Interactive
Telecommunications Program, NYU 2000
Project Description:
This is a videoconferencing system that can connect up to twelve people across
the Internet. Each user has a camera
that is aimed towards them. The camera
digitizes an outline of that individual and relays it to the other people in
the conference. The camera captures the gesture and the general appearance of
the user without the intrusive image detail that many users dislike about ordinary
video conferencing systems that take the full video image. Using outlines has the advantage that they
can be overlaid on each other without obscuring the other. Instead of the usual split screen grid (as
seen, for example, in the opening credits of The Brady Bunch), this allows for
more interesting interfaces where users can express themselves with the placement
of their outline. Finally this type
of conferencing uses much less bandwidth and allows for more people to participate
and with better frame rates. Users can
therefore participate over slower connections. I have also worked on versions that allow
the level of detail to be adjusted from merely outlines to including internal
edges and to cartoon colorization.
Technical Notes:
I wrote the client or end-user software as a Java Applet using QuickTime for
the video digitization. I wrote the
UDP server as a Java application. NYU
is pursuing a patent on this idea.