Slashdot Mirror
Erasing Objects From Video In Real Time
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."
We need this built into our televisions to automagically remove those network logo "bugs" and other crap they have started putting on the screen during the shows.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Pretty good, but take note that all the examples where objects sitting on pretty flat colored backgrounds. I'd like to see what happens when you try to remove an object in a complex environment. Like removing a single person standing in a crowd.
This has some frightening ramifications for how much we believe video. Videos similar to the ones Wikileaks leaked, or news videos "live" on scene, could be doctored in near enough to real time that we consumers might never know it. Scary.
Great - it'll start off by making eyesore real estate disappear from "live coverage," then be required as a precondition for live celebrity interviews (not just makeup to cover that acne), moving on to inconvenient points to the story that would take too much time and effort to explain, then images which might "disturb the children" (number of student bodies in Tienanmen Square?), and finally develop to ubiquitous studio-in-a-cameras such that we'll have little assurance of whether live coverage is fact or fiction.
Of course that's just pessimism speaking. Really I'm looking forward to watching live reports without those obnoxious people waving at their mothers, or holding up witty slogans about taxation.
... I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.
Finally, we can restore my childhood memories and eviscerate Jar-Jar from the last batch of Star Wars movies.
FTFA:"It does seem to be thwarted by reflections though; a cell phone removed from a bathroom counter is still visible in the mirror."
"Zoom in on the reflection...ENHANCE!"
Set your phasers on "funky"!
comes to life then?
Its bad enough people believe lines said by comedians are the actual lines of some high profile people, how can we hope that people will care enough to know if the video they are seeing is not edited? Hollywood doesn't need the tech to make movies, maybe to "fix" reality shows, but I figure politics is where the mileage comes in.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
We need a name for this process. I suggest "to Jar-Jar." Examples:
They Jar-Jared the cell phone and stapler off the desk.
"Jar-jar the 3-D glasses off the chair."
Al Pacino released the "Actor's cut" of Godfather 3 and Jar-jared himself out of the movie.
I'd like to Jar-jar my ex-girlfriend from my brain.
It was a guy! He Jar-jared his webcam!
This sentence no verb.
1) Objects must be sitting on a consistent(ish) surface with a low rate of change compared to the object. Desk, Chair, Bathroom, Wall, Hubcap, etc.
2) It doesn't handle strong shadows (or they are not showing us it doing so).
3) It makes the greatest amount of mistakes with the shadows anyway.
Please add anything I missed to future posts.
I would like to see it erase a boat from a choppy sea where there are 5-7 waves for the length of the boat as I expect that to be a pathological case. I would also like to see it erase a discolouration rather than a very different object to see its behaviour. Cool technology though!
Are you saying the pixels are wrong? Have you seen a lot of shops?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Given the nonsense in the Bible I'd suggest he manages it without technology.
If you wish to be seen, but are being spliced out. You could wear several different colored t-shirts over each other or something similar and then take them off to trick the camera at least temporarily. If you want people to see something that is being blocked out, you would have to probably spray them or it with some kind of colorant, or a bright flash of light might also do the trick, maybe some kind of a portable strobe light. This is just off the top of my head.
Somehow l feel like like I shouldn't be giving away these ideas, maybe my tinfoil hat is just making my head itchy...
Racing competitions, NFL, etc. own the copyright to the original footage. They're not going to license broadcast of that footage to any television station which threatens their revenue model, unless the station is going to pay so dearly that their previously existing revenue stream looks paltry in comparison.
Even if the TV stations were to put more cash on the table, they still might not agree to such a practice as it gives a large degree of control to a single party (which means more finiancial risk if the party becomes unable to maintain the agreement).
In addition to dealing with reflections, which I consider just a part of polishing step one, step two will use the position of something in the video as an anchor and substitute the image of something else.
How far off do you think *that* is? I give it two years to the the lab demo with problems.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Invisibility is an ancient notion and tampering with video as old as the Lumière brothers. What is new here is the trend toward placing these capabilities closer and closer to the camera. Combine such effects with the face detection algorithm that is already in your phone's camera and the original picture can remove or replace individuals from the scene of the crime. "Ground truth" will be ever more difficult to establish.
1.It works with Slashdot comments, too.
2. For example, in line 3 of this comment, I make an extremely poignant and insightful comment:
4. And it's as if it was never there! Powerful stuff.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!