In sports broadcasts, networks consisting of pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras usually exhibit very wide baselines, making standard matching techniques for camera calibration very hard to apply. If, additionally, there is a lack of texture, finding corresponding image regions becomes almost impossible. However, such networks are often set up to observe dynamic scenes on a ground plane. Corresponding image trajectories produced by moving objects need to fulfill specific geometric constraints, which can be leveraged for camera calibration. We present a method which combines image trajectory matching with the self-calibration of rotating and zooming cameras, effectively reducing the remaining degrees of freedom in the matching stage to a 2D similarity transformation. Additionally, lines on the ground plane are used to improve the calibration. In the end, all extrinsic and intrinsic camera parameters are refined in a final bundle adjustment. The proposed algorithm was evaluated both qualitatively and quantitatively on four different soccer sequences.

Real-world camera networks are often characterized by very wide baselines covering a wide range of viewpoints. We describe a method not only calibrating each camera sequence added to the system automatically, but also taking advantage of multi-view correspondences to make the entire calibration framework more robust. Novel camera sequences can be seamlessly integrated into the system at any time, adding to the robustness of future computations. One of the challenges consists in establishing correspondences between cameras. Initializing a bag of features from a calibrated frame, correspondences between cameras are established in a two-step procedure. First, affine invariant features of camera sequences are warped into a common coordinate frame and a coarse matching is obtained between the collected features and the incrementally built and updated bag of features. This allows us to warp images to a common view. Second, scale invariant features are extracted from the warped images. This leads to both more numerous and more accurate correspondences. Finally, the parameters are optimized in a bundle adjustment. Adding the feature descriptors and the optimized 3D positions to the bag of features, we obtain a feature-based scene abstraction, allowing for the calibration of novel sequences and the correction of drift in single-view calibration tracking. We demonstrate that our approach can deal with wide baselines. Novel sequences can seamlessly be integrated in the calibration framework.

We present an algorithm designed for navigating around a performance that was filmed as a "casual" multi-view video collection: real-world footage captured on hand held cameras by a few audience members. The objective is to easily navigate in 3D, generating a video-based rendering (VBR) of a performance filmed with widely separated cameras. Casually filmed events are especially challenging because they yield footage with complicated backgrounds and camera motion. Such challenging conditions preclude the use of most algorithms that depend on correlation-based stereo or 3D shape-from-silhouettes. Our algorithm builds on the concepts developed for the exploration of photo-collections of empty scenes. Interactive performer-specific view-interpolation is now possible through innovations in interactive rendering and offline-matting relating to i) modeling the foreground subject as video-sprites on billboards, ii) modeling the background geometry with adaptive view-dependent textures, and iii) view interpolation that follows a performer. The billboards are embedded in a simple but realistic reconstruction of the environment. The reconstructed environment provides very effective visual cues for spatial navigation as the user transitions between viewpoints. The prototype is tested on footage from several challenging events, and demonstrates the editorial utility of the whole system and the particular value of our new inter-billboard optimization.