Amazing technique for browsing video by direct manipulation [video] | Hacker News Reader

Amazing technique for browsing video by direct manipulation [video]

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21 pointspdubroy12 comments

That just rocks. Now combine this with multi-touch surface technology... Minority Report here we come!

Seriously, another example of cool new technology that actually catches your attention and makes you wonder how they did it.

Between what they're doing with music over at www.celemony.com, What Jeff Han is doing (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/65), and what Trevor Blackwell is doing at Anybots, I'm really starting to get excited about technology again!

It sure is better than when they told me the future had arrived and it was pet food by mail.

Not to take anything away from Jeff Han, because he's done some great work, but most of the techniques he demonstrates in that video were invented by other people. For example, the use of the pinch gesture for resizing was first published almost 20 years ago. Multi-touch interaction research has a long history, but since the techniques are only now coming to consumer devices, Jeff Han and Apple seem to be getting all the credit.

See http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html for a thorough review of multi-touch research.

Yeah, I don't think Trevor invented self balancing systems either but when someone does something so well it looks like magic, I think thats exciting. It gives me hope for the future and a renewed sense of "I can't wait to see what's next".

I guess you didn't see the end of the video. More examples of multi-touch performance animation: http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~tomer/store/papers/multifdemo.mo...

I don’t see why you guys think it’s amazing? They have just connected all objects in video to videos timeline – you can’t really change anything but just rewind and forward the video. Amazing for me would be if by moving one object in the video the end outcome would be different...

"They have just connected all objects in video to videos timeline"

The technology is awesome if it's powered by software that interprets what elements of a video constitute an object, and then connects those elements to a timeline in a single, automated swoop. I've assumed that's the case, but I could be completely wrong.

Whether they actually capture objects is unclear. You could get the same results by building the vector field of motion (pixelwise) and then detecting if the mouse moves along the vectors (fast forward) or against them (back). So, you aren’t "dragging" the car with your mouse - your mouse is simply following the path of the car.

I think where this technique really shines is when you don't have any idea when a particular object moved. Like in the parking lot example, you could just click and drag on an arbitrary car to immediately jump to the time when that car moved.

I really want to play with this, one of the main problems that I'm having is that if you don't know which direction the object was moving, say it was going up, and you're dragging down would it do anything?

And in one frame you could be holding on to something whilst in the next you're holding nothing... I guess we'll have to play with it to see how the interface works.

I kind of get the feeling that it will be like placing the OS X dock on the right or left side of your desktop, you instinctively want to resize by moving up or down, but you have to move left or right.

That's really impressive. It puts me to mind of that image resizing tool (http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/27/i-want-this-in-photosho...) in as far as it's an exciting way to work with an old, familiar medium.

TechCrunch covered the former tool, whose co-founder was eventually hired away by Adobe to build it into photoshop. Wonder if MA will pick up on this one...

More information about this system can be found here: http://www.aviz.fr/dimp/, including a longer video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib_g7F6WKAA) and paper from CHI 2008 (http://www.aviz.fr/dimp/dimp-chi08.pdf)

Also, does this remind anyone else of Donnie Darko? The way the trail of an object is "projected into the future".

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