Virtual director technology for social video communication and live event broadcast production

This thesis investigates several aspects of Virtual Director technology, i.e. software capable of intelligent real-time selection of live media streams. It addresses several research questions in this interdisciplinary field with respect to how a generic Virtual Director framework can be constructed, and how its behavior can be modeled and formalized to realize professional applications with many parallel users within real-time constraints. Prototypes have been built for the applications of group videoconferencing and live event broadcast. The engine executes cinematic principles aiming to enhance the user experience. In group videoconferencing, a Virtual Director aims to support communication goals by selecting from multiple available streams, i.e. automating cuts between shots according to the communication situation. In event broadcast, it enables personalization by framing, animating and cutting virtual camera views as cropping from a high-resolution panorama. While the technical approach and framework has been evaluated in lab experiments, further evaluation involving potential users and cinematic professionals is ongoing.