SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL ALIGNMENT OF VIDEO SEQUENCES

Some embodiments allow a video editor to spatially and temporally align two or more video sequences into a single video sequence. As used in this application, a video sequence is a set of images (e.g., a set of video frames or fields). A video sequence can be from any media, such as broadcast media or recording media (e.g., camera, film, DVD, etc.). Some embodiments are implemented in a video editing application that has a user selectable alignment operation, which when selected aligns two or more video sequences. In some embodiments, the alignment operation identifies a set of pixels in one image (i.e., a “first” image) of a first video sequence and another image (i.e., a “second” image) of a second video sequence. The alignment operation defines a motion function that describes the motion of the set of pixels between the first and second images. The operation then defines an objective function based on the motion function. The operation finds an optimal solution for the objective function. Based on the objective function, the operation identifies a transform, which it then applies to the first image in order to align the first image with the second image.