Fly-through viewpoint video system for multi-view soccer movie using viewpoint interpolation

This paper presents a novel method for virtual view generation that allows viewers to y through in a real soccer scene. A soccer match is captured by multiple cameras at a stadium and images of arbitrary viewpoints are synthesized by view-interpolation of two real camera images near the given viewpoint. In the proposed method, cameras do not need to be strongly calibrated, but epipolar geometry between the cameras is su cient for the view-interpolation. Therefore, it can easily be applied to a dynamic event even in a large space, because the e orts for camera calibration can be reduced. A soccer scene is classi ed into several regions and virtual view images are generated based on the epipolar geometry in each region. Superimposition of the images completes virtual views for the whole soccer scene. An application for y-through observation of a soccer match is introduced as well as the algorithm of the view-synthesis and experimental results.