Microsoft makes cool stills from lousy video

C|Net | at | by Mike

Ever wish you could get a decent still image from that so-so video clip you took on your digital camera?

That ability may not be too far away. At Thursday's TechFair on Microsoft's campus here, researcher Neel Joshi showed several cool approaches of using short video clips and burst-mode photography to create some pretty nifty pictures and panoramas.

In one example, Joshi used a hazy view of Mount Ranier and tracked the motion of the atmosphere to take the haze away and create an image that was far sharper than what was visible with the naked eye. In another example, he showed how a wobbly video of Microsoft's Building 99 could be turned into a surprisingly sharp panorama.