AI-assisted slow-mo

Super Slomo. © Nvidia.

To obtain quality slow motion in a 24 fps video, you need to film at a rate of 48 fps. And to capture split-second events like the bursting of a balloon, you will need thousands of frames per second using expensive, specialized equipment. This is why Nvidia created a new, deep learning-based AI able to create high-quality slow-motion footage based on a standard 30 fps video. The resulting footage seems to have been filmed at much higher speeds. Researchers trained the AI using over 11,000 videos of sports and everyday life shot at 240 frames per second. This massive archive allowed the AI to learn how to accurately interpolate between images to produce the missing shots for slow-mo, slowing the action by a factor of 8 (240/30, or 12.5% of original speed). The researchers explained the usefulness of their method: “While it is possible to take 240-frame-per-second videos with a cell phone, recording everything at high frame rates is impractical, as it requires large memories and is power-intensive for mobile devices.”

⇨ PetaPixel, “NVIDIA’s AI can turn normal video into high-quality slow motion.”