NIMA Motion Imagery Technology R&D Program Precision Video Geo-Registration
Difficult to register analog video stills to geo-referenced NTM imagery
- Manual matching of extracted video still frame is very labor intensive (1 hr)
Interim Solution: Analog video imbedded with minimal closed captioning metadata improves ability to geo-reference image
- Coarse geo-coordinates are imbedded at sensor ground station
- VWG published “Analog Closed Captioning (CC) Metadata” standards 3 years ago!
- USAF did not install until 1999 (Allied Force warfighter demands)
- Limited CC metadata greatly assists image matching (~5 minutes)
Change to all digital video (digital video sensor / embedded digital metadata) will make fully automatic geo-registration possible
- NIMA Motion Imagery Program (VWG) has been developing the worlds first all-digital, commercial-technology-based Metadata standards for past three years
- Commercial, due-process, SMPTE metadata standards ready for world-wide adoption (S. Long Chairman of SMPTE Metadata Committee)
- DoD R&D software available to facilitate semi-automatic geo-registration
- Missing piece of the puzzle has been sufficiently accurate (timely) geo-spatial coordinates imbedded with/from the sensor video stream
Motion Imagery R&D plan to deliver significant image quality improvements and prototype imbedded digital metadata systems