Project History
I once used a program that would take multiple images from a computer
flat bed scanner and average them to eliminate some of the CCD
generated noise in the image. A flat bed scanner works very good for
this technique. As long as you make all the scans without lifting the
cover each pixel should be over the same spot on the paper. The
differnce in color value for this spot is the random noise. The idea
is that the noise will not fall on the same pixel for each scan and by
averaging the images you get a higher quality final image.
Trying the same technique for a VideoCamera
Obviously for this to work both the camera and the subject must be
stationary, as well as the lighting conditions must not change. I wrote
a program that would read a list of ppm formatted images average them
and then spit out an image. Click on each image to see the full 640x480
image or view all of them Full Sized.
Single frame
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Maximum Light |
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Same Light as Above |
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Less Light |
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Averaged
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8 frames averaged |
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30 frames averaged |
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47 frames averaged |
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Averaging images can clean up Video Camera images
I was surprised at how clear the images came out after being used to
the image quality that comes out of that camera. It sure beats the
X10 camera I have, but after seeing the these images I have a better
appreciation for why home video equiptment doesn't compare to the
quality shown on tv. Naturally if you want good quality still images
go buy yourself a descent still digital camera and you'll do better
than what I've shown here, but it was a fun project anyway.
Hardware used
The Video camera is a Sony Camera that is a few years old, it uses
(analog) 8mm tapes. The tv capture card is a Pinnacle PCTV Pro tuner
card that uses the Bt878 chipset. xawtv was used to capture the images.
Source is available.
The averating software was designed and written on Linux.
Download Directory
ppmaverage-1.1.tar.gz