This work addresses the NHK challenge that aims at automatic recognition of beautiful scenes in broadcast programs. We propose a method that can be used to automatically extract beautiful scenes from videos and rank the scenes in terms of beauty. In particular, we introduce cinemagraphs as an alternative manner for presenting beautiful scenes, and a notion of beauty based on the presence of interesting motions. The method is fully automatic, requires no training phase, and produces beautiful scene cinemagraphs as by-products.

A cinemagraph is a new type of medium that infuses a static image with the dynamics of one particular region. It is in many ways intermediate between a photograph and a video, and has a number of attractive potential applications, such as the creation of dynamic scenes for games and interactive environments. However, creating cinemagraphs is time consuming and requires certain level of proficiency on photo editing techniques. In this paper, we present a fully automatic approach that creates cinemagraphs from video sequences. Specifically, we view cinemagraph construction as a constrained optimization problem that seeks a sub-volume in video with the maximum cumulative flow fields. The problem can be efficiently solved by a branch and-bound search scheme. A user survey is conducted to understand user preferences and demonstrate the performance of the proposed approach. The findings of this study should provide information for various design choices for an easy and versatile authoring tool for cinemagraphs.

A cinemagraph is a new type of medium that infuses a static image with the dynamics of one or a few particular regions. It is in many ways intermediate between a photograph and a video, and provides a simple, yet expressive way to mix static and dynamic elements from a video clip. However, the process of creating cinemagraphs is usually tedious for end users and requires serious photo editing skills. In this demonstration we show a tool that creates cinemagraphs in a fully automatic manner. The technique should enable new features such as "intelligent cinemagraph mode" for digital cameras that provides an alternative method to capture the moment.