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Video Stabilization on YouTube

May 6th, 2012 Irfan Essa Posted in Computational Photography and Video, Google, In The News, Matthias Grundmann, Vivek Kwatra | No Comments »

Here is an excerpt from a Google Research Blog on our Video Stabilization on YouTube.  Now even more improved.

One thing we have been working on within Research at Google is developing methods for making casual videos look more professional, thereby providing users with a better viewing experience. Professional videos have several characteristics that differentiate them from casually shot videos. For example, in order to tell a story, cinematographers carefully control lighting and exposure and use specialized equipment to plan camera movement.

We have developed a technique that mimics professional camera moves and applies them to videos recorded by handheld devices. Cinematographers use specialized equipment such as tripods and dollies to plan their camera paths and hold them steady. In contrast, think of a video you shot using a mobile phone camera. How steady was your hand and were you able to anticipate an interesting moment and smoothly pan the camera to capture that moment? To bridge these differences, we propose an algorithm that automatically determines the best camera path and recasts the video as if it were filmed using stabilization equipment.

Via Video Stabilization on YouTube.

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Paper in IEEE ICCP 2012: “Calibration-Free Rolling Shutter Removal”

April 28th, 2012 Irfan Essa Posted in Computational Photography and Video, Daniel Castro, ICCP, Matthias Grundmann, Vivek Kwatra | No Comments »

Calibration-Free Rolling Shutter Removal

  • M. Grundmann, V. Kwatra, D. Castro, and I. Essa (2012), “Calibration-Free Rolling Shutter Removal,” in Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP), 2012. [PDF] [WEBSITE] [VIDEO] [BLOG] [BIBTEX]
    @inproceedings{2012-Grundmann-CRSR,
      Author = {Matthias Grundmann and Vivek Kwatra and Daniel Castro and Irfan Essa},
      Blog = {http://prof.irfanessa.com/2012/04/28/paper-iccp12/},
      Booktitle = {Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP)},
      Date-Added = {2012-04-09 22:40:38 +0000},
      Date-Modified = {2012-04-30 22:18:03 +0000},
      Pdf = {http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~irfan/p/2012-Grundmann-CRSR.pdf},
      Publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
      Title = {Calibration-Free Rolling Shutter Removal},
      Url = {http://www.cc.gatech.edu/cpl/projects/rollingshutter/},
      Video = {http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pr_fpbAok8},
      Year = {2012},
      Bdsk-Url-1 = {http://www.cc.gatech.edu/cpl/projects/rollingshutter/}}

Abstract

We present a novel algorithm for efficient removal of rolling shutter distortions in uncalibrated streaming videos. Our proposed method is calibration free as it does not need any knowledge of the camera used, nor does it require calibration using specially recorded calibration sequences. Our algorithm can perform rolling shutter removal under varying focal lengths, as in videos from CMOS cameras equipped with an optical zoom. We evaluate our approach across a broad range of cameras and video sequences demonstrating robustness, scalability, and repeatability. We also conducted a user study, which demonstrates a preference for the output of our algorithm over other state-of-the art methods. Our algorithm is computationally efficient, easy to parallelize, and robust to challenging artifacts introduced by various cameras with differing technologies.

Presented at IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography, Seattle, WA, April 27-29, 2012. Winner of BEST PAPER AWARD.


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Paper in IEEE CVPR 2012: “Detecting Regions of Interest in Dynamic Scenes with Camera Motions”

April 9th, 2012 Irfan Essa Posted in Activity Recognition, Kihwan Kim, Numerical Machine Learning, PAMI/ICCV/CVPR/ECCV, Papers, PERSEAS, Visual Surviellance | No Comments »

Detecting Regions of Interest in Dynamic Scenes with Camera Motions

  • K. Kim, D. Lee, and I. Essa (2012), “Detecting Regions of Interest in Dynamic Scenes with Camera Motions,” in Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2012. [PDF] [WEBSITE] [VIDEO] [BLOG] [BIBTEX]
    @inproceedings{2012-Kim-DRIDSWCM,
      Author = {Kihwan Kim and Dongreyol Lee and Irfan Essa},
      Blog = {http://prof.irfanessa.com/2012/04/09/paper-cvpr2012/},
      Booktitle = {Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)},
      Date-Added = {2012-04-09 22:37:06 +0000},
      Date-Modified = {2012-04-30 22:26:13 +0000},
      Pdf = {http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~irfan/p/2012-Kim-DRIDSWCM.pdf},
      Publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
      Title = {Detecting Regions of Interest in Dynamic Scenes with Camera Motions},
      Url = {http://www.cc.gatech.edu/cpl/projects/roi/},
      Video = {http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19BMwDMCSp8},
      Year = {2012},
      Bdsk-Url-1 = {http://www.cc.gatech.edu/cpl/projects/roi/}}

Abstract

We present a method to detect the regions of interests in moving camera views of dynamic scenes with multiple mov- ing objects. We start by extracting a global motion tendency that reflects the scene context by tracking movements of objects in the scene. We then use Gaussian process regression to represent the extracted motion tendency as a stochastic vector field. The generated stochastic field is robust to noise and can handle a video from an uncalibrated moving camera. We use the stochastic field for predicting important future regions of interest as the scene evolves dynamically.

We evaluate our approach on a variety of videos of team sports and compare the detected regions of interest to the camera motion generated by actual camera operators. Our experimental results demonstrate that our approach is computationally efficient, and provides better prediction than those of previously proposed RBF-based approaches.

Presented at: IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2012, Providence, RI, June 16-21, 2012

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Award (2012): Best Computer Vision Paper Award by Google Research

March 22nd, 2012 Irfan Essa Posted in Computational Photography and Video, Matthias Grundmann, Papers, Vivek Kwatra | No Comments »

Our following paper was just awarded the Excellent Paper for 2011 in Computer Vision by Google Research.

  • M. Grundmann, V. Kwatra, and I. Essa (2011), “Auto-Directed Video Stabilization with Robust L1 Optimal Camera Paths,” in Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2011. [PDF] [WEBSITE] [VIDEO] [DEMO] [BLOG] [BIBTEX]
    @inproceedings{2011-Grundmann-AVSWROCP,
      Author = {M. Grundmann and V. Kwatra and I. Essa},
      Blog = {http://prof.irfanessa.com/2011/06/19/videostabilization/},
      Booktitle = {Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)},
      Date-Modified = {2011-12-08 22:13:20 +0000},
      Demo = {http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MiY-PNy-GU},
      Month = {June},
      Pdf = {http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~irfan/p/2011-Grundmann-AVSWROCP.pdf},
      Publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
      Title = {Auto-Directed Video Stabilization with Robust L1 Optimal Camera Paths},
      Url = {http://www.cc.gatech.edu/cpl/projects/videostabilization/},
      Video = {http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5keG1Y810U},
      Year = {2011},
      Bdsk-Url-1 = {http://www.cc.gatech.edu/cpl/projects/videostabilization/}}

Casually shot videos captured by handheld or mobile cameras suffer from significant amount of shake. Existing in-camera stabilization methods dampen high-frequency jitter but do not suppress low-frequency movements and bounces, such as those observed in videos captured by a walking person. On the other hand, most professionally shot videos usually consist of carefully designed camera configurations, using specialized equipment such as tripods or camera dollies, and employ ease-in and ease-out for transitions. Our stabilization technique automatically converts casual shaky footage into more pleasant and professional looking videos by mimicking these cinematographic principles. The original, shaky camera path is divided into a set of segments, each approximated by either constant, linear or parabolic motion, using an algorithm based on robust L1 optimization. The stabilizer has been part of the YouTube Editor youtube.com/editor since March 2011.

via Research Blog.

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Teaching: Spring 2012

January 11th, 2012 Irfan Essa Posted in CnJ, Computational Journalism, Computational Photography and Video, DVFX | No Comments »

In Spring 2012, I am teaching 2 classes.

Advanced Computational Photography (CS 8803 PHO) [with Grant Schindler]

This is an advanced topics class in Computational Photography, building on my intro class and explores technical aspects of pictures, and more precisely the capture and depiction of reality on a 2D medium. The scientific, perceptual, and artistic principles behind image-making will be emphasized. Topics include the relationship between pictorial techniques and the human visual system; intrinsic limitations of 2D representations and their possible compensations; and technical issues involving depiction. Technical aspects of image capture and rendering, and exploration of how such a medium can be used to its maximum potential, will be examined. Students are strongly encouraged (not required) to bring their digital cameras and a laptop to facilitate experiments. The class will explore recent and state of the art paper in Computational Photography from leading conferences and journals in the area and students will do projects in a variety of topics.

Computation + Journalism (CS 4464 / CS 6465)

This class is aimed at understanding the computational and technological advancements in the area of journalism. Primary focus is on the study of technologies for developing new tools for (a) sense-making from diverse news information sources, (b) the impact of more and cheaper networked sensors (c) collaborative human models for information aggregation and sense-making, (d) mashups and the use of programming in journalism, (e) the impact of mobile computing and data gathering, (f) computational approaches to information quality, (g) data mining for personalization and aggregation, and (h) citizen journalism. Complete schedule and other information will be on the t-square site available to only students taking the class.

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Welcome 2012!

January 1st, 2012 Irfan Essa Posted in Interesting | No Comments »

Just a brief post to welcome in the new year and to wish all a very happy 2012.  2011 was a very busy and productive year in terms of research and other academic pursuits (follow the 2011 tag for an overview).   I am especially thankful to my team and my collaborators who have made 2011 such a successful year. I expect to 2012 to be equally productive.

Again, Happy 2012 and Best Wishes to all.

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Kihwan Kim’s Thesis Defense (2011): “Spatio-temporal Data Interpolation for Dynamic Scene Analysis”

December 6th, 2011 Irfan Essa Posted in Computational Photography and Video, Kihwan Kim, Modeling and Animation, Multimedia, PhD, Security, Visual Surviellance, WWW | No Comments »

Spatio-temporal Data Interpolation for Dynamic Scene Analysis

Kihwan Kim, PhD Candidate

School of Interactive Computing, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

Date: Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Time: 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm EST

Location: Technology Square Research Building (TSRB) Room 223

Abstract

Analysis and visualization of dynamic scenes is often constrained by the amount of spatio-temporal information available from the environment. In most scenarios, we have to account for incomplete information and sparse motion data, requiring us to employ interpolation and approximation methods to fill for the missing information. Scattered data interpolation and approximation techniques have been widely used for solving the problem of completing surfaces and images with incomplete input data. We introduce approaches for such data interpolation and approximation from limited sensors, into the domain of analyzing and visualizing dynamic scenes. Data from dynamic scenes is subject to constraints due to the spatial layout of the scene and/or the configurations of video cameras in use. Such constraints include: (1) sparsely available cameras observing the scene, (2) limited field of view provided by the cameras in use, (3) incomplete motion at a specific moment, and (4) varying frame rates due to different exposures and resolutions.

In this thesis, we establish these forms of incompleteness in the scene, as spatio- temporal uncertainties, and propose solutions for resolving the uncertainties by applying scattered data approximation into a spatio-temporal domain.

The main contributions of this research are as follows: First, we provide an effi- cient framework to visualize large-scale dynamic scenes from distributed static videos. Second, we adopt Radial Basis Function (RBF) interpolation to the spatio-temporal domain to generate global motion tendency. The tendency, represented by a dense flow field, is used to optimally pan and tilt a video camera. Third, we propose a method to represent motion trajectories using stochastic vector fields. Gaussian Pro- cess Regression (GPR) is used to generate a dense vector field and the certainty of each vector in the field. The generated stochastic fields are used for recognizing motion patterns under varying frame-rate and incompleteness of the input videos. Fourth, we also show that the stochastic representation of vector field can also be used for modeling global tendency to detect the region of interests in dynamic scenes with camera motion. We evaluate and demonstrate our approaches in several applications for visualizing virtual cities, automating sports broadcasting, and recognizing traffic patterns in surveillance videos.

Committee:

  • Prof. Irfan Essa (Advisor, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology)
  • Prof. James M. Rehg (School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology)
  • Prof. Thad Starner (School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology)
  • Prof. Greg Turk (School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology)
  • Prof. Jessica K. Hodgins (Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, and Disney Research Pittsburgh)

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Essa, Egerstedt Named IEEE Fellows | School of Interactive Computing

November 21st, 2011 Irfan Essa Posted in Awards, In The News | No Comments »

Via Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing‘s Website > Essa, Egerstedt Named IEEE Fellows.

The IEEE Board of Directors has elected professors Irfan Essa and Magnus Egerstedt (both Interactive Computing) as Fellows in its Class of 2012.

Essa is a professor whose research focus is in computer vision, computer graphics, computational perception, robotics and computer animation. In his Fellow citation, Essa was lauded for “contributions to computer vision and graphics.”

“I feel honored to be selected to be part of a group of my peers that I respect and who have made amazing contributions to their fields,” Essa said. “I am glad that my contributions to computer vision and graphics are considered worthy for this honor, and I intend to continue working on my multi-disciplinary research.”

Egerstedt, an adjunct faculty member in the School of Interactive Computing with a primary appointment in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, works in optimal control, as well as modeling and analysis of hybrid and discrete event systems, with emphasis on motion planning and control of (teams of) mobile robots. His IEEE citation acknowledged “contributions to hybrid and networked control, with applications in robotics.”

Both professors are affiliated with the Robotics & Intelligent Machines (RIM) Center.

The IEEE Grade of Fellow is conferred by the Board of Directors upon those members with extraordinary records of accomplishment in any IEEE field of interest. IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement. For a full list of the Fellow Class of 2012, visit the IEEE website.

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Event: CnJ Panel at Georgia Tech’s Future Media Fest 2011 | Computation + Journalism

November 15th, 2011 Irfan Essa Posted in Computational Journalism, Eric Gilbert, Events | No Comments »

Computational Journalism is defined as the application of computation to the activities of journalism such as information gathering, organization, communication, and dissemination of information, while upholding values of journalism such as accuracy and verifiability. Journalists are increasingly adopting and using the proliferation of open-source tools and embracing different styles of journalism. Explore how newsrooms are opening, what new tools are being created, and how to use those tools most effectively.

Panelists:

Topics of discussion will include (but will not be limited to):

  • What is Computational Journalism?
  • What impact has Computation / Information Technology / Networking Technology had on Journalism?
  • What is the newsroom of the future? How has the newsroom changed?
  • How has investigative journalism changed with new technologies?
  • How is social networking changed how we gather, distribute, and share news (and information)?
  • What are the economic / financial models that need to explored to support (and sustain) journalism?
  • What is the role of an Editor in the new journalism model?
  • What should we be teaching the next generation of journalists?

via CnJ Panel at Georgia Tech’s Future Media Fest 2011 | Computation + Journalism.

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Paper in ICCV 2011: “Gaussian Process Regression Flow for Analysis of Motion Trajectories”

October 28th, 2011 Irfan Essa Posted in Activity Recognition, DARPA, Kihwan Kim, PAMI/ICCV/CVPR/ECCV, Papers | No Comments »

Gaussian Process Regression Flow for Analysis of Motion Trajectories

  • Kim, Lee, and Essa (2011), “Gaussian Process Regression Flow for Analysis of Motion Trajectories,” in Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2011. [PDF] [WEBSITE] [VIDEO] [BIBTEX]
     @inproceedings{Kim2011-GPRF, Author = {K. Kim and D. Lee and I. Essa}, Booktitle = {Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV)}, Month = {November}, Pdf = {http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~irfan/p/2011-Kim-GPRFAMT.pdf}, Publisher = {IEEE Computer Society}, Title = {Gaussian Process Regression Flow for Analysis of Motion Trajectories}, Url = {http://www.cc.gatech.edu/cpl/projects/gprf/}, Video = {http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtLr37hDQz0}, Year = {2011}}

Abstract

Analysis and Recognition of motions and activities of objects in videos requires effective representations for analysis and matching of motion trajectories. In this paper, we introduce a new representation specifically aimed at matching motion trajectories. We model a trajectory as a continuous dense flow field from a sparse set of vector sequences using Gaussian Process Regression. Furthermore, we introduce a random sampling strategy for learning stable classes of motions from limited data.

Our representation allows for incrementally predicting possible paths and detecting anomalous events from online trajectories. This representation also supports matching of complex motions with acceleration changes and pauses or stops within a trajectory. We use the proposed approach for classifying and predicting motion trajectories in traffic monitoring domains and test on several data sets. We show that our approach works well on various types of complete and incomplete trajectories from a variety of video data sets with different frame rates

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