Patent ID: 7729422

Claim:
A method for masking a foreground portion from a background portion of a digital video, the method comprising: receiving an input defining an initial border region that includes a border between a foreground portion and a background portion of an initial digital image, the initial digital image being one of a sequence of digital images that define a digital video, the initial border region further including only a part of the foreground portion and only a part of the background portion, the border consisting of pixels that include contributions from the foreground portion and the background portion, the input including an inside path and an outside path; automatically generating, based on the initial border region, a border region for another digital image of the sequence of digital images, the automatically generated border region including the border in the other digital image, only a part of the foreground portion, and only a part of the background portion, wherein automatically generating a border region for another digital image comprises: identifying an edge path for the initial border region, the edge path indicating edges of the foreground portion in the initial digital image, identifying an edge path for the automatically generated border region, the edge path indicating edges of the foreground portion in the other digital image, determining an edge path transformation between the initial digital image and the other digital image, and applying the edge path transformation to the inside path and the outside path in the initial digital image in order to generate a border region in the other digital image, and wherein generating a border region is performed by one or more processors; and using the initial and automatically generated border regions for masking the foreground portion from the background portion in the digital video.