Patent Document ID: 8854457
Application ID: 13319202
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A computer based camerawork method for autonomous production of an edited video from multiple video streams captured by a plurality of fixed and/or motorized cameras distributed around a scene of interest, that selects, based on a known location of a set of objects-of-interest and as a function of time, sequences of optimal viewpoints to fit a display resolution and user preferences, and for smoothing these sequences of optimal viewpoints for a continuous and graceful story-telling, the camerawork method comprising: selecting, for each envisioned camera location and/or position, a field of view obtained by: either cropping an image captured by a fixed camera, thereby defining image cropping parameters, or selecting pan-tilt-zoom parameters for a virtual or motorized camera, wherein, as part of said field of view selection, objects-of-interest are included and the field of view is selected based on joint processing of the positions of the multiple objects-of-interest that have been detected, and wherein the selection of the field of view is done in a way that balances completeness and closeness metrics as a function of individual user preferences, wherein completeness counts a number of objects-of-interest that are included and visible within the displayed viewpoint, and closeness measures a number of pixels that are available to describe the objects-of-interest, and wherein said user preferences define a set of parameters that are used to tune the trade-off between completeness and closeness, and autonomously building the edited video by selecting and concatenating video segments provided by one or more individual cameras, wherein the building is done in a way that balances completeness and closeness metrics along the time, while smoothing out the sequence of said cropping and/or pan-tilt-zoom parameters associated to concatenated segments, wherein the smoothing process is implemented based on a linear or non-linear low-pass temporal filter mechanism, and the relative importance of each camera location is tuned according to user preference.