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Scientists Create Easier Way To Embed Objects Into Video
Ashutosh Saxena writes "Stanford artificial intelligence researchers have developed software that makes it easy to reach inside an existing video and place a photo on the wall so realistically that it looks like it was there from the beginning. The photo is not pasted on top of the existing video, but embedded in it. It works for videos as well — you can play a video on a wall inside your video. The technology can cheaply do some of the tricks normally performed by expensive commercial editing systems. The researchers suggest that anyone with a video camera might earn some spending money by agreeing to have unobtrusive corporate logos placed inside their videos before they are posted online."
I thought there was more than enough advertisement on YouTube as it was already.
The researchers suggest that anyone with a video camera might earn some spending money by agreeing to have unobtrusive corporate logos placed inside their videos before they are posted online.
Just like web surfers no longer even glance at banner ads anymore, people will learn to ignore any corporate logos in videos (even if they really ARE there in real life!).
Does anyone notice that the more pervasive advertising is, the less effective it is?
In other words, people build filters for it. I know within younger generations, advertising is almost invisible.
I recall older people at work asking me "did you notice that new ad on the webpage?"
To which I responded "uhm... our webpage has ads?"
Because I spend enough time on the web to have almost totally filtered them out (yeah, adblock does a bunch of that for me, but even without it....)
I don't think I could tell you after a TV show, who the sponsors were. Commercial time is just blank in my mind because I tune it out.
I don't think I've EVER clicked on an ad in a webpage. I don't know for sure, but television and radio advertising rarely affect my purchasing decisions, at least not in a way I can discern.
So, legitimately, how powerful is a wall-hanging logo for Pepsi in some random goofy youtube video ACTUALLY going to be?
Am I a total oddity in not even noticing most advertising?
Because if there's one thing we all need in our lives, it's more inane advertising plastered over every square inch of vertical surfaces.
Yes! Now you too can star in your very own pr0n movie!
Ah, the wonders of software!
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
Modern advertising/branding isn't about actively convincing you anymore. It's about creating a pervasive environment of exposure in which you become familiar with a brand/product/logo whatever. In the store people are then more likely to subconsciously reach for Tide or Tylenol (despite the fact that generics are composed of essentially the same active ingredients) because they are familiar.
Nobody pays much attention to TV commercials anymore, and haven't for some time. Have advertisers markedly decreased their buying of TV commercial time? No, because you don't have to pay attention for it to work.
Couldn't I use this to remove the objects/logos/animations just as effectively? I would likely pay for that!
When American football television broadcasts started featuring real-time "underlays" of such play-by-play landmarks as line of scrimmage and first down mark, a worried little voice at the back of my head wondered if someone would use this technology to underlay advertising. I think I've seen just such things (i.e., digitally-projected advertising hoardings in the video background, even logos "projected" into the playing field). Now this kind of stuff will be easy and ubiquitous.
As little as we can trust digital visual media now, it'll be even less trustworthy.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
It is nice to see top universities working on better advertising. You know, I was thinking to myself just yesterday, "There is just not enough product placement in society. I hope someone makes it easier to put advertising in digital media."
Somebody tell the BertIsEvil guy.
1. Initially from a computer forensics pov, it would be trivial to detect if a video has been altered, however i think with further improvements in the embedding technology where the actual advert piece is better rendered to take into account surrounding lighting conditions it might become more difficult, however not impossible to detect intentional modifications
2. Just as with current browser ad-blockers, the these ads can also be blocked out, in-fact the technology proves that complex camera conditions such as rotational pan(the heros examples) and occlusion (fat chick on couch) can be easily determined, so creating a blank out mask of a texture that is close to the surrounding surface would also be quiet doable, perhaps not real-time at the moment, but doable nonetheless, and most definitely live sometime in the future perhaps.
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
Maybe these Stanford geeks don't watch football... that yellow first-down line is actually *not* painted on the field, it's inserted into the live video feed electronically. While doing it live requires some reasonable amount of processing power, doing it by non-real-time processing is pretty trivial (it's just a 3D texture map).
The technology to do this was commonly available in the mid-90's.
ummmm.... It sucks when all my wit is spent in the subject line of my response.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
I am a member of a number of websites with no advertising, even large ones.
I even pay subscription fees to some.
The fact that there is so much advertising that I tune it out has little to no relevance to your desire for me not to share my opinion, or your belief that my opinion is going to shut down Slashdot... or whatever.
Frankly, I made my income for 5 years off advertising, but we did it in a way that was not stupid banner ads. There were active discussion forums about products related to our content, where people got together to purchase the product for a volume discount and in exchange for organizing it, the site took a moderate cut.
The people got a better deal than they would have without that service and the site was able to make a decent income doing it.
Of course, that was ages ago, but the fact still stands that there are unobtrusive means to conduct business.
On another hand, I block advertising as a side effect.
I block third party cookies, I use NOScript and FlashBlock for legitimate security reasons. The fact that this effectively kills about 95% of advertising isn't really my problem.
They want to drop cookies on my machine and make flash animations fly all over and I don't allow unauthorized flash animations.
Google ads still appear for me, and those are often quite relevant, but one issue is that I don't purchase things online through random retailers FOR SECURITY REASONS, so those ads have little to no benefit to me.
If I want to buy something online, I'll go find a retailer rating website where I can choose a few good retailers to check out and make an educated decision from there and only purchase from reputable stores, regardless of the advertising.
I never called anyone stupid or called for the decline of slashdot, but I won't pretend that ads are super-duper effective, just so that you don't get upset.
There are ads on Slashdot? (O_o)
Quick way to get 30% Funny 70% Troll: defend Opera browser on
Because simply overlaying an image with opacity wouldn't allow foreground objects to move in front of the image, or for the image to change dynamically with the motion of the camera or the background object. Follow the link in the story and watch the video. The cool stuff starts about 1:40 minutes in.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
We call them "Slashvertisements" or something like that. I think it's the uninteresting stories that are promoting a product and / or service.
It's not like we're reading TFA's anyways..
The researchers suggest that anyone with a video camera might earn some spending money by agreeing to have unobtrusive corporate logos placed inside their videos before they are posted online.
More like Google will insert said logos into said videos upon your posting them on YouTube.
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
(despite the fact that generics are composed of essentially the same active ingredients)
Have you bought generic or third party hardware before? I'm thinking of a replacement car fender a body shop once tried to sell me. The steel was thinner than the original steel, and much more flexible. The rolled form of the fender didn't exactly line up with the rolled form of the original. The factory fender, on the other hand, was a perfect match to the original part. I'm sure the car would have *looked* like it was supposed to, but if you examine the fit and finish up close, it's evident that it's not a perfect match.
I think of that every time I buy a generic product. You pay less for a generic product for many reasons: the lack of a patent license or advertising are only two attributes of the lower cost. The materials may be inferior. The measurements may not be as precise. How many of those "low quality" attributes carry over to generic medicines? Am I getting the correct dosage? Is this product cut with food-grade corn starch or with clay dug out from the field next to the factory? Did they copy the binding agents that keep it from irritating my stomach, or did they use their own binding agents that might not work for me, and do those new agents have any interactions with the medicine?
I'm not saying generics are bad or ineffective -- I usually buy them. But I always think of the quality differences on the products I can see, and wonder about those differences that I can't.
John