3D reconstruction and video-based rendering of casually captured videos

Abstract

In this chapter we explore the possibility of interactively navigating a collection of casually captured videos of a performance: real-world footage captured on hand held cameras by a few members of the audience. The aim is to navigate the video collection in 3D by generating video based rendering of the performance using the offline pre-computed reconstruction of the event. We propose two different techniques to obtain this reconstruction, considering that the video collection may have been recorded in complex, uncontrolled outdoor environments. One approach recovers the event geometry by exploring the temporal domain of each video independently, while the other explores the spatial domain of the video collection at each time instant, independently. The pros and cons of the two methods and their applicability to the addressed navigation problem, are also discussed. In the end, we propose an interactive GPU-accelerated viewing tool to navigate the video collection. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.