First there was virtual reality, an all encompassing immersive experience for singular head-wear users, then came augmented reality, a way of adding objects to ones field of vision for interpretative understanding. Now arrives, perhaps a slightly more curious method of altering reality ? No, merely on-the-fly erasure of selected objects in video making.
Researchers Jan Herling and Wolfgang Broll, from the Ilmenau Technical University in Germany have developed a way of removing objects from real-time video. They call it Diminished Reality and it seems to work in a similar way to that of using a 'clone' brush in photoshop.
"The effect is achieved by an image synthesizer that reduces the image quality, removes the object, and then increases the image quality back up. This all happens within 40 milliseconds, fast enough that the viewer doesn't notice any delay."
This profoundly cool technique could quickly become useful for many a studied video creator, but perhaps unlikely useful for instant video making ? Merely watch how long it actually takes to remove unwanted objects in the picture plane. The electronic sleight of hand erasure and repair is superior to the physical time it must take to notice, select, draw a circle around and repair the image space of the unwanted thing ?
The electro-pop sound-bed pushing us excitedly through this digital sleight of hand video effect is Synth harmony by Cassiopeia.
