Free-viewpoint Video for Interactive Entertainment Production

The goal of this proposal is to achieve broadcast quality free viewpoint video of outdoor sports events such as football or athletics. This research is a collaboration project lead by BBC R&D, under the DTI Technology Programme, which brings together extensive experience in broadcast production, visual reconstruction, videoanalysis and rendering. The project will deliver and evaluate free-viewpoint video technology for broadcast production of action replays for live sports and demonstrate the potential of this technology for interactive visualisation of sports events on a home platform. The principal scientific and technological objectives for the University of Surrey, to be supported by EPSRC and DTI respectively, are: - To develop algorithms for free-viewpoint video of live sports events with broadcast video quality (EPSRC). - To demonstrate interactive free-viewpoint rendering on a consumer games platform (DTI).Recent research by the investigators has demonstrated for the first time studio-based production of freeviewpoint video of moving people with a visual quality comparable to captured video using multiple widebaseline static cameras. The challenge of the proposed research is to develop robust computer vision and image-based rendering algorithms to enable free-viewpoint rendering in uncontrolled outdoor environments with changing illumination.