A team from
Google and the University of Washington have developed a fully automated way to
create time-lapse videos of popular tourist’s landmarks using images from
Flickr, Picasa and other sites. Here's how it works: first, the researchers
sorted some 86 million photos by geographic location, looking for widely
snapped landmarks. Next, the photos were ordered by date and warped so that all
had a matching viewpoint. Lastly, each photo was color-corrected to have a
similar appearance, resulting in uniform time-lapse videos.
The videos
aren't just breathtaking, but also illuminating. For instance, they show
glaciers receding, waterfalls evolving and skyscrapers sprouting, making them
useful tools for geologists or builders. The science that went into the
time-lapses is also interesting, as researchers combined various techniques in
warping, stabilization and color normalizing to make it work. Many sequences
contain over 1,000 images and took around six hours to render on a single
computer. The best part is that even though it's a fun form of crowd-sourcing,
it doesn't require participants to do anything but be tourists.
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