The FotoInMotion (FiM) project, coordinated by professor Paula Viana of the School of Engineering, Polytechnic of Porto (ISEP), and researcher at the Institute of Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science (INESC TEC), was distinguished by the initiative European Commission's Innovation Radar, as an innovative project with high potential within the European Union.
In the current context of mass production of multimedia content, this project – aimed primarily at photojournalism, fashion and festivals, but easily adapted to other application scenarios – has developed a set of processes and tools that enable the automatic and smart transformation of a single photo into a high-quality video, with dynamic storytelling and branding effects.
The tool is available on desktop and mobile versions, allowing audio-visual professionals and the creative public in general to produce a video that tells a story suitable to the context in which the picture was captured – based on static content (photography). More specifically, this tool resorts to computer vision and artificial intelligence techniques, in order to transform a simple photograph into a video, sensitive to the acquisition content, the photograph’s context and the application scenario.
It’s important to point out that this accolade focused on the tasks and results of the project, under the responsibility of INESC TEC’s team of researchers, which enable the creation of different types of metadata relevant to the creative process, integrating different approaches and concepts. Moreover, the solution developed by INESC TEC generates information that allows people to create smart automatic animations, through movements (zoom in/out, pan/tilt) and effects (filters, 3D effects) that adapt to the content and context of the photographs.
For Paula Viana, project coordinator, this acknowledgment “emphasises the results achieved by the CTM team”, which also includes Teresa Andrade and Pedro Carvalho, as well as Luís Vilaça, Inês Teixeira, José Pedro Pinto and Tiago Costa.
The FotoInMotion project began in January 2018, under the motto “Repurposing and enriching images for immersive storytelling through smart digital tools”; it will end in December of 2020, and it is part of the Horizon 2020 community programme.
