Interactive image capture, marketing and distribution
Automated systems and methods for capturing digital images of a customer with multiple high-definition video cameras mounted in a venue such as a stadium, interactively communicating with venue customers to receive customer requests for images and information regarding customer locations in the venue and in response identify camera images containing the requested images and pixel groups therein containing images requested by customers, processing the requests to generate preview and send to customers for approval and ordering, and generating and sending final images in response to purchase requests and calculating and automatically applying charges to customers and third parties for promotional material sent to customers and making payments to third parties having rights in image content sent to customers. Variations of embodiments are suitable for venues such as a museum, a garden, a zoo, a religious institution, a theme park, or any other venue where imaging is possible and practical, or in a defined time period, such as a trip or vacation. The systems and methods can be essentially fully automated, using automated cameras and essentially only electronic communications between a customer and a computerized central facility, or can include a human representative or contractor for some of the operations. The souvenir can include other customer-related elements, such as “stock” images, composited images that include the customer or customer-related people or objects, and text and sound.
1. An automated system configured to create customized pictorial souvenirs of customers' visits at a venue, comprising:
multiple, high-definition, video cameras having fields of view covering respective areas in the venue each including a multiplicity of locations for customers and each operating in a video mode over selected multi-frame time intervals to output respective sequences of frames of camera output images;
a computer system having image storage facilities and associated with the cameras and configured to receive and store the sequences of frames of camera output images;
a communication facility configured to receive, from customer devices, customer requests for images of customers and convey the requests to the computer system, and to receive preview images of customers and final images of customers from the computer system and convey the preview and final images to customer devices as directed by the computer system;
the computer system being further configured to identify locations of customers and respond to customer requests for images of the respective customers by selecting camera output images from the storage facilities that include pixel groups associated with the requested images of customers, and to identify the pixel groups in the respective camera output images;
wherein the identified pixel groups of at least some of the camera output images are subsets of the pixels of the respective images and cover less than the respective fields of view of the images;
the computer system being further configured to generate the requested images of customers by applying image processing to the selected camera output images to generate the requested images of customers from the identified pixel groups;
the computer system being further configured to generate preview images by degrading requested images, and said communication system being further configured to send the preview images to the customer devices associated with the respective requested images and to receive image purchase information from those customer devices and convey the image purchase information to the computer system;
the computer system being further configured to respond to the image purchase information to generate, from respective requested images, and send to customer devices final images that are formatted as pictorial souvenirs of customers' visits and have higher quality, including resolution or apparent smoothness, than the respective preview images; and
wherein said computer system is further configured to respond to customer request by cropping and/or zooming processing of at least some of the requested images by carrying out an entirely electronically magnification of only portions of images, including by interpolation of pixel values.
2. The automated system of claim 1 wherein the customer requests for images comprise requests for multi-frame video clips, and wherein the computer system is configured to send the requested video clips to the respective customer devices.
3. The automated system of claim 2 wherein the computer system is configured to send preview images comprising the requested video clips, and to receive from selected customer devices versions of the video clips that have been edited on the respective customer devices, and to include the edited clips in the respective pictorial souvenirs.
4. The automated system of claim 1 wherein the computer system is configured to receive from respective customer devices requests for images of customers generated at least in part by tapping symbols on touch screens of those customer devices.
5. The automated system of claim 1 wherein at least some of the cameras are wide view cameras with fields of view covering respective overlapping fixed areas of the venue.
6. The automated system of claim 1 further including cameras with zooming and/or pointing facilities operating under control of the computer system.
7. The automated system of claim 6 in which the computer system is configured to respond to customer requests for images that include zooming in and/or out to generate images that include a customer or a customer group as well as wider fields of view.
8. The automated system of claim 1 wherein the computer system is configured to form composite images of customers with other images in forming the preview and final images.
9. The automated system of claim 1 wherein the computer system is configured to respond to image editing requests received from customer devices via the communication facility to edit the final images according to the editing requests.
10. A method of creating customized pictorial souvenirs of customers' visits at a venue, comprising:
imaging respective fixed areas in the venue from respective angles with respective high-definition cameras that are at fixed positions and operate in video mode over selected time intervals to provide respective camera multi-frame camera output images;
storing the camera output images in a computer-controlled storage facility;
computer-processing customer requests sent wirelessly by customer devices to thereby identify locations of customers, automatically selecting images from the storage facility that include pixel groups associated with respective customer requests, and automatically identifying through said computer-processing the pixel groups and generating therefrom requested images by cropping and/or zooming image processing;
wherein the identified pixel groups of at least some of the camera output images are subsets of the pixels of the respective images and cover less than the respective fields of view of the images;
generating preview images by computer-processing the generated requested images to degrade them, sending the preview images to respective customer devices, and receiving image purchase information from customer devices;
responding to image purchase information to generate, from respective requested images and through computer-processing, and send to customer devices, final images that are formatted as pictorial souvenirs of customers' visits and are not degraded as are the respective preview images; and
wherein said cropping and/or zooming of at least some of the requested images comprises image processing in which only portions of respective images selected from the storage facilities are entirely electronically magnified including by interpolation of pixel values.
11. The method of claim 10 wherein the customer requests comprise requests for multi-frame video clips, and wherein one or more of the final images comprise multi-frame video clips wirelessly transmitted to customer devices.
12. The method of claim 10 wherein at least a part of some of the customer requests comprise information generated by tapping symbols on touch screens of customer devices.
13. A computer program product stored in a non-transitory form in computer-readable media and comprising instructions that when loaded into and executed by a computer system cause the computer system to carry out the steps of:
receiving images from multiple high-definition cameras that image respective areas in a venue from respective angles and operate in video mode over selected time intervals to provide respective multi-frame camera output images;
storing the camera output images in a computer-controlled storage facility;
computer-processing customer requests to thereby identify locations of customers in the venue, selecting images from the storage facilities that include pixel groups associated with respective customer requests, and identifying through said computer-processing the pixel groups and generating therefrom requested images of customers by cropping and/or zooming electronic image processing;
wherein the identified pixel groups of at least some of the camera output images are subsets of the pixels of the respective images and cover less than the respective fields of view of the images;
generating preview images by computer-processing requested images of customers to degrade those images, sending the preview images to respective customer devices, and receiving image purchase information from customer devices; and
responding to image purchase information to generate final images from respective requested images through computer-processing, and to wirelessly send the final images to customer devices, wherein the final images are not degraded as are the respective preview images; and
wherein said cropping and/or zooming of at least some of the requested images comprises image processing in which only portions of respective images selected from the storage facilities are entirely electronically magnified, including by interpolation of pixel values.