

HighlightCam (YC S09) Releases Video Summarization API - mjtokelly
http://code.google.com/p/highlightcam-api/

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systemtrigger
It's fast. I tried a 17MB flv, chose 10% summary and got the response in
1min4sec. Screen: <http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1704650/camapi.png>

It filters the boring moments well. The Animals and YouTube ZeitGeist examples
opened my eyes.

Just for fun I tried to stump it with a video I had personally edited. See
before and after: <http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1704650/hlcamtest.html>. Pretty
good result, all things considered.

Time to plug my own editing startup: <http://videothink.com>. Host any video
file and I will _personally_ cut all the boring moments and serve you the
highlight movie. The site is very minimal now but it works.

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dzlobin
This is a really cool product, yet not something I would have imagined there
being a startup for. Regardless, great job guys and good luck!

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ALee
Now I finally know what to do with all of my old videos filled with lots of
crap. No more lengthy crappy videos.

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catch23
Yeah, funnel all those boring family reunion vacation VHS tapes in there.
Though I'm not sure if their algorithm will be smart enough to get all the
exciting bits since our camera man has a shaky hand and they probably use some
kind of motion detection.

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mjtokelly
We actually just improved the algorithm to address exactly that scenario:

[http://blog.highlightcam.com/post/176798199/highlighting-
now...](http://blog.highlightcam.com/post/176798199/highlighting-now-works-
with-moving-cameras)

Camera motion is no longer considered "interesting" unless there's other
motion against the static background. Works especially well with jittery
cameras and panning security cameras.

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jsdalton
Your debug page is showing: <http://highlightcam.com/about/>

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mjtokelly
Fixed--thanks!

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rams
What are the other YC companies that have released code under a open source /
free software license ?

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wheels
Note that this is just sample code to connect to HighlightCam's webservices
API.

I think Objective-J is one of the more notable YC-spawned open source
thingers:

<http://objective-j.org/>

Virtualmin is also a pretty big contribution:

<http://www.virtualmin.com/download>

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sh1mmer
I love the concept, but watching the example videos I kinda wish they'd
implemented a transition in there. Some of videos were really jarring moving
from "interesting" to "interesting" states. A small audio/visual fade out and
then in again would help a lot.

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fnid
Looks neat, but with all that javascript, I can't watch the videos or even see
the youtube page, so even though I'd like to earn more, I can't.

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catch23
You must be running IE, the only browser with outdated javascript abilities.

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fnid
Was using Opera. Tried in Firefox too. Neither worked. If the hyperlinks were
actually hyperlinks, then it'd work.

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anateus
Links are not mere links when they need to perform certain programmatic side-
effects, so having them be just regular links wouldn't work.

I am interested in the bug you are experiencing. Could you email me at
support@hlcam.com with a more detailed description?

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fnid
I guess here, it's the definition of need. Do you need to track your users
every movement more than you need them to learn about your product?

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delackner
Looking at the youtube zeitgeist page you have, most of the videos seem
insanely shortened. What is a more reasonable percentage choice to get just
the highlights without feeling like you are talking to a meth-head?

~~~
mjtokelly
With the API, you can choose any desired length of the summarized video, up to
30%. We think of the YouTube summaries as "trailer length", but we might make
them a bit longer by default in the future.

