Google (Mountain View, CA, USA) researchers have developed a technique that removes the effects of an unsteady filming hand on amateur video.
Their algorithm begins by identifying key objects in an image and using them to plot the path traveled by the camera. It then determines a "best path," which represents the smoothest course for the camera to have traveled.
By cropping the frames, it is able to adjust the footage so that the camera appears to have traveled the best path. The algorithm uses tools such as face detection to make sure it does not remove key components of the video in the process. Because the computational work is distributed among many machines, the system is fast enough for editing in a browser in real time.
At present, the user has to specify to what size the image-processing system should crop the frames. The algorithms then find the optimal path for the given size. In the future, the researchers plan to adjust the system so that it can calculate the ideal size on its own.
-- Posted by Vision Systems Design
