Generating Video From Sequential Photographs

I browse through a lot of photographs on the internet, scouring places like flickr and so on, and I often come across streams of photographs that have been taken in quick succession. So, I got the idea into my head to see what would happen if you tried to make a video of these images. I'm not going to say the results here are amazing, but given the right type of photographs, taken under the right circumstances, the results can be quite pleasing. Skip to the third video if you want to see the best example.



I'm using VirtualDub for all the video editing, plus two filters to achieve the resultant video. I've already blogged about the second part of the editing process, the frame interpolation between photographs. The new part to the process involves Gunnar Thalin's Deshaker plugin which does a really nice job on steadying each frame relative to each other. The plugin has a lot of options and if you know what you're doing, even the most choppy video can be tamed.



In the three examples, the order of the video is as so: First the photographs are played back to back at 5fps. Then the final result result is played, also at 5fps. Following that there are the resultant videos after each process: raw, stabilised, cropped, side-by-side comparison. The last video works the best, as the models movements aren't so dramatic from photograph to photograph. I've increased the length and frame rate in the side-by-side comparison in in the seond and third videos to help see the results. Notice the extreme morphing in the second video. Concentrate more on the overall smoothness to the video, rather than the transition in poses of the models. More advanced software and user-defined morphing points would alleviate a lot of the weird transitions.



Personally, what I see this useful for, is making video from screen captures. I tend to make a lot of screen captures when watching live streams of things (TWiT, Eurosport, RTÉ, etc.) which I sometimes make into gif animations or video (for example). With the videos in particular, interpolating the frames I miss with the screen grabs would make the videos run much smoother. I tend to shy away from video capture because you end up with a lot of crap you don't want, plus taking stills is a lot more fun :)

All photographic credit goes to cosfit [flickr], who's photographs not only were of invaluable use here, but also helped inspire the post too.