July 2004 - August 2005
Course: Special project
Software: C++
Developed by: The Magicbot Group, which is an international research
project between LIACS Media Lab and Helios Technologies
People: Michael Lew (Project Manager/Design), Bart Thomee (Lead Video Browser
Interface Programmer), Ernst Lindoorn (Video Browser Interface and Frame Grabber)
and Roger Fujii (Video Player, Frame Grabbing, Video Info)
Description
Built specifically for movie enthousiasts, MagicVideoBrowser offers a highly intuitive
interface, shown in Figure 1, that allows its users an easy and effective way of
navigating one's computer to browse or search for video files. In this application,
video files are represented in a truly visual way as opposed to text. If you feel
annoyed about the way that Microsoft Windows Explorer in thumbnail mode displays
movies, then our program is absolutely meant for you.
Figure 1. User interface
Video representation
Every video file is represented by a filmstrip of thumbnails taken from carefully
selected scenes, so in one glance it is clear what kind of movie you're looking
at, see for instance Figure 2. The general approach is to use pictorial and audio
content based methods integrated with artificial intelligence to learn which frames
or visualizations would make excellent video summarization thumbnails. Besides showing
the contents of the movie, one can also instantly start playing the video file from
any scene that is showing in the filmstrip, simply by double-clicking the thumbnail.
Figure 2. Filmstrip of the movie 'House of Flying Daggers'
One of our primary features is the open ability for another programmer or scientist to insert custom algorithms for selecting the frames or creating the video visualization. By default, the filmstrip contains snapshots that are taken evenly spaced throughout the movie and are displayed in a linear fashion, as you can see in the filmstrip above. Two alternative frame selection algorithms, motion detection and skin detection, have been included and example filmstrips are shown in Figures 3 and 4.
Figure 3. Linear filmstrip using motion detection
Figure 4. Linear filmstrip using skin detection
Instead of displaying the thumbnails in a linear fashion, an alternative video visualisation algorithm, called mosaic, has also been provided. As you can see in Figure 5, not only is it possible to totally change the layout of the filmstrip, but is it also possible to add lots of features to the filmstrip, such as a button that takes the user to a web page showing details about the movie.
Figure 5. Mosaic filmstrip
These provided frame selection and video visualisation algorithms can serve as a starting point for users who are interested in writing their own custom algorithms.
In addition to the aforementioned customizations there is another modifiable aspect of MagicVideoBrowser: the interface. By creating your own theme you can tweak the interface to your own liking. An extra theme, called colorful, has been provided to give the interested user a starting point for theme development.
Future developments
For the next release we would like to include the following items. However, active
development is on hold at the moment.
- good interface to imbd.com and tvtome.com
- video sharing
- playlists
- improved user interface with customizable icons and themes
Download
Grab the 0.91 alpha release from here. It
doesn't need to be installed. Just unzip it to any folder and you're ready to go.
As it is in a perpetual alpha state and nowadays outdated, we cannot guarantee that
it'll work absolutely perfectly.
Publications
The MagicVideoBrowser was used for the experiments described in the MM2004 paper.