Interactive video and television viewers should have the power to control their viewing position. To realize this, we introduce the concept of immersive video, which employs computer vision and computer graphics technologies to provide viewers of live events a sense of total immersion by providing the viewer with a "virtual camera". Immersive video uses multiple videos of an event, captured from different perspectives, to generate a full 3D digital video of that event. While replaying this 3D digital movie, interactive viewers are able to explore the scene continuously from any perspective. This is accomplished by combining an a priori static model with a dynamic model that is created by assimilating dynamic information from each video stream into a comprehensive three dimensional environment model. We formalize the concept of immersive video, describe the architecture of our current implementation, and illustrate immersive video in staged karate demonstrations and basketball games. In its full realization, immersive video will be a paradigm shift in visual communication which will revolutionize television and video media, and will become an integral part of future telepresence and virtual reality systems.
['Saied Moezzi', 'Arun Katkere', 'Don Y. Kuramura', 'Ramesh Jain']
Immersive video