Automatic editing of multi-camera event footage, developed by Disney

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by Nino LeitnerAugust 18^th, 2014

With the advent of digital tapeless cameras, the amount of video footage that is being produced by both amateurs and professionals has increased dramatically – the easy access to cheap digital cameras made them ubiquitous and that means more footage being shot in total (it’s just as logical as the whole American gun control discussion).

However, the massive amounts of footage being shot all the time don’t mean that it got much easier or faster to edit. On the contrary, I believe that there is still much room for innovation in the field of organizing and editing footage. The editing industry still relies almost the same methodology it used 20 or 30 years ago, and while NLE software has evolved, it mainly got faster, yet still relies on the very same principles like back in the day when it was invented. And that doesn’t help much with media management requirements of the 21st century.

So it’s nice to see innovation in the editing world that would reduce the work an editor has to do. At SIGGRAPH, Disney Research published a new scientific paper describing a software that would automatically edit multi-camera event footage shot at the same time. It analyzes video footage from several angles and applies cinematography rules like the 180 degree line and determines the shooters’ main area of interest and then cuts between the cameras automatically. Or so the House of Mouse says.

In the video, they compare it to other products that are randomly cutting between cameras and even the results of a professional editor. Of course, pieces of software like this won’t be able to replace editors anytime soon, but they can help editors save hours of work in the editing booth if they are at least able to deliver a half-decent edit of a multi-camera event shoot. Naturally, a software like this won’t work for boring presentations on a stage where not much is happening, but it might add a lot of value to concert shoots or recorded sports games.

Combine that with Microsoft’s software smooth first-person hyperlapse software (which we recently covered) and we might have a winner on our hands.

Can you think of projects on which this software might be helpful? And where do you see room for more innovation in the field of editing and post production in general?

Let us know in the comments.

via NoFilmSchool