
  • sabormate 2 years ago
    This is awesome.
  •  
  • James 2 years ago
    WOW! I would pay you to start developing this for Blender... If only I hadn't bust all my money on a new computer...
  •  
  • Eugeni Dodonov 2 years ago
    Wow, really amazing!
  •  
  • Jose Franco 2 years ago
    Yeah, that was great! Truly revolutionary software!
  •  
  • Sami Takieddin plus 2 years ago
    This is amazing stuff! Anybody reminded of Blade Runner?
  •  
  • Vernon Reid plus 2 years ago
    That this is not available immediately on all platforms is exceedingly CRUEL.
    Thanks for the ToRmENt!!!!!!
  •  
  • Paul Davis 2 years ago
    Geektastic!!
  •  
  • Gabriel Naranjo 2 years ago
    The illusion of reality brought by video eventually will come to an end: the perception of our world thru the media will change and the viewer will have to be much more aware of other forms of information in order to validate the veracity of anything shown on tv.

    If this is the way of the future post processing and computing power will generate the need for huge investments in unusual places ( you will pay more for your renderfarm that for your actors or shooting equipment) You may even rent the renderfarm in a far away land or from a zombie network built out of trojan infected machines.

    The quality of the documentaries and reality shows is about to become even with big budget series like "lost". How weird!.
  • Echinadrome 2 years ago
    Don't be so damn pessimistic. This is a great tool with potential, and doesn't have anything to do with your renderfarms, if you were even listening to a thing pro has said (it's an engineering process).
  •  
  • WOW! This is sweet! Features you could add, using web images, ie. use image reconition and get pictures from google image search (think microsoft made a concept of using other pictures based on geotagging to make a super high res image of the Notre Dame). Would be something to concider. Requires that a lot of pictures use geotagging.

    Moving objects would be solid gold. Today there are some software creating 3d models from video. You draw the geometry on the object in your video (here's a link: acvt.com.au/research/videotrace/ ). If you could use the depth algorithm to accomplish something like it you would be very very close to enhance moving objects as well!

    If you could extract the depth data and project the video on it. Then it would be fantastic if you could import it to programs like combustion to make composites with video and 3d objects that you could manipulate in 3D space. Imagine filming a room and taking photographs, then run your algorithms to create a super detailed 3D room.

    Add feats like these and you guys will be the saviors of filmmakers budgets and the liberator of their imaginative minds! :P AWSOME!
  •  
  • mim 2 years ago
    WOW!
    This is just amazing! thought the next steps for CG field of software developments are appearing! ;)
    Btw, I'm curious what the hell you're workin on right now! :D

    mim,
  • pro 2 years ago
    I recently finished working on this project called GradientShop (www.GradientShop.com). Currently working on algorithms to enhance videos of dynamic scenes and enhance Photosynth type data.
  • mim 2 years ago
    Tnx buddy for your reply,
    I like the other project too, seems really cool
    I like especially the coloring sections and changing the light spots on the video so much ( as a Cg artist not a pro codder thought! ) btw the painting effect didn't look so new for me, but I didn't see a coloring system like that before, really amazing,

    keep up awsome works,
    wish ya all best luck
    Regards, mim.Armand
  •  
  • lobak loon 2 years ago
    Brilliant stuff, but I notice all your videos were deep focus, I wonder how does it fare in shallow depth of field situations, would it be able to estimate the depth as efficiently as it did here?
  •  
  • XSportSeeker 2 years ago
    Impressive!
    Really looking forward for the final results of this research!
  •  
  • wilanowiak 2 years ago
    This is just brilliant! Hope someone will get a UI made for it.
  •  
  • Harry Bardak 2 years ago
    Hi Pro !
    Nice work !

    Quick question. In the video you are presenting, your footage got a large amount of parallax. That make easier the depth computation. what happen if you got try your algorithm on footage that contain less parallax ?

    Do you use your still images to introduce parallax ?
    Can you apply this with non static scene ?

    Usually we are doing the same kind of work by hand ( 3d space reconstruction and image based modelling and texturing ) Having a software doing that automatically will be a time saver !
  •  
  • Tim Gluth 2 years ago
    I can think of so many uses for this right now. That is unbelievable!
  •  
  • cwnation 2 years ago
    WTF!!???

    where can i buy one
  •  
  • seltar 2 years ago
    Amazing!!
  •  
  • Poet Zero plus 2 years ago
    And so ends the current "reliability" (not the there is much as most of this can already be accomplished albeit slowly) of video in news and media.
  •  
  • BA Productions 2 years ago
    *mind implodes* bravo guys, this is amazing
  •  
  • Beeker 2 years ago
    This still seems like a "time" costly task to perform, when doing things like green screening, using a higher resolution camera, better optics, and lighting, etc. would provide equal or better results as you scale up, with minimal time effort. I love the other video where the "space time" curve is drawn on... amazing stuff really!
    Kudos for the alex grey vimetar too!
  •  
  • Josh 2 years ago
    really neat work -- HDR will have a lot of applications, and the photo effects applied to a scene could be an easy way to get nice effects with time in post rendering vs. lower cost in initial production. Great work!
  •  
  • Soul trape 2 years ago
    5min a frame would make this a cluster-only application - still brilliant though!

    What'd be interesting is how much of this processing can be done on the GPU(s) - If Adobe for instance gets this into After Effects - perhaps with some more optimizations and GPU utilization (1 TFlop per card is feasable) - things could be sped up.

    Pro, do you think this is possible?
  •  
  • Joana Franco 2 years ago
    That's amazing! I don't really work with video... it's just hobby for me... and I simply love these effects!
  •  
  • Foomandoonian 2 years ago
    I'd never have thought something this powerful could be post-processed like this. We're entering a new world of FX with this stuff - before too long it'll be realtime!
  •  
  • DaMos 2 years ago
    i want a beta on osx
  • Justin McAleece 2 years ago
    me too.
  •  
  • Chad von Nau 2 years ago
    looks amazing. It seems like the stuff you're working on has a lot in common with what the Mokey/Monet guys are doing. You should give them a holler, maybe get a job there. imagineersystems.com
  •  
  • Pietro Impagliazzo plus 2 years ago
    That stabilized shot looked GREAT!

    Kudos to the team, I just hope we see this technology in professional programs soon.
  •  
  • ziad chatila 2 years ago
    The HDR video was a bit disappointing. i think I saw more window detail in the bracketed images than in the output video. But this is pioneering stuff here!
  •  
  • hungry.digital.elf 2 years ago
    Simply speechless!
  •  
  • awesome !
  •  
  • Kyle McDonald 2 years ago
    I saw this video in a computer graphics/computer vision class last semester, and it still amazes me. The "space/time fusion" algorithm seems to be the key here -- any other paper would have stopped just before that and presented the proof of concept.

    If you run this on non-static scenes, what happens? Does the depth approximation/structure from motion just give up? If it still chugs through I'd be curious to see the artifacts.
  •  
  • Fleants 2 years ago
    at first i didnt notice it, but then looking at the video for a second time i realized how great this will be. the meir fact that i can take digital stills with differnt exposure time, then feed them in will allow the guys with camcorders the ability to go up against the high contrast level of film(almost).

    great work.
  •  
  • mike ambs ☂ plus 2 years ago
    Oh... my... amazing. Wow.
  •  
  • Mark Randle 2 years ago
    Happened upon this by accident and had to watch it a couple of times. It truly does seem groundbreaking from the ironic opposing potentials of super realism and complete fiction. Like most everyone here I would love to have this to play with. I suspect most of us won't. However Pro has stated that he doesn't have time to move forward on it presently and is willing to release under GPL. Is that correct? In fact it looks that the code is available as indicated minus Noah's portion. Get moving!

    Coincident with the "invisibility shield" light bending tech that is emerging this may well signal the end of our eyes being our most trusted sensor as well as video being a truly useful reporting document without far better vetting. Already video can be manipulated frame by frame with relatively high realism; it is, after all a series of still images. On the other hand most humans are willing to suspend disbelief for any trusted source and swallow the narrative anyway. Net change is probably a continuing upward curve of cynicism.

    If this code isn't snapped up immediately in a bidding war then my name's not Romario ...or other interested parties have something written that is very similar. Sure would love to see this remain in the open source domain though.

    Hell, this has been posted for a week already. Any updates from Pro on the interest generated back-channel or is it all NDA-ed now?

    Very cool stuff. Thanks for sharing it here.
  •  
  • bad. ass.

    object removal looked really easy.
  •  
  • Pieter Vicami 2 years ago
    impressive work!
  •  
  • Guz 2 years ago
    That is a very promising system! Any ideas to release a public beta? :D
  •  
  • batuhan 2 years ago
    this is great and thanks for making your research and codes publicly available!
  •  
Showing 100 of 126 comments. Want to see the rest?
This conversation is missing your voice. Take five seconds to join Vimeo or log in.

Advertisement

About this video

FLV
00:06:44
  • 504x336, 27.52MB
  • Uploaded Mon August 11, 2008
  • Please join or log in to download

Statistics

Date Plays Comments
Totals 511K 961 126
Sep 9th 6 0 0
Sep 8th 39 0 0
Sep 7th 45 0 0
Sep 6th 51 0 0
Sep 5th 50 0 0
Sep 4th 50 0 0
Sep 3rd 37 0 0