Modelling for video editing
Image editing programs have become very sophisticated, allowing even inexperienced uses to change the content of images. Cutting and psting objects between images, or just deleting objects from images, are relatively easy to achieve. Personal video editing software, however, is far more primitive in the range of operations supported. It allows clips to be shortened, or combined, but only the content of the video remains largely unchanged. Copying an object from one video sequence to another, for example, requires a film post-production (special effects) company. The reason for this difference between image editing and video editing software is that most video content editing opeation require 3D information. This 3D information includes the path of the camera through the scene, but also the shape of the objects visible.
This video shows what happens if you perform the equivalent of image editing on video. All we have done here is copy pixels from one video sequence into another.
VideoTrace provides a easy way of recovering this required 3D information, and possibly a way of making 3D special effects available to all. The creation of video editing software which allows ordinary users to insert 3D special effects into video is one of the longer term goals of Punchcard.
