Photography, Programming and Algorithms: Merging Multishot Motion Images

I was busy working on a few algorithms these days, so could not put posts on a regular basis. So what was the algorithm about? Recently I was watching the movie Matrix on TV, especially the scene where he dodges the bullets. It was excellent! In this particular scene multiple images of his will be seen at a single instance if time. I started thinking if this was possible with a regular camera using the multishot capability or long exposure kind of stuff. I also started searching for techniques that are currently available to create such an effect and came across one called "stroboscopic technique" where in flashes of light will be used to illuminate a moving object over a dark background. But this cannot be used in our day today life in the actual/real environment or surrounding. Also long exposures cannot create this sharp effect. So, at first I tried to capture my matrix kind of motion using the multishot capability in DCs (3fps using my Canon 350D) and merged them to get the above effect. It looked wonderful, but the draw back was that the camera was held static during the capture and so, did not require any special software to do the merge. I just used Matlab to get this thing done. But what I wanted is a far more flexible stuff. Assume I go to watch a motion sport; something like a 20m diving competition (in swimming). I would want to capture the motion of this person from the start to the end, till he drops off into water and merge the complete set of images into a single one. Why would I want this? Simply because it is a motion sport and so, to get its complete effect I need to capture a motion sequence of it; something like a video. But suppose I want a poster of his motion or some of his important moves along his dive path in a single frame; today there is nothing I can do! Single picture frames don't give me the complete story, so I am not interested in it. I cant get a poster from the video I have captured either. Simple image averaging and differencing can create such effects if and only if the camera remained static during the capture. But unfortunately I don't want to put an extra burden of carrying a tripod, on the person who wants to capture such a shot. This means that the software should be able to merge images with a little offset. Also I cant expect the person to have very stable hands which means the output images would have also undergone a little bit of rotation. The software should take care of even this case :( Memory comes at a cost, and to create a single motion shot we would have captured 10s of stills, 10s of motion shots would require 100s of stills, which will quickly fill up the memory. So I would want this to be an embedded compatible, in camera software; which means it should make use of very less resources (both memory and time). I tried my best to come up with a software which would closely match the above requirements. I do not know what other requirements you people might have. If it is something that will impress me and be practical, I will definitely try to incorporate it in the coming versions (this one will be alpha-- still!). The software will be out shortly for you to test and create some jazzy stuff. Multishot of your own stunts, your favorite sports, etc, etc. Let me see how creative you people can get!