AT Texas Instruments to give a Talk on "Video Stabilization and Rolling Shutter Removal on YouTube

Video Stabilization and Rolling Shutter Removal on YouTube

Abstract

In this talk, I will over a variety of approaches my group is working on for video analysis and enhancement. In particular, I will describe our approach for a video stabilizer (currently implemented on YouTube) and its extensions. This work is in collaboration with Matthias Grundmann and Vivek Kwatra at Google. This method generates stabilized videos by employing L1-optimal camera paths to remove undesirable motions [1]. We compute camera paths that are optimally partitioned into constant, linear and parabolic segments mimicking the camera motions employed by professional cinematographers. To this end, we propose a linear programming framework to minimize the first, second, and third derivatives of the resulting camera path. Our method allows for video stabilization beyond the conventional filtering that only suppresses high frequency jitter. An additional challenge in videos shot from mobile phones are rolling shutter distortions. Modern CMOS cameras capture the frame one scanline at a time, which results in non-rigid image distortions such as shear and wobble. I will demonstrate a solution based on a novel mixture model of homographies parametrized by scanline blocks to correct these rolling shutter distortions [2]. Our method does not rely on a-priori knowledge of the readout time nor requires prior camera calibration. A thorough evaluation based on a user study demonstrates a general preference for our algorithm.
I will conclude the talk by showcasing a live demo of the stabilizer and time permitting, I will discuss some other projects we are working on.
[1] Matthias Grundmann, Vivek Kwatra, Irfan Essa, CVPR 2011, www.cc.gatech.edu/cpl/projects/videostabilization
[2] Matthias Grundmann, Vivek Kwatra, Daniel Castro Irfan Essa, ICCP 2012, Best paper, www.cc.gatech.edu/cpl/projects/rollingshutter