Method for aligning different photo streams

• US 8,380,039 B2
• Filed: 11/09/2010
• Issued: 02/19/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 11/09/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Kodak Alaris Inc (KPP (no. 2) Trustees Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Eastman Kodak Company
• Inventors: Luo, Jiebo, Yang, Jianchao, Yu, Jie
• Primary Examiner(s): Tran, Thai
• Assistant Examiner(s): Park, Sunghyoun
• Application Number:
  US12/942,407
• Publication Number:
  US 20120114296A1
• Time in Patent Office: 833 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 386/224
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/772 the recording apparatus and the television camera being placed in the same enclosure
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/91 Television signal processing therefor
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 9/8205 involving the multiplexing of an additional signal and the colour video signal

Abstract

A method for organizing individual collections of images or videos captured for the same event by different cameras into a master collection, wherein each individual collection forms a media stream in chronological order. A processor for extracting image features for each image or video of the media stream of each collection; constructing a graph based on the extracted features to link the images or videos from the two media streams; finding on the graph at least a pair of images or videos, each from one of the two media streams, that corresponds to correlated captured content; aligning the remaining images or videos in response to the aligned pair so that the all images or videos from the two media streams are aligned over a common timeline; and producing a master stream in chronological order of the event over a common timeline by merging the aligned individual.

Claims

1. A method for aligning two individual collections of images or videos captured for the same event by two different cameras to produce a master stream, comprising:

(a) accessing the two individual collections of images or videos captured for the same event by two different cameras, wherein each individual collection is separate and forms a media stream in chronological order;

(b) extracting image features for each image or video of the media stream of each collection;

(c) constructing a sparse bipartite graph having weighted directed edge information based on the extracted features to link the images or videos from the two media streams;

(d) finding on the graph at least a pair of images or videos, each from one of the two media streams, that corresponds to correlated captured content by selecting pairs of images or videos that have significantly non-zero edge weights with respect to the other of the pair;

(e) aligning the remaining images or videos in response to the aligned pair so that the all images or videos from the two media streams are aligned over a common timeline by using max linkage selection to prune edges on the graph if a node has multiple edges linked to other nodes; and

(f) producing a master stream in chronological order of the event over a common timeline by merging the aligned individual streams; and

(g) storing, displaying or transmitting the master stream.

2. A method of claim 1, wherein step (a) further includes extracting geo-location tags or other textual tags associated to each image or video as additional features.

3. A method of claim 1, wherein the image features included color histogram, gist, or locality-constrained linear coding features.