Time-lapse Mining from Internet Photos [SIGGRAPH 2015]

We introduce an approach for synthesizing time-lapse videos of
popular landmarks from large community photo collections. The
approach is completely automated and leverages the vast quantity
of photos available online. First, we cluster 86 million photos into
landmarks and popular viewpoints. Then, we sort the photos by
date and warp each photo onto a common viewpoint. Finally, we
stabilize the appearance of the sequence to compensate for lighting
effects and minimize flicker. Our resulting time-lapses show diverse
changes in the world’s most popular sites, like glaciers shrinking,
skyscrapers being constructed, and waterfalls changing course.
Project website: grail.cs.washin...

[@MaXGTS1]

The narrator's voice is great for relieving stress.

[@bigtank2185]

Whoever did the audio for this is NOT cut out for audio work. The speaker is too quiet, audio isn't normalized, frequent volume changes, low quality recording...

[@sleeknub]

This is incredible. The ability to watch scenes evolve over a long period of time has the potential to be very powerful.

[@NonExistingName]

The effort this must've taken... Incredible! It is true the audio wasn't the best, but I don't think that matters at all!

[@KirkMartinez]

Great to see my photos of Briksdalsbreen glacier used in the intro! Good work!

[@julesd]

This is an incredible time lapse technique

[@marvinkitfox3386]

Graphics 10/10 Sound 0.2/10

[@marvinkitfox3386]

+Marvin Kitfox P.S. I really love the scenes that include trees. Seeing a tree "swell" over the years is a very eye-opening, mind-expanding experience. You can *see* the growth!

[@FlimKlaus]

Hey Ricardo, that's a great work and I'm glad to see one off my picture. Best regard Klaus

[@WeBeYachting]

Nice video, thumbs up. Cheers from sunny Sint Maarten in the Caribbean.

[@KamiKaZantA]

I wish they either had better sound equipment, or a narrator that wasn't timid. I can barely hear what he is saying.

[@jsdigital]

This is incredible. Marvelous work.

[@SomeInfo-ib3wz]

The seasonal timelapses...looks like the mountains are breathing.

[@English_Lessons_Pre-Int_Interm]

That's an intriguing technology, scientists!

[@lollife1154]

I love nature, keep it up!

[@RicardoJunqueira]

Amazing technology! Great demo. The narration on the other hand, could be better.

[@adamrath7095]

The bull blew my mind, you guys wrote software that just takes mass amounts of internet pictures and shows how a popular statue imperceptibly moved over years.

[@crockettlauncher]

Someone should have told the guy doing the voiceover that he was supposed to stay in the booth the whole time instead of walking away while he was still talking.

[@williambirkin8733]

Una labor laboriosa y dedicada,¡buen trabajo!

[@wormball]

Так вот для чего миллионы людей все эти годы снимали одно и то же!

[@jeremys9283]

Sounds like a robot is presenting this video! This is a great job and very interresting.

[@Sebal007]

is it just me or is the audio f*cked up? Most of the time it's more some kind of mumbling than anything else :(

[@hanfei6871]

It's like a group of people's voice spliced and reverbed… sounds disgusting

[@zybch]

So low most of the time my speakers and PC volume at 100% still couldn't make it understandable.

[@AbsoluteApoorv]

This is great but how did you correct perspective of the photos clicked by users from different angles and superimposed them to create a time-lapse. Was this an automated algorithm ?

[@BinkieMcFartnuggets]

Thank you for not using any rectal prolapse photos. I know a lot of those are floating around on the internet these days.

[@JeremyReger]

I love the interweb....

[@ProfezorSnayp]

Try to speak to microphone next time you make a video.

[@nejuspesnejsi]

Wow. Such sound. Many understand.

[@Jesus-bc1hw]

Great work, gran trabajo!

[@barilj]

Thank you for this exceptionally nice channel! I found it really interesting.

[@chrispage3803]

this reminds me of the presentation by Blaise Aguera years ago when he presented photosynth at Ted Talks. Still worth watching today. I wonder if any of the photos from the 86 million taken here over lapped with the same mining technique used by those guys back then... if not i wonder if it could have helped with this project.

[@GammelFood]

Wow, ich bin begeistert. Die Idee ist der Hammer und eigentlich nur logisch, wenn man die ganzen Fotografen, besonders bei den weltweiten Sehenswürdigkeiten sieht. Echt cool gemacht. - Einen Like habt ihr dafür von mir und das Video share ich gleich mal in meinem Channel.

[@Crixxtachi868]

OK at first I thought this was really really cool... But then after a minute or so I realised that in the hands of skynet, this is really really terrifying.

[@q23main]

That is cool, and also valuable research material (i think).

[@TYNEPUNK]

Incredible, the results are too good to be true, Id love to get the code for this :)

[@mykolaklymyuk1177]

You can find Lviv at 03:37

[@alexmalyarchuk1723]

Mykola Klymyuk Видно, як старі іржаві дахи ремонтують і заміняють новим покриттям. Хоч якийсь пруф того, що щось робиться добре )

[@kusy]

Could you mine the progress of Gaudi's Sagrada Família in Barcelona, please? There is no shortage of tourists' photos, and many would love to see the progress of construction throughout the decades.

[@kassie2k4]

would be nice if this was turned into a service where you could upload a photo and it would find ones taken by others from that spot and give you a timelapse from those other public photos, but you could optionally select a subject like a person from your photo to remain constant across the timelapse, it would make for an interesting effect, perhaps you could also choose the timeframe for the timelapse if enough photos were available, like you could pick a season or a year and it would only include images that those categories

[@lovecooking73]

I love this video so much if you would like to see update time lapse video please write: Nature TimeLapse Video.

[@peteralbrecht3999]

the swiss guard is impressive!

[@pleiadesds2012]

This is all cool and all but your audio... recorded with microphone from 1975 telephone?

[@ewerybody]

Awesome technology! Thanks for sharing! You have a nice voice. I'd be nice if you'd could have a look at the level of the sound, comparing it to other, louder videos. Cheers!

[@abeskauaiphoto]

Fantastic!

[@bnw_eyestudio4161]

Thanks for the ideas

[@bobbyjoehenry797]

Wow, very cool.

[@ki6eki]

This shows how people take the same photos

[@jcynavarro]

Quite amazing..

[@JyrzStreams]

There's this voice whispering in my ear. It tells me to kill, but I ignore it. I ignore it, yet I feel it is right.

[@l-ours]

Internet regorge de millions de photos. Des chercheurs de Google ont trouvé le moyen de créer des videos en accéléré (time-lapse) automatiquement à partir de photos publiques d'un même lieu. Sur cette video d'exemples, on peut contempler l'érosion des roches sur une période de huit années, la construction ou la rénovation d'édifices ou encore l'impact du changement climatique sur les glaciers ou les lacs. Bel exemple de création participative autonome et automatique ! #technologies #google #création #crowdsourcing

[@marytravel5929]

Good creative time lapse photos, How you can collection all this photos?

[@DJMavis]

Am I the only person thinking that it's odd that these thousands of people taking the photos are using the same focal length, angle, elevation etc? These aren't just tourist snapshots, they're dedicated cameras for some reason, so this is simply making a timelapse by using someone else's effort, rather than doing the legwork yourself. Good work.

[@commisaro]

mavis cruet The images aren't as similar as the final product makes it look, they really are tourist snaps. The algorithm warps the images to match the viewpoint and focal length.

[@aaronholt3136]

Were are the people and traffic???

[@ChuckNORRlS]

If i didn't know this is a RL photos i will it's just some good video editing :) Quite the Software guys

[@TheOneWithTheManyZs]

That's really cool, but guys... Something went horribly wrong with the voiceover - was the microphon BEHIND the narrator at times? xD

[@SteveFrenchWoodNStuff]

No, it was up his ass.

[@GreatLordJason]

Very cool.

[@vibhupande]

does the system use geolocation data? besides coordinates, what other factors help in perspective matching?

[@letspretend_22]

How come most of the photographs in the timelapses only go to around 2011? Surely there are a lot more photos being taken nowadays then back in 2011 and before. Copyright issues?

[@bl4ck1911]

Ricardo, I see at 1:05 you have a lot of places in the map, do you have any timelapses for romania?

[@vitaliikravets2777]

Was shocked when recognized my home city! Lviv, Ukraine!

[@owrklch]

Could use normalized audio. The accent isn't trouble but the variance in the volume makes this very difficult to understand.

[@tmburns4]

This is a super cool project, but you guys need to work on a better presentation. Maybe find some filmmakers to help you make this a dynamic video that can go viral. Keep up the awesome work!

[@JaakkoRinne]

Next maybe work on technologies that will make low-quality, low-volume narration in KZbin videos audible.

[@Viplexify]

I wonder if google could make a time-lapse video of my own face as well, as it's growing older, if intended to.

[@JazzKeyboardist1]

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once?

[@dallaesvanhoosse8902]

how they are able to distinguish the photoshopped ones?

[@mtm81989]

I would love to have this software

[@adonis.]

Holy wow

[@alicecarback]

Now that is some cool data mining.

[@jch7807]

impressive yet very scary

[@jkrarchive]

You are able to create a stunning time-lapse out of photos from the internet but can't produce a video where you can understand one single word? Great project though!

[@DaimonWalker]

Just wondering if you could talk a little quieter and I can almost hear you ;)

[@romsthe]

Awesome imaging skills, but terrible audio. I guess you can't have it all. It was amazing though, MORE !

[@sickbastard151]

how can i be a computer scientists like you?

[@KFIUEJEJJDO]

WHAT!? I can't hear you. what did he say?

[@keramadohal]

Great job, guys! :-) I have only one question: Why the hell is the commentary so damn bad? I can't hear almost anything! -_-

[@juggaajerry]

Hong Kong!!

[@mathieulatin7981]

:O Awesome !

[@DinosaurFromFuture]

The interest of this video is inversely proportional to the boringness of the voice-over

[@CraigTalbert]

Woah.

[@GodsDesire]

R.I.P. headphone users

[@kubeek]

Where´s the subtitles?

[@Raven16691]

dudeyourreallyhardtoundertstand

[@PGGoyeneche]

What software you have made this?

[@motionsam]

magic

[@DipperDK]

Very very cool! But next video, please speak up :)

[@nefariou5]

What the hell happened to the audio? It's like it was recorded on a phone in a toilet.

[@adelarscheidt]

I can't understand what he says at 2:34

[@sam5941]

how about photo copy right?

Interesting video but I wish it was spoken a bit more clearly.

[@PashaDefragzor]

cool, but what for ?

[@Uttrediay]

Why the computer-generated voice? Surely it must be possible to find someone who can read English understandably.

[@tylersmyler]

this is really fucking interesting

[@TheAlex12392]

-.- First: All photos have exactly the same camera position... Second: Is there no ebb and flow at waterplaces? Result: Fake

[@TheBigBentley911]

Why are you whispering? Is this supposed to be a secret?

[@ChronoSquare]

next time you guys might want to turn up the volume on your commentary. Max volume & I can still hardly understand what you're saying.

[@BAP3221]

Why is he whispering?

[@FxSnRoK]

Can you please whisper more?

[@infirmux]

this is very interesting, but no offence - please assign someone that could speak a tad more comprehensibly :)

[@KathysSong]

And now once again with new audio - I'm sorry, but the audio quality is just... crap? And speak up and sloooooow down :)! I didn't understand a word :(

[@CinematicTechnologies]

Technology.

[@GregoryEvansRacing]

I CANT HEAR YOU SPEAK LOUDER

[@laughingoctopus8556]

I CAN'T HEAR SHIT

[@milkshake3243]

Laughing Octopus Unfortunately, shit can't actually be heard. You can literally smell, feel, see and even taste shit. But you can't hear it. Mysterious.

[@Viplexify]

Milkshake actually, it can be

[@milkshake3243]

can't*

[@oosamaaaa]

i want dubai