Re-Cinematography: Improving the Camera Dynamics of Casual Video

Michael Gleicher and Feng Liu
Abstract
This paper presents an approach to post-processing casually captured videos to improve apparent camera movement.  Re-cinematography transforms each frame of a video such that the video better follows cinematic conventions. The approach breaks videos into shorter segments. For segments of the source video where where there is no intentional camera movement are made to appear as if the camera is completely static. For segments with camera motions, camera paths are keyframed automatically and interpolated with matrix logarithms to give velocity-profiled movements that appear intentional and directed. Close-ups are inserted to provide compositional variety in otherwise uniform segments. The approach automatically balances the tradeoff between motion smoothness and distortion to the original imagery. Results from our prototype show improvements to poor quality home videos.

Video demos: 1, 2,3,4

Michael Gleicher and Feng Liu. Re-Cinematography: Improving the Camera Dynamics of Casual Video.
ACM Multimedia 2007,Augsburg, Germany, September 2007. pp.27-36. PDF

Michael Gleicher and Feng Liu. Re-cinematography: Improving the Camerawork of Casual Video. 
ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications. Vol. 5, Issue 1, Oct. 2008:1-28. (Extended version of MM' 07 paper)

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