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Is there a tool that I can use to extract a background from the frames of a video? I have a surveillance scene, but I do not have the original background image. I would prefer not to use Photoshop for this. Is there a GIMP plug in that can do this? I am able to split the video up into frame images if necessary.

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I wish to extract a good estimate of the background from the frames of the images. I know there are papers out there that describe the process. However, I can not seem to find a tool that can do this. – monksy Nov 19 '09 at 21:35
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3 Answers

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Of course this can be done, but it costs a little money. I know of no other alternative than using Ultimatte. Take a look at their site and software available. Starts at like $1,500 but it will get the job done.

www.ultimatte.com

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I appreciate the offer, however this was for an class project. I was looking for a free program. I'm quite suprised that I can't find anything for this.. The technique isn't that difficult and it was published a while ago. – monksy Dec 7 '09 at 0:46
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I think rather than photo shopping out a background which would be horrible and tedious (unless it is a solid magenta background lol). What you should be looking for is something closer to a dif for frames. There should be an ap that scans through the frames and finds what has/hasn't moved really and cut away the background.

Not that I know anything about video editing so I can't suggest an app. The idea of you manually cutting each frame seemed harsh though. I suppose even if you were to do it in photo shop you could take 2 frames do a dif yourself (layers options) and tweak it from there.

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Thats something simliar to what I'm looking for. – monksy Nov 19 '09 at 23:53
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A frame in a video is a whole picture. You can convert a frame to a .bmp image.

Just how exactly do you want to extract a background from the picture if not, for example, by cropping it out?

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I think the question is that he wants ONLY the background; not everything but. – Travis Nov 19 '09 at 21:41
I'm looking for a tool that will generate a background model based on most of the data in the video. I've seen the papers for it but I haven't seen any tools that allow you to do it. – monksy Dec 7 '09 at 0:44
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