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I'm trying to create a video feed that will display a special effects rendition of a dance area on a nearby video board. Much like what many of you have probably seen in a children's museum. An example of what I'm trying to do can be seen here: http://exs.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/recollections/

I've been searching for hours, but as there isn't a specific search term I can think of, it's extremely frustrating. I would really appreciate it if someone can point me in the right direction or has another solution to how this can be done.

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I think most things like this tend to be specialty installations where the system and image processing is designed by the artist making it. The exact ways to approach it would depend on the particular type of effect you are trying to produce. It could be as simple as storing the last few frames and blending them together with an average that is weighted towards the last frame to give it a blur look or various other possible methods of effect.

At it's simplest, you might look at some of the simple effects stuff that some webcams make available, but I'd expect you'd need to do custom work for most of it. You could also look in to video jokey software that might have some components that could be used for this kind of thing, though I don't personally have a whole lot of experience in that particular arena, so the amount of help I can give is limited there.

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  • Thanks for taking the time to respond. That's what I'm starting to gather, that it's all custom. But I'm still a little surprised that there isn't some simple software out there that can do this. Basically all I'm searching for is some software that can recognize a persons outline (or any shape really) and then perform a special effect on that moving shape. 20 years ago it's hard to believe anyone could do this, but now with facial recognition software all over the place I'm amazed there isn't a commercial version of something like this.
    – Keith
    Commented Aug 5, 2013 at 19:32
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    @Keith - there are image processing libraries now that would make it far easier to implement, but it's still a special case that has no significant market. Just because it's possible for us to do something doesn't mean that it is a good investment of time and resources to make a user friendly way of doing something.
    – AJ Henderson ♦
    Commented Aug 5, 2013 at 20:16
  • I'm not much of a audio/video guy, but I'd appreciate any advice if you think this could be put together by a "weekend warrior". And I guess it's all dependent on what the actual time investment would be required for a professional product, but I actually think if this was a couple hundred dollar software package you would have a pretty big market in the nightlife industry.
    – Keith
    Commented Aug 5, 2013 at 21:13
  • VJ software would be the place to start, hopefully someone else can comment more on it though. Otherwise it is going to be programming oriented if VJ software can't handle your needs. Unfortunately, I've never personally worked with VJ software for more than about an hour per product that I've even seen, and that was years ago, so my knowledge in that space is practically zilch.
    – AJ Henderson ♦
    Commented Aug 5, 2013 at 21:59

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