[R] Video Analysis?

[spencerg]

Thanks to Kevin Middleton, Barry Bowlingson, M. Austenfeld: 


      The Hedrick reference is very interesting, digitizing a video of 
the flight of a moth.  This shows the state of the art AND describes 
"freely available MATLAB" code.  I've used Matlab before, but it would 
strain my budget right now to obtain it.  I've translated Matlab into R 
before, and I could do that again if needed.  First, however, I think I 
want to review the "Motion"  and "OpenCV" projects -- and possibly 
"ImageJ". 


      I want to convert videos into functional time series, more 
complicated than the "gait" data set in the "fda" package but perhaps 
not as demanding as Hendrick's the flight of a moth.  I want to measure 
dynamic bridge deflection midspan to see how that varies between spans 
and throughout a duty cycle.  I will ultimately want to measure 
millimeters from high resolution video if possible.  For a railroad 
bridge, a duty cycle will be the passing of a train, measuring both 
maximum deflection and oscillations.  For highway bridges, I want to be 
able to measure the changes from the morning rush hour to midday to the 
late afternoon rush hour -- and preferably also the mostly unloaded 
period between 2 and 3 AM.  I might be able to place corner reflectors 
on the bridge to mark the points I want to trace, though I'd prefer to 
be able to do it without that.  In any event, I'd like to create a 
functional time series.  I may also be able to get traffic counts, so I 
could model deflection as a function of traffic. 


      Thanks again to Middleton, Bowlingson, and Austenfeld. 


      Best Wishes,
      Spencer


Barry Rowlingson wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 1:07 AM, spencerg<spencer.graves at prodsyse.com> wrote:
>   
>>     What software exists for digitizing video to quantify the motion of
>> specific features in the image?  I might be willing to use something that's
>> NOT in R, though I'd prefer something in R (or at least with an R
>> intereface).
>>     
>
>  The 'Motion' project seems to do quite a bit:
> http://www.lavrsen.dk/foswiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHome
>
>  Specifically it will capture frames from a video device, detect
> movement, and write jpeg or mpeg files when it detects movement.
>
>  You can control it via http commands (which you can send from R) or
> it can start external commands on events (such as starting to detect
> motion) - these commands could trigger things in R.
>
>  Motion is GPL licensed which means you can take the code and do stuff
> with it - it might be possible to link R directly to the underlying
> motion detection algorithms.
>
>  So what's left for R to do? Or do you want to use it to develop new
> motion detection algorithms?
>
> Barry
>
>   


-- 
Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Operating Officer
Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
751 Emerson Ct.
San José, CA 95126
ph:  408-655-4567