Video Stabilization for Strict Real-Time Applications

Abstract

Offline or deferred solutions are frequently employed for high quality and reliable results in current video stabilization. However, neither of these solutions can be used for strict real-time applications. In this paper, we propose a practical and robust algorithm for real-time video stabilization. To achieve this, a novel and efficient motion model based on inter-frame homography estimation is proposed to represent the video motion. An important feature of the proposed motion model is that it updates at each frame input to reduce the accumulation errors caused by parallax or scene changes. We also propose a novel Kalman filter for the motion smoothing and a unique mosaic algorithm for the video completion. The proposed Kalman filter and mosaic algorithm enable the development of a practical real-time video stabilizer that not only produces steady video but also retains the full resolution of the original video. We verify the proposed algorithm through a broad range of video sequences that demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is computationally efficient while being able to robustly stabilize videos with various challenges.