CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

In the last decade, the use of multimedia devices like personal digital assistants, mobile phones, etc. has dramatically increased. Improvement in their computational performance combined with a higher storage capability allows them to process large amounts of data. These devices, typically small and thin, usually have video acquisition capability. There is a large increase in application of video cameras in industrial and military fields and this is mainly due to two factors: the decrease in cost of both video cameras and processing hardware, and their higher processing power that has allowed using complex and efficient algorithms. Many of these applications use camera mounted on a hand held device or a mobile platform and this will result in video sequences are affected by unwanted shakes and jitters. Unstable video may result from the shaking of users hand while capturing the scene. The same problem arises in presence of cameras placed on moving supports like car, airplane etc. or fixed cameras operating outdoors where the atmospheric conditions like the wind and the vibrations produced by passing vehicles make the recorded video unstable. In this situation making a stable video is a very challenging task. Video stabilization technology is used to avoid visual quality loss by removing unwanted shakes and jitters of a video capturing device without influencing moving objects or intentional camera motion. This is particularly essential in handheld imaging devices which are more affected by shakes due to their smaller size. A stabilized video is defined as a motionless video where the camera motion is completely removed. Video stabilization techniques results in high visual quality and stable video footages.

1.1. Different Approaches to Video Stabilization

Video stabilization technique can be broadly classified into hardware based techniques and digital video stabilization techniques.

Hardware based video stabilization techniques may be either mechanical based approach, optical based approach or electronic based approach. In mechanical stabilization, camera motion is detected by gyroscopes. The gyroscopic wheels, occupying opposed axes to each other, spin with high speed and physically resist camera vibrations, acting like an invisible tripod. Once the camera motion is detected, the sensor is counter-moved to avoid vibrations and to obtain clear, steady images. Optical image stabilization, which has been developed after mechanical image stabilization, employs a prism or moveable lens assembly that variably adjusts the path length of the light as it travels through the cameras lens system. It is not suited for small camera modules embedded in mobile phones due to lack of compactness and also due to the associated cost. Electronic stabilization uses an electronic system to control the stabilization process. If the system detects through its sensors a camera shake, it responds by slightly moving the image so that it virtually remains in the same position on the image sensor. The digital video stabilization systems operate on the captured image data. It tries to smooth and compensate the undesired motion. Each frame of the video sequence is processed in order to remove the unwanted motion from the video sequence.

1.2 Digital Video Stabilization

Digital video stabilization is done in three steps. 1.2.1 Motion Estimation This step derives the parameters of the transform occurred between subsequent frames. Displacement of one frame to the next is defined by a horizontal translation, a vertical translation, and a rotation component. The task of this step is to find these three global motion parameters to which a new incoming frame must be subjected to fit as closely as possible to the previous frame.

1.2.2 Motion filtering

The estimated motion in the previous step may be due to the motion of an object in the scene or due to unwanted camera movements. This step in digital video stabilization discriminates intentional motion from unwanted motion.

Figure 1.1 Schematic representation of digital video stabilization technique 1.2.3 Image warping Stabilized image reconstructed through proper image warping. Geometric transformation to eliminate the unwanted camera motion is done to the current frame. Thus the frame is stabilized with respect to its reference frame. The missing data in the boarders are filled using the technique mosaicing or trimming.