Erasing Objects From Video In Real Time 175
Smoothly interpolating away objects in still pictures is impressive enough, but reader geoffbrecker writes with a stunning demonstration from Germany's Technical University of Ilmenau of on-the-fly erasure of selected objects in video. Quoting: "The effect is achieved by an image synthesizer that reduces the image quality, removes the object, and then increases the image quality back up. This all happens within 40 milliseconds, fast enough that the viewer doesn't notice any delay."
Re:Cool, but probably still has a ways to go. (Score:4, Informative)
Take a look at the explanation part of the video. The background texture is tiled. You can see some strange deformation in the regular pattern where the object used to be. Also in the drain example there is a strange crater effect as the camera angle changes.
It seems like smooth colour graduations work well, but patterned backgrounds have more obvious deformations.
Re:I thought what I'd do is... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I thought what I'd do is... (Score:3, Informative)
Catcher in the Rye you meant right? That classic book? Bill Gate's favorite as well (just throwing that line out for comedy).
Re:I thought what I'd do is... (Score:3, Informative)
He did it before that, though. When he kidnapped Serano from his own home then he was visible to Serano, but not to his guards. As far as the guards were concerned then Serano was just walking out on his own and nothing was unusual. That would probably be more impressive because he did it to lots of people at once, not just a single person who was chasing him as he left a hotel and casually escaped (IIRC).
Re:Do we still believe what we see? (Score:3, Informative)
This is only news for real-time feeds. For anything that is not live (and you can verify that it's live! A lot of what you see labeled "live" on TV actually isn't!), assume that the stream has been messed with, already today. Most of the times, it is "artistic" messing - improving picture quality, editing out distracting background content, cleaning up artifacts, etc.
Re:Do we still believe what we see? (Score:3, Informative)
Video can already be manipulated without restoring to high-tech wizardry. There's been plenty of examples of news reporters "on scene" when they're just in front of a blue screen. Cinema (which has much higher resolution, so it is harder to fake) constantly amazes us with simple tricks like flattening the depth of field, rotating the camera to make small inclines look like cliffs, adjusting zoom while moving the camera to distort depth perceptions, etc.
And we aren't even getting close to the easier techniques of look-alikes, shooting in constructed sets instead of on-site, etc. Basically if you believe this will shake your faith in video, you're faith in video is already built on a foundation as stable as quicksand.
Re:Perfect Application (Score:2, Informative)
That space is from where the Marlboro 'barcode' was, and it was FINALLY pointed out to the FIA that Ferrari was breaking their no-advertising-smoking-brands rule by having it on their cars.