December 25, 2009 at 16:32Mobicast: synchronized video recording from multiple mobile phones
As you know, almost all modern mobile phones can shoot video, and with the advent of 3G, they even learned to broadcast it on the Internet (see the Qik and Ustream services ). Many events happen (concerts, parties), where the simultaneous recording is from dozens, or even hundreds of spectators' mobile phones. Researchers at the Microsoft lab in Cairo came up with the idea: what if you try to combine all of these video streams, just like the Photosynth technology glues individual photos? Indeed, due to the complementary shooting sources, you can improve the quality of the video to high resolution.
A team of researchers led by Ayman Kaheel has developed the Mobicast program ., which consists of two parts: client (of course, under Windows Mobile) and server.
As soon as two or more Mobicast phones start broadcasting the video stream, the server synchronizes their clocks and then glues the video streams. Here, pattern recognition technology comes into play, which tries to find good points for bonding at the level of individual frames. Video made up of separate streams has a high resolution and is broadcast on a large screen (since mobile phones have very low video resolution, the server copes with the task almost in real time). See the video demonstration of the technology with three mobile phones .
For example, during a concert, fans themselves can organize high-quality video broadcasting without the use of expensive video equipment, just from several hundred mobile phones. This is theoretically, in practice, the system will probably only work when shooting slow-moving objects.
What is more interesting, even feedback is provided in the Mobicast program: each contributor receives screenshots of the joint picture on his mobile phone, where his own content is highlighted.
via New Scientist
A team of researchers led by Ayman Kaheel has developed the Mobicast program ., which consists of two parts: client (of course, under Windows Mobile) and server.
As soon as two or more Mobicast phones start broadcasting the video stream, the server synchronizes their clocks and then glues the video streams. Here, pattern recognition technology comes into play, which tries to find good points for bonding at the level of individual frames. Video made up of separate streams has a high resolution and is broadcast on a large screen (since mobile phones have very low video resolution, the server copes with the task almost in real time). See the video demonstration of the technology with three mobile phones .
For example, during a concert, fans themselves can organize high-quality video broadcasting without the use of expensive video equipment, just from several hundred mobile phones. This is theoretically, in practice, the system will probably only work when shooting slow-moving objects.
What is more interesting, even feedback is provided in the Mobicast program: each contributor receives screenshots of the joint picture on his mobile phone, where his own content is highlighted.
via New Scientist