Patent ID: 8345956

Claim:
A computer-implemented, user-guided process for converting a two-dimensional (2D) video into a multi-view video, comprising using a computer to perform the following process actions: inputting the 2D video, wherein the 2D video comprises a sequence of frames; segmenting the inputted frames to generate a temporally consistent segmented 2D video comprising a sequence of segmented frames each segmented frame of which comprises a plurality of segments each segment of which encompasses one or more pixels; and generating the multi-view video, said generation comprising, employing user-guided operations to generate depth assignments for the segments associated with user-assigned regions of the segmented frames, wherein a user-assigned region is formed from a group of contiguous segments selected by the user, and the user selecting one or more regions of interest in particular segmented frames forming a sub-sequence of the segmented frames, said region selection comprising, (a) setting a first segmented frame in the sub-sequence to be a current frame, (b) the user selecting one or more groups of segments within the current frame that form the one or more regions of interest by roughly marking-out an interior of the regions of interest, (c) generating a bounding box around the selected groups of segments, (d) forward propagating the selected groups of segments through the sub-sequence of segmented frames by automatically selecting corresponding segments in subsequent segmented frames in the sub-sequence, (e) utilizing the selected groups of segments to generate an iterated graph cut segmentation of the current frame, (f) constructing a foreground color model for the selected groups of segments, (g) constructing a background color model for unselected segments residing within the bounding box, (h) optimizing the segmentation of the current frame using an iterative graph cut method, wherein the selected groups of segments are constrained as foreground, segments outside the bounding box are constrained as background, and iterations of the graph cut continue until convergence, and (i) whenever the current frame is not the last segmented frame in the sub-sequence, forward propagating the selected groups of segments and the bounding box to the next segmented frame in the sub-sequence, wherein particular segments are prevented from being propagated if they don't fit the foreground and background color models, setting the next segmented frame in the sub-sequence to be the current frame, and repeating actions (b)-(i).