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Crystal-Clear Stills From Substandard Video? Microsoft Can Do It

by Matthew Zuras on May 8, 2010 at 05:01 PM

stills from grainy video by Microsoft
We at Switched know a lot about the pitfalls of trying to extract a clear image from grainy, wobbly or otherwise substandard video (i.e. every single one of our YouTube screencaps). Even as high definition cameras become more and more commonplace, pulling clear stills from those videos can prove difficult, but Microsoft may have a nifty solution.

Microsoft researcher Neel Joshi showed off some experimental techniques for extracting a mostly clear image from a mostly grainy video clip yesterday. In a process that reminds us of the Photoshop hacks for making faux-HDR images, Joshi isolated the static parts of the image (in this case, a mountaintop) while the moving parts (the hazy clouds around the peak) were removed. The software that he's using is "only taking about 10-percent of the data, but it's probably the best 10-percent," Joshi said to TechFair attendees at the Microsoft campus on Thursday. And the results are pretty astounding.

Joshi also presented a panoramic photo derived from a single pan shot from a wobbly video camera, and another featuring a stop-motion effect of a man diving from a waterfall -- while the background remains static. For photo manipulators, this is remarkable news; it would normally take a lot of creative blurring, sharpening, masking and other Photoshop sorcery to pull out an image like that. Better yet, if this software ever hits the market, it means even nicer images for amateur shutterbugs, too. [From: CNET]

Tags: microsoft, neel joshi, NeelJoshi, photo manipulation, photography, PhotoManipulation, photoshop, pictures, stills, top, video

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