Active capture: automatic direction for automatic movies

ABSTRACT

Current consumer media production is laborious, tedious, and produces unsatisfying results. To address this problem, Active Capture leverages media production knowledge, computer vision and audition algorithms, and user interaction techniques to automate direction and cinematography and thus enables the automatic production of annotated, high quality, reusable media assets. Active Capture is part of a new computational media production paradigm that transforms media production from a manual mechanical process into an automated computational one that can produce mass customized and personalized media integrating video of non-actors. The implemented system automates the process of capturing a non-actor performing two simple reusable actions ("screaming" and "turning her head to look at the camera") and automatically integrates those shots into various commercials and movie trailers.

REFERENCES

• 1: Marc Davis, Editing out Video Editing, IEEE MultiMedia, v.10 n.2, p.54-64, March 2003 [doi>10.1109/MMUL.2003.1195161]
• 2: M. Davis. Active Capture: Integrating Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Vision/Audition to Automate Media Capture. In: Proceedings of ICME 2003 in Baltimore, Maryland, IEEE Computer Society Press, Vol. II, 185--188, 2003.
• 3: Marc Davis , Jeffrey Heer , Ana Ramirez, Active capture: automatic direction for automatic movies, Proceedings of the eleventh ACM international conference on Multimedia, November 02-08, 2003, Berkeley, CA, USA [doi>10.1145/957013.957028]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.1 MODELS AND PRINCIPLES
      H.1.2 User/Machine Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.1 Multimedia Information Systems
          Subjects: Video (e.g., tape, disk, DVI); Audio input/output
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)

  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.4 IMAGE PROCESSING AND COMPUTER VISION
      I.4.9 Applications

  J. Computer Applications
  J.5 ARTS AND HUMANITIES

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Human Factors

Keywords:
active capture, automated direction, automatic direction, automatic movies, human-in-the-loop, metadata, recognition, video capture