This is our crappy mock-up of diminished reality, not a working app.
I’m not a skilled video editor but it seems that removing objects from video would be a laborious task. I asked an editor friend of mine to quickly explain how he’d go about removing an object/person from a scene. It went something like this..
Cut out the object, fill the background ( with some sort of cloning tool I assume), motion tracking (apply motion to the object to fill in the missing object frame by frame ), he then went on and on with additional tweaks.. but I thought I’d spare you the details.
Bottom line it sounded painstaking. So, software that could do it for you by simply circling the object would be a godsend? I asked. The answer was “hells yeah”
The virtual worlds department at German University Ilmenau may have simplified the entire process for editors– and it works in real-time — they’re calling it Diminished Reality being the opposite of augmented reality, a technology that basically brings the ‘occurrence’ of objects by overlaying information-objects in real-time.
While this is bound to cut down some time for editors, on the other hand, revolutionary tools like this one may limit the work you get — its becoming rapidly easier for newbies to produce slick professional looking content, just look at some of the new tools in iMovie11.
To achieve successful diminished reality, as it’s defined by the German University, the system should remove the object from the camera, then outline the unwanted object and figure out the area (pixels) its needs to fill in with the background. And, if it is truly as easy as the video make it out to be, users would just need to circle the object they want removed.
There’s some sort of glitchiness going on in the video, if you look closely you’re able to see flashes of the removed object but they’re clearly onto something very cool.
I’d love to see this technology come to the mobile platform, there could be endless uses for diminished reality in app-form; home renovation apps (to remove & play around with furniture), live-streaming apps (maybe you want to remove a copyright-protected-sign in the background) and lastly of course as a built-in tool within our favourite mobile video-editors.
(image of rec room, flickr creative commons-Striatic) ( Sources CrunchGear )
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