Vi-Vikki-Vikki-Video...aw yeah!

I remember seeing this commercial and thinking how cool it would be to manipulate a video by dragging the objects contained within it. Manipulating real-life objects like the commercial simulates by reaching into it and dragging cars and people around seemed unrealistic (however difficult it is to convince some clients of that!), but objects in a video?...hmmm... and that is where some other shiny object caught my eye....and...what were we talking about?

Oh ya...direct manipulation of video. So it appears someone infinitely more focused than I has figured out how to actually do it. They call it DimP: A Direct Manipulation Video Player. By evaluating the motion of a video and mapping the paths of moving objects they are able to enable those objects to be used much like the scrub-bar typically found in video players. Check it out.