Domestic Surveillance: stills from video

[David Honig]

At 09:26 PM 10/9/01 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
>On Tue, 9 Oct 2001, Dynamite Bob wrote:
>
>> [Reformatted for legibility.  Please take the few moments required to
>> ensure materials submitted are readable.  KMSelf]
>> 
>>
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-000080591oct09.story?co
ll=la%2Dnews%2Da%5Fsection
>> 
>> Still images can be derived from many video frames
>> with better resolution than you think.
>
>It's actually pretty standard.
>
>My 15 year old Amiga Video Toaster uses several frames to generate each
>still.
>
>It's common practive in astronomy to 'stack' multiple images in order to
>bring out detail. They can sometimes stack quite a few frames, 25+

I think the point is that the source frames were moving.  REquiring 
serious correlation to stack the right frames.  Quite different from
an earth-motion-compensated tracking telescope stacking frames.

If you are filming a nonmoving object you can get very large S/N by
accumulating frames.  If the object is moving its much harder --esp
if moving in 3D.  I once did some research programming for MD/researchers who
film Xray movies of clogged hearts (cineangiography at Cedar Sinai '90-93), 
who found better recognition of problems if you fixate the feature of
interest.  
Doing so automatically is nontrivial.
Similarly with the work described, e.g., Yo-yo cranking on the fiddle.





But your Toaster experience is correct.