Presentation of geo-referenced videos with Google Earth

Abstract

Geo-tagging is becoming increasingly common as location information is associated with various data that is collected from a variety of sources. In the field of media, images and most recently videos, can be automatically tagged with the geographic position of the camera. Geographic location pro-vides an interesting means of browsing through, and "drilling into," large video repositories. At the same time complementary efforts are underway to create so-called mirror-worlds - large-scale environments that are essentially detailed computer-models of our three-dimensional real world. However, these mirror worlds are for the most part static (for example they include buildings and trees). Here we describe our efforts to bring together these two paradigms by enabling Google Earth (and similar tools) to come to life with videos that are geographically and perspectively correctly placed as "viewports" inside the world. In essence this reflects the next step in the evolution of mirror worlds and maps with (panoramic) still images towards a three-dimensional, dynamic environment.