DimP changes the way you navigate videos with image manipulation
by Brad Linder May 23rd 2008
If you'd asked us yesterday if there was anything wrong with the typical fast forward, rewind, and scrollbar buttons included in most video players, we would have said no. But that would have been before we saw DimP, a new video player that offers a unique way to navigate a video timeline - through direct image maniuplation.
Here's how it works. Instead of sliding that big scrollbar on the bottom of the video player (which you can use if you really feel like it), you can hover your mouse over various images on the screen. Now say you want to see whether Tracy Morgan is flipping off the camera by tracing the motions his hands make in the shot above. Just click on his hand, wait for a little green line to show you the motion his hand makes through the screen, and slowly drag your cursor back and forth along that line. The entire video will then rewind and fast forward as you drag your mouse.
The effect is pretty awesome. But there is a downside. In order for DimP to effectively track the motions made my various objects in an image, it needs to process the video. And that can take a very long time if you have large, high resolution videos with a lot of objects. It will work with pretty much any AVI video, but you might have to wait a few days for it to process all the frames. If you just want to check the program out, DimP ships with a handful of short videos that you can play with. DimP is currently only available for Windows.
You can check out a demo video of DimP in action after the jump.
[via TechCrunch]
