In just few years, the Internet has revolutionized the traditional movie and entertainment industries, originally conceived as a “lay back” experiences: video streaming services allow watching videos anywhere on any device, and increasingly more people watch video content on their mobile computers and phones, sometimes simultaneously with other tasks. An even more recent emergence of virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) technologies makes many people in the industry believe that the way future users will be consuming video content will change dramatically, offering a huge market potential.
VideoPlus takes such capabilities to the next level, implementing a close-to-market system that serves as a “uniform resource identifier” for video content. We implemented a novel framework, relying on video fingerprinting, to synchronize spatio-temporal metadata with any video content, without being limited to a specific video source or distribution channel. A user wearing AR glasses with our application looking at a movie will see an augmented reality layer displaying interactive video annotations, such as customised subtitles and details about the movie being watched. Mobile devices such as phones or tablets can also transform into secondary displays to improve the watching experience with additional related information.
