Abstract:

We introduce the concept of a temporal Magic Lens, a novel interaction technique that supports querying and browsing for video data. Video data is available from an increasingly number of sources, and yet analyzing and processing it is still often a manual, tedious task. A Temporal Magic Lens is an interactive tool that combines spatial and temporal components of video, creating a unified mechanism for analyzing video data; it can be used for viewing real-time video data, as well as for browsing and searching archival data. In this paper, we define the Temporal Magic Lens concept and identify its four key components. We present a sample implementation for each component, and then describe two usage scenarios for a prototype surveillance application.