With so many first-person cameras available in the market today, such as head-mounted GoPros and Google Glass, many people have been creating videos of their travels. Because of the head-mounted nature of these videos, the final product will often be quite shaky, especially if you plan on shortening it down into a pleasing time-lapse.
Microsoft has been working hard at a solution: an algorithm that turns shaky time-lapse videos into a hyperlapse video. Hyperlapse is a term used to describe time-lapse videos that are extremely smooth, often created using a special rig or careful software stabilization. With head-mounted cameras, traditional software stabilization isn't enough to create hyperlapse footage.
The algorithm to create hyperlapse videos uses a combination of 3D reconstructions, stitching and blending. This makes each frame in the video a composite of multiple other frames, which does reduce quality, but delivers an amazingly smooth result that easily justifies the effort.
The video above shows a comparison between original footage and hyperlapse videos constructed using Microsoft's algorithm. The research team behind the project has another video on their website that gives a more technical overview of how the algorithm works, alongside a full technical paper.
Microsoft is hoping to package their algorithm into a Windows app, which would certainly be a useful and cool addition to a video enthusiast's tools.
