Portable Multi-megapixel Camera with Real-Time Recording and Playback

Abstract

We are interested in the problem of automatically tracking football players, subject to the constraint that only one vantage point is available. Tracking algorithms benefit from seeing the entire playing field, as one does not have to worry about objects entering and leaving the field of view. However, the image of the entire field must be of sufficient resolution to allow each of the players to be identified automatically. To achieve this desired video data, several high definition video cameras are used to record a football match from a single vantage point. The cameras are oriented to cover the entire playing field, and their images combined to create a single high-resolution video feed. The user is able to pan and zoom in real-time within the unified video stream while it is playing. The system is achieved by distributing tasks across a network of computers and only processing data that will be visible to the user.