Patent ID: 7657060

Claim:
A method for styling vides video utilizing a processor and a memory, comprising: performing a spatio-temporal segmentation analysis on the video to identify three dimensional volumes of contiguous pixels having a similar color; receiving an interactive user input identifying a group of the three dimensional volumes of contiguous pixels, wherein the inactive user input comprises outlining a plurality of the three dimensional volumes of contiguous pixels, wherein the outlining comprises a user manually drawing loop boundaries that physically encircle the three dimensional volumes of contiguous pixels, the three dimensional volumes of contiguous pixels extending forward and backward in time, the outlining being performed on a number of keyframes of the video, the number of keyframes being fewer than a total number of frames of the video, and additional three dimensional volumes of contiguous pixels on frames of the video other than keyframes are identified by determining a relationship of the additional three dimensional volumes of contiguous pixels to the three dimensional volumes of contiguous pixels outlined on the keyframes; and identifying the group of three dimensional volumes of contiguous pixels as a single semantic region; deriving a set of two-dimensional edge sheets that represent the surface of the single three-dimensional semantic region, the edge sheets being derived from constituent surface representations of the three-dimensional semantic region, the constituent surface representations being annotated with measurable properties, the edge sheets being derived based on a value of the measurable properties, wherein the edge sheets are sliced at a frame time to extract a curved line configured to be rendered with the stylized video, and associating the edge sheets with the single three-dimensional semantic region, wherein a thickness of the edge sheets is determined based on a user-input parameter in combination with criteria associated with the single three-dimensional semantic region, the criteria comprising a position of the edge sheet relative to an arclength of the edge sheet.