SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CALIBRATING MULTIPLE CAMERAS WITHOUT EMPLOYING A PATTERN BY INTER-IMAGE HOMOGRAPHY

Interactive multi-view video presents new types of video capture systems, video formats, video compression algorithms, and services. Many video cameras are allocated to capture an event from various related locations and directions. The captured videos are compressed in control PCs and are sent to a server in real-time. Users can subscribe to a new type of service that allows users to connect to the servers and receive multi-view videos interactively. In one embodiment of the invention, an automatic pattern-free calibration tool is employed to calibrate the multiple cameras. In contrast with a pattern-based method which uses the correspondences between image points and pattern points, the pattern-free calibration method is based on the correspondences between image points from different views.