Microsoft Engineers Just Devised a Way to Turn Your Shaky GoPro Footage Into Hyperlapses
This could be a game changer. Engineers at Microsoft recently unveiled a method for converting first-person videos into hyperlapse videos (time-lapse videos with a smoothly moving camera).
As the team explains on their research page:
At high speed-up rates, simple frame sub-sampling coupled with existing video stabilization methods does not work, because the erratic camera shake present in first-person videos is amplified by the speed-up.
Our algorithm first reconstructs the 3D input camera path as well as dense, per-frame proxy geometries. We then optimize a novel camera path for the output video that is smooth and passes near the input cameras while ensuring that the virtual camera looks in directions that can be rendered well from the input.
Next, we compute geometric proxies for each input frame. These allow us to render the frames from the novel viewpoints on the optimized path. Finally, we generate the novel smoothed, time-lapse video by rendering, stitching, and blending appropriately selected source frames for each output frame.