Uncut Aerial Video via a Single Sketch

Abstract

Nowadays UAV filming is getting popular, more and more stunning aerial videos appearing online. Nonetheless, making a good uncut aerial video with only one-long-shot for the large-scale outdoor scenes is still quite challenging, no many eye-catching pieces available yet. It requires users to have both consummate drone controlling skill and good perception of filming aesthetics. If totally manual, the user has to simultaneously adjust the drone position and the mounted camera orientation during the whole flyby while trying to keep all operation changes executed smoothly. Recent research has proposed a number of planning tools for automatic or semi-automatic aerial videography, however, most requires rather complex user inputs and heavy computations. In this paper, we propose a user-friendly system designed to simplify the input and automatically generate continuous camera moves to capture compelling aerial videos that users prefer to see without any post cutting or editing. Assume a rough 2.5D scene model that includes all the regions of interest are available, users are only required to casually draw a single sketch on the 2D map. Our system will analyze this rough sketch input, compute the corresponding quality views in 3D safe flying zone, and then create a globally optimal camera trajectory passing through regions of user interest via solving a combinatorial problem. At end, we optimize the drone flying speed locally to make the resulting aerial videos more visually pleasing.