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Media Technology

Scientists Create Easier Way To Embed Objects Into Video 236

Ashutosh Saxena writes "Stanford artificial intelligence researchers have developed software that makes it easy to reach inside an existing video and place a photo on the wall so realistically that it looks like it was there from the beginning. The photo is not pasted on top of the existing video, but embedded in it. It works for videos as well — you can play a video on a wall inside your video. The technology can cheaply do some of the tricks normally performed by expensive commercial editing systems. The researchers suggest that anyone with a video camera might earn some spending money by agreeing to have unobtrusive corporate logos placed inside their videos before they are posted online."
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Scientists Create Easier Way To Embed Objects Into Video

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  • Youtube (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TBoon ( 1381891 ) on Friday November 14, 2008 @02:54PM (#25764439)
    I thought there was more than enough advertisement on YouTube as it was already.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DarthJohn ( 1160097 )

      I thought there was more than enough advertisement on YouTube as it was already.

      But not in our dreams! Nosiree!

    • Re:Youtube (Score:4, Funny)

      by lysergic.acid ( 845423 ) on Friday November 14, 2008 @07:14PM (#25767115) Homepage

      yea, it's kinda sad that they developed such a cool tech, and the first thing they thought to do with it is to plaster everyone's home videos with Coca-Cola logos. i mean, how much are you really going to be paid by Coca-Cola to add their logo to your home videos? does video documentation of your child's first steps or first words really need corporate sponsorship?

      some things don't need to be monetized. now, covering up the playboy posters in videos of your dorm room to send to your parents--that's a useful application.

  • Yeah, that'll work (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The MAZZTer ( 911996 ) <megazzt.gmail@com> on Friday November 14, 2008 @02:54PM (#25764455) Homepage

    The researchers suggest that anyone with a video camera might earn some spending money by agreeing to have unobtrusive corporate logos placed inside their videos before they are posted online.

    Just like web surfers no longer even glance at banner ads anymore, people will learn to ignore any corporate logos in videos (even if they really ARE there in real life!).

    • It will, and does (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LockeOnLogic ( 723968 ) on Friday November 14, 2008 @03:08PM (#25764595)
      Modern advertising/branding isn't about actively convincing you anymore. It's about creating a pervasive environment of exposure in which you become familiar with a brand/product/logo whatever. In the store people are then more likely to subconsciously reach for Tide or Tylenol (despite the fact that generics are composed of essentially the same active ingredients) because they are familiar.

      Nobody pays much attention to TV commercials anymore, and haven't for some time. Have advertisers markedly decreased their buying of TV commercial time? No, because you don't have to pay attention for it to work.
      • by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Friday November 14, 2008 @03:25PM (#25764813) Homepage Journal

        It's about creating a pervasive environment of exposure

        Also an effective way to brainwash a person too.

      • It also enables the game of 'spot the sponsor' on films. Some of the product placement is hillariously bad.

        I won't say I'm not influenced by advertising, but in the generics case I can't recall a time I haven't bought the generic where it's available. I always look at ingredients.. if the cheaper one is the same, I save my money.

        • Generics (Score:3, Interesting)

          by plover ( 150551 ) *

          (despite the fact that generics are composed of essentially the same active ingredients)

          Have you bought generic or third party hardware before? I'm thinking of a replacement car fender a body shop once tried to sell me. The steel was thinner than the original steel, and much more flexible. The rolled form of the fender didn't exactly line up with the rolled form of the original. The factory fender, on the other hand, was a perfect match to the original part. I'm sure the car would have *looked* like it was supposed to, but if you examine the fit and finish up close, it's evident that it'

          • Re:Generics (Score:4, Insightful)

            by StrategicIrony ( 1183007 ) on Friday November 14, 2008 @07:00PM (#25767003)

            There are cases for generic and cases for non-generic.

            There's nothing to say that brands are evil, just that brands with heavy advertising aren't necessarily more worthy of a purchase.

            When it comes to drugs, generics actually ARE composed of essentially the same thing, but when it comes to card or liquor or computer parts, "generics" are definitely not.

            However, purchasing a car bumper because the TV showed a hot woman rubbing on it is different than purchasing it because it's a superior product.

            That's the contention this whole thread. Some people seem to think that advertising legitimately will make me pay more for an identical or inferior product, without my conscious knowledge, which I have argued as a bit of bunk, at least the enormous majority of the time, for me personally.

            • Re:Generics (Score:4, Funny)

              by Ihmhi ( 1206036 ) <i_have_mental_health_issues@yahoo.com> on Friday November 14, 2008 @07:28PM (#25767197)

              I've tried generic alcohol before. It didn't sit with me well at all.

              Long story short, keep away from the Isopropyl brand of hard liquor. It may be cheap, but you sure do pay for it tomorrow!

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by plover ( 150551 ) *

              Actually, when it comes to generics, drugs are not very different than car doors. The chemicals are supposed to be the same, but the other components may be cheaper. And there may be qualitative functional differences in the packaging. "Time release" is sometimes achieved by coating particles with compounds that have measured rates of decomposition in stomach acid, and with some percentage of particles to be coated heavier than others. There is no guarantee that a generic has to mimic that behavior, or

      • by Ethanol-fueled ( 1125189 ) * on Friday November 14, 2008 @03:35PM (#25764943) Homepage Journal
        I've noticed that ads are being chained to increase effectiveness.

        For example, The SNL episode featuring the fake Sarah Palin had a later skit which showcased the MS Surface technology, then showed the Microsoft ads during the commercial breaks. Another show featured a very distinctive necklace worn by some lade ghost in a mirror on some chick show, and coincidentally the exact same necklace was featured in a commercial which sold them for some kind of real-life charity.
        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by HTH NE1 ( 675604 )

          I particularly liked how a CSI:NY episode matched the marks on a dismembered body's bones to the blade of a particular brand of cordless reciprocating saw, then the same saw was advertised in the commercial break, just in case you had some bodies you needed to dismember.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          That was My Name is Earl. The character Joy watched the commercial in the show (they showed most of the commercial in the show) and she started name dropping the product. Soon after during the commercial break that commercial was on for real. I love the show but when the show was over I turned to my wife and said if they did that again I wouldn't be a viewer any more.

          It may sound childish but that was too much.

      • Re:It will, and does (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mcgrew ( 92797 ) * on Friday November 14, 2008 @03:35PM (#25764947) Homepage Journal

        In the store people are then more likely to subconsciously reach for Tide or Tylenol (despite the fact that generics are composed of essentially the same active ingredients) because they are familiar.

        I guess once again I'm outside the bell curve, as I use generics almost exclusively. Tylenol? Doesn't work. Advil? Hell no, generic Naproxin Sodium is 1/3 the price. Tide? Yeah, becasue I haven't found anything that works as good. Listerine? Yes, that brand was shown to reduce incidence of gum disease which I suffer from, and the generics are watered down, you can tell because they don't burn as bad (yes, I did try them and found them wanting).

        However, NEGATIVE ads work well on me. Sony's rootkit bit me when my daughter trusted BMG and I'll never buy another Sony product again. I spent so much time under the hood of my Mustang in 1970 that I never again bought another Ford. Tyson Foods burned two dozen Mexicans alive in Georgia in the 1980s because they chained the fire exits shut to keep them from stealing chicken parts (a manager spent 2 years in prison for twenty five horrible deaths) and I'll pay MORE for generic meat than buy Tyson.

        And some ads are so annoying that I deliberatly avoid the products.

        You would think that the corporates would learn. It's an old adage that if you're happy with a product you MIGHT tell a friend, but if you feel like you've been ripped off you'll tell everybody.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by ericrost ( 1049312 )

          Advil? Hell no, generic Naproxin Sodium is 1/3 the price.

          Well you may want to price it against ibuprofen since that's the active ingredient. Just sayin'

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          Interesting, you admit you're outside the bell curve and then expect corporations to learn from your example? I think it'd be more worth it to them to pay attention to the middle of that bell curve. :-)

          You know well why they'll keep doing stuff like the rootkit thing. Most people don't care, and the ones who do aren't present in large enough numbers for them to change their strategy.
        • by shadow349 ( 1034412 ) on Friday November 14, 2008 @08:02PM (#25767409)

          Tyson Foods burned two dozen Mexicans alive in Georgia in the 1980s because they chained the fire exits shut to keep them from stealing chicken parts (a manager spent 2 years in prison for twenty five horrible deaths) and I'll pay MORE for generic meat than buy Tyson.

          You are basing your opinion of a whole company and all of its current and future products on the actions of a small group of people who made an error in judgment 20+ years ago? Sounds pretty petty to me.

          - Ryan Jacobson
          Union Carbide, Project Manager
          Bhopal Division

      • Nobody pays much attention to TV commercials anymore, and haven't for some time. Have advertisers markedly decreased their buying of TV commercial time? No, because you don't have to pay attention for it to work.

        And yet online advertising is all about click-throughs. Thanks for poisoning the well, Doubleclick.

        • Fine with me. It's hard to ignore billboards and TV ads. Web ads don't even get loaded for me, let alone displayed.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
        And the only way to discourage this is if enough people start actively working against it. When I am looking for a product and I recognise a brand but can't think of which independent source told me something good about it, I actively choose something else.
    • by HTH NE1 ( 675604 )

      Near the last season of BattleBots the logos they started inserting on the Lexan panels of the arena were really annoying me. Especially when they'd animate their reveal every time the camera angle changed.

      Or was it Robot Wars? Whichever one had rows of Lexan panels instead of whole tall sheets of it.

      At least in football(US) the ads inserted into the field have some benefit to the viewer in marking the scrimmage and first-down lines. (And hitting the 30-second skip between plays skips past the ads there to

    • I don't notice them because they are adblocked. IF I can't block the ad, then it has to be unobtrusive and tasteful. Otherwise I will take my eyeballs elsewhere. And if it is obtrusive and a major company, I will take my dollars as far away from them as practical and email them telling them my reasons.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by HardCase ( 14757 )

      I wonder if it would be just as easy to take them out?

  • by StrategicIrony ( 1183007 ) on Friday November 14, 2008 @02:56PM (#25764469)

    Does anyone notice that the more pervasive advertising is, the less effective it is?

    In other words, people build filters for it. I know within younger generations, advertising is almost invisible.

    I recall older people at work asking me "did you notice that new ad on the webpage?"

    To which I responded "uhm... our webpage has ads?"

    Because I spend enough time on the web to have almost totally filtered them out (yeah, adblock does a bunch of that for me, but even without it....)

    I don't think I could tell you after a TV show, who the sponsors were. Commercial time is just blank in my mind because I tune it out.

    I don't think I've EVER clicked on an ad in a webpage. I don't know for sure, but television and radio advertising rarely affect my purchasing decisions, at least not in a way I can discern.

    So, legitimately, how powerful is a wall-hanging logo for Pepsi in some random goofy youtube video ACTUALLY going to be?

    Am I a total oddity in not even noticing most advertising?

    • by nysus ( 162232 ) on Friday November 14, 2008 @03:11PM (#25764635)
      You think you are immune, but you are not. Perhaps you are not interested in 99.9% of the products out there. But when an ad for that that product or service you are interested in, you will pay attention.
      • by StrategicIrony ( 1183007 ) on Friday November 14, 2008 @03:29PM (#25764875)

        Probably.

        I saw ads for the new Nikon camera, which reminded me I had meant to drop by the local camera shop because It was something I'd been wanting to do (upgrade my camera)

        I ended up doing some research and bought a Canon from an online discount shop.

        Yay for Nikon ads.

        • And here you are talking about the ad that you distinctly remember.

          That apparently was an effective ad. Effective ads don't have to make you want to buy the product, simply remember the ad. Like those damn "Head On" ads that everyone hates, yet can't ignore.

          In this case, the point of the ad doesn't seem to much to promote the product so much as make it seem commonplace. So, like your initial comment, I don't know how effective that is - might have to check some studies.
          • That's interesting.

            The most memorable ads, if I recall, were actually remembered with very few people actually remembering what the product was.

            I recall the Larry Bird vs Michael Jordan ads of the late 80s were some of the most popular ads of all time. In surveys, like 95% of people chose them as the best ads of the superbowl. But only 5% of those people could remember any products being pitched in the ad.

            Most ads remind me of Family Guy.

            Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man!
            Wacky Waving Inflatab

          • I'm not familiar with the "head on" ads, btw.

            Not enough TV in my diet. :-D

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Machtyn ( 759119 )
        Agreeing with parent, I will give my own anecdotal evidence. The more I see a KFC, Wendy's or Burger King commercial, the more I might think about it, even subconsciously. There are even BK product placements in one of the games I like to play (NFS:U2). Unfortunately for Wendy's and BK, I don't act on my impulse very often / at all, KFC a little more often (say once or twice a month as opposed to once or twice in 3 months).

        The point is that the ad placements do tend to get me to think about the brand.
    • I don't think I've EVER clicked on an ad in a webpage.

      I sometimes click on ads on one webpage. Just so it doesn't die. Nonetheless I filter most of them, I even have greasemonkey to remove one ugly green ad looking almost like other content.

    • Modern advertising is a very different creature from what you seem to think it is. It operates quite well, perhaps even at its best, when (you think) you are not aware of it. When you are not paying attention, you have no chance to rationally evaluate the message it is delivering. It just slips past all your conscious filters right into your subconscious.

      Show a pretty girl beside a Lexus logo often enough and you'll start getting a hard-on for one even if you can't say just why.

      Co--stan-za!

      • I have a hard on for the new Subaru wagon.

        But have you ever seen a Subaru commercial? (unless you live in the mountains, the answer is likely no).

        But I like it because on a feature-for-feature comparison, it's one of the more economical and reliable (and safe) vehicles for the price.

        But uhm ok.

        I'm looking around my house for brands that I might have seen advertised somewhere.

        I guess I use Colgate toothpaste... But that was mainly because I was using Tom's of Maine and it gave me bad breath.

        I shopped aro

        • The point of advertising is awareness... you bought that beer, so did a lot of other people. A certain %age decided they liked it and kept buying... kerching.

          No advert will persuade 100% of people to buy the product, but it might persuade 10% to try it, and maybe 1% to switch brands. If you're advertising to a million people that's a lot of sales.

    • How do you know what Pepsi is?
      • Because I've tried the other 8 or 10 competitors and I prefer the taste.

        I credit their distribution channel for getting the product into every convenience store in the world. Maybe that has something to do with TV ads, but generally when I order a drink, I say "uhm I'll have a Coke or Pepsi or whatever". I guess if I were from the northeast it might be a "soda" but that also means bubbly water in some places...

        Regardless, if I found something that tasted different, I'd get that. I really like Jones soda,

        • Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray
          Sosyo
          Crodino
          Sanbitter

          • The other problem is, for me, soda purchases are frequently a last-minute gas station purchase, where the selection is grossly limited.

            That usually pisses me off, but meh... I don't really *care* that much what's on the label as long as it has a little caffeine and a decent flavor.

          • Dude, there are many [wikipedia.org] much [wikipedia.org] better [wikipedia.org] things [wikipedia.org] to be connoisseur of than soda.

            Celery soda? /shudder

    • Ah, but all the subliminal messages still work on you. Hence your inexplicable urge to go drive a Lexus to McDonalds and pay with your Capital One credit card. ;-)
      • Well... no

        I use a credit union because they give me better rates.

        And I drive a 10 year old station wagon, because it's more practical.

        I am fast-food agnostic and will eat anyplace that has a "drive-thru" window if I'm in a pinch for time.

        Though mcdonalds does have decent fries. I tend to avoid it during these stupid "Monopoly" games because it seems to be twice as crowded. (obviously, advertising works there)

        • Well... no

          Sorry, I was kidding. :-)

          I guess there is a real point lurking beneath my irony though. Advertisers don't actually need your attention. They believe that if they bombard you with their brand name and logo often enough, for long enough, they can bias your purchasing decisions toward their product. I'm skeptical of the value of this whole "brand recognition" idea, myself.

          Oh, look at the time! I have to run down to the Lexus dealer and then go to McDonalds! ;-)

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      So, legitimately, how powerful is a wall-hanging logo for Pepsi in some random goofy youtube video ACTUALLY going to be?

      A lot more than you realize.

      Advertisement is one of the most heavily researched areas of our lives. A good fraction of psychology research is, directly or indirectly, related to the effects and effectiveness of advertisement. While it is almost impossible to correctly estimate any specific ad or campaign, the general effects of advertisement are extremely well researched.

      So you don't consciously register the ads anymore. Do you think the advertisers care? No, not in the least. They were never targeting your

      • It's just simple exposure. Advertisers don't even have to be overt about it. We like things that we are more familiar with, regardless of "conscious" awareness or not.
    • I am one of the generation that ACTIVELY builds REAL filters against advertising. I stop watching shows when they get obnoxious with "banner ads" after the real commercial breaks. My MythTV box hits the delete button on commercials, adblock removes banners from the web. My day to day life is fairly marketing free and I try to read real reviews and tests of products to seek advice in my buying decisions.

      Its not perfect but I try to avoid walking around in a marketing induced daze like many of the sheeple I e

      • I've been thinking and I've decided, at least for me, that big purchases are rarely affected by advertising because I consciously go out of my way to be educated on features and make an informed decision.

        But with small stupid trivial stuff, maybe the ads do something.

        However, I still lean toward the fact that price and availability are far more important.

        I was thinking of buying Mentos. Which I've done.

        But I realized that I'd probably not have bought them if they weren't within arms reach of the cash regi

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by jmhoule314 ( 921571 )
        I don't mean to pick on you but I just happened to get a little fed up as I reached this spot. You may make effort to avoid advertising but unless board yourself into your house and don't talk to anybody, you are failing miserably. I find it odd that we are having a sort of dick measuring contest based on how few commercials we watch. I however don't find it the slightest bit odd that we don't even realize just how bombarded by advertisements we are, and apparently don't even know what an advertisement i
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gknoy ( 899301 )

      but television and radio advertising rarely affect my purchasing decisions, at least not in a way I can discern.

      It's probable that some advertising DOES affect you, even if you don't realize it. Do you buy generic drugs, or name brand, for example? (I know I occasionally buy Alleve, despite knowing that it's the same thing as the generic naproxin right next to it. Why?? It's not logical.)

      If you had to find car insurance, where would you go? The first thing that pops in my mind is Geico, Allstate, etc -- [i

      • Personally, I make a conscious decision to avoid doing that.

        I know I'm not perfect, but the drugs on my desk right now are all generics. Sometimes I buy Advil brand, but that's because they have a sweet flavored coating on their pills and none of the 8 or 10 different generics I've tried have that feature.

        For car insurance, I actually called a number of smaller companies and ended up getting a cheaper premium with one of the big companies, which disappointed me.

        You know, I like some brands. I always buy "

    • Look, these guys probably figure that ads are the only profitable use for their tech right now - and they want jobs after they get their degrees. Nice high paying jobs. For an Ad firm I would suspect. Probably adding Product Placement into all your classic movies and television shows. Certainly when there are adds for Viagra all over the walls of the enterprise when you are watching star trek off some bit torrent, you will notice the adds.
      • yeah, and I'll go out and make a download service that screens movies and strips embedded advertising and my MYSELF rich. (because I suspect it would be hugely popular) :-)

  • by JonTurner ( 178845 ) on Friday November 14, 2008 @02:57PM (#25764483) Journal

    Because if there's one thing we all need in our lives, it's more inane advertising plastered over every square inch of vertical surfaces.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by drexlor ( 1314419 )
      Maybe someday it will be like in Futurama:

      Leela: Didn't you have ad's in the 20th century?
      Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ball games and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No siree!

      Last night I dreamed about The Office cast in a Seinfield episode. Maybe NBC is already working on the technology.
  • of the woman in the movie 'the corporation' that thought it was a great idea to get children to 'nag their parents more effective'. I just love the advertising business. not.

  • by TheNecromancer ( 179644 ) on Friday November 14, 2008 @03:07PM (#25764581)

    Yes! Now you too can star in your very own pr0n movie!

    Ah, the wonders of software!

  • Now we will see an even greater number of bogus science experiments on Youtube.
  • by mevets ( 322601 )

    Couldn't I use this to remove the objects/logos/animations just as effectively? I would likely pay for that!

  • by idontgno ( 624372 ) on Friday November 14, 2008 @03:13PM (#25764661) Journal

    When American football television broadcasts started featuring real-time "underlays" of such play-by-play landmarks as line of scrimmage and first down mark, a worried little voice at the back of my head wondered if someone would use this technology to underlay advertising. I think I've seen just such things (i.e., digitally-projected advertising hoardings in the video background, even logos "projected" into the playing field). Now this kind of stuff will be easy and ubiquitous.

    As little as we can trust digital visual media now, it'll be even less trustworthy.

    • by Tony Hoyle ( 11698 ) * <tmh@nodomain.org> on Friday November 14, 2008 @03:40PM (#25765015) Homepage

      They already do - those advertising boards on the side? They're electronically generated - have been for years. That's why when you see something played in another country all the adverts are in english.

      • I did mention that....

        (i.e., digitally-projected advertising hoardings in the video background,

        I guess my point is that now this'll be accessible to anyone with a video and any motive whatsoever to alter it.

        I guess I was naive to think that digital video was ever trustworthy.

        Does anyone remember the huge critical attention and praise garnered by Woody Allen inserting his moving image into historical film footage in Zelig [imdb.com] ? I understand that the movie post-processing was painstaking and expensive, and nota

    • In Latin American soccer games, they use this technology during time-outs to project ads onto the field.

      The US market is just a bit more resistant to such pervasive iickyness. :-)

    • As little as we can trust digital visual media now, it'll be even less trustworthy.

      What trust is it betraying? That one coast is seeing a different play than another?

  • by coolsnowmen ( 695297 ) on Friday November 14, 2008 @03:14PM (#25764677)

    It is nice to see top universities working on better advertising. You know, I was thinking to myself just yesterday, "There is just not enough product placement in society. I hope someone makes it easier to put advertising in digital media."

    • Re:Stanford sold out (Score:4, Interesting)

      by iluvcapra ( 782887 ) on Friday November 14, 2008 @03:30PM (#25764881)

      I dunno, it seems that this knowledge is directly applicable to all kinds of serious real-world problems involving computer vision, particularly automated car driving (the Stanford [wikipedia.org] connection might just be a coincidence, but there's a lot of overlap).

      • Yes, Of course it's progress, if only to help me get this technology as a GNU-IMP plugin.

        I'm not sure whether you meant computer assisted vision (computers helping us) or vision for computers, but as far as automated cars:
        That work seems to be all incremental improvements and people are already pretty good at it (http://www.darpa.mil/GRANDCHALLENGE/). The current problems are getting it fast enough to react in "real-time," and getting it accurate enough at the same time. If Stanford's algor

  • by sneakyimp ( 1161443 ) on Friday November 14, 2008 @03:17PM (#25764719)

    Somebody tell the BertIsEvil guy.

  • by xquark ( 649804 ) on Friday November 14, 2008 @03:25PM (#25764817) Homepage

    1. Initially from a computer forensics pov, it would be trivial to detect if a video has been altered, however i think with further improvements in the embedding technology where the actual advert piece is better rendered to take into account surrounding lighting conditions it might become more difficult, however not impossible to detect intentional modifications

    2. Just as with current browser ad-blockers, the these ads can also be blocked out, in-fact the technology proves that complex camera conditions such as rotational pan(the heros examples) and occlusion (fat chick on couch) can be easily determined, so creating a blank out mask of a texture that is close to the surrounding surface would also be quiet doable, perhaps not real-time at the moment, but doable nonetheless, and most definitely live sometime in the future perhaps.

    • "1. Initially from a computer forensics pov, it would be trivial to detect if a video has been altered, however i think with further improvements in the embedding technology where the actual advert piece is better rendered to take into account surrounding lighting conditions it might become more difficult, however not impossible to detect intentional modifications"

      If I'd points, I'd mod you insightful - and I appreciate the understated tone of the statement. One implied (er, embedded) concern here is th
  • I can't seem to understand how this is any different than applying a video\image overlay with opacity to an existing video? Can someone help me out?
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by camperdave ( 969942 )
      Because simply overlaying an image with opacity wouldn't allow foreground objects to move in front of the image, or for the image to change dynamically with the motion of the camera or the background object. Follow the link in the story and watch the video. The cool stuff starts about 1:40 minutes in.
  • Nothing new here (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sunderland56 ( 621843 ) on Friday November 14, 2008 @03:31PM (#25764887)
    Maybe these Stanford geeks don't watch football... that yellow first-down line is actually *not* painted on the field, it's inserted into the live video feed electronically. While doing it live requires some reasonable amount of processing power, doing it by non-real-time processing is pretty trivial (it's just a 3D texture map).

    The technology to do this was commonly available in the mid-90's.
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      Like your Soliton Radar, it's all made from currently existing technology.
    • See also: digital billboard replacement by Supponor

      http://www.netprofile.fi/pressphotos/supponor [netprofile.fi]

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by xquark ( 649804 )

      Actually you're wrong, conceptually its a similar process but the method is very different. The video processing done in football games requires 4+ cameras to be position around the arena, the camera locations are known exactly, furthermore the cameras are all high frame rate, hi resolution.

      From the article it seems to suggest one can take some arbitrary video that has non-degenerative camera motion and embed images/video into it, doing this requires knowing the optical flow of all the moving objects in the

    • by sahonen ( 680948 )
      The difference here is that the technology behind the first down line relies on stationary cameras with encoders in the pan/tilt heads and zoom lenses in order to figure out where to draw the line, as well as human operators carefully choosing key colors to make sure that the players occlude the line properly. The Stanford technology works with moving cameraout any encoders and handles occlusion automatically.
  • This will lead to ads all over the place. Pepsi ads imbedded in The Maltese Falcon. iPod ads hanging on the wall above Col. Klink's desk. There'll be Penzoil decals on Starbuck's viper, a McDonalds opposite the Holodeck, and Nike swoosh logos on all of SG1's gear.

    I'm guessing this uses a variation of the technology that they use to put the scrimmage and first down lines on the football fields.
  • More stimulation in the hour of mass media over-stimulation! I seriously hope we'll be able to use this technology. I like to watch porn, but it quickly gets boring and even repetitive (I know, that kind of is the point, to a certain extent), but it'd be more entertaining if I could project my favourite comedy show on the lady's stomach or buttocks. Also I like to watch the news but I don't have the time for all of these, so if we could project the porn-comedy combo in the screens in the background on CNN t

  • by riceboy50 ( 631755 ) on Friday November 14, 2008 @04:29PM (#25765669)

    The researchers suggest that anyone with a video camera might earn some spending money by agreeing to have unobtrusive corporate logos placed inside their videos before they are posted online.

    More like Google will insert said logos into said videos upon your posting them on YouTube.

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