Optical Image Stabilization, or OIS, is used to counteract some of the disturbances caused by moving your camera or smartphone while taking photos or recording video. It works by physically moving and rotating the camera lens by a few degrees according to information it receives from the device’s sensors.

Different companies use different names for this technology. Nokia were the first to produce the first smartphone OIS sensor for their Lumia 920 phone. Today, nearly all high-end smartphones use Optical Image Stabilization for photos and videos.

Our world consists of three dimensions - breadth, width, and height - and the word freedom refers to free movement in these three dimensions. In mathematics and engineering, we usually denote these three dimensions by x, y, and z.

By the word move, we mean both changing location by moving along an axis through space - known as translation, but also rotating about an axis while still remaining at the same coordinates. Consider how you would say you are moving when you are turning around, even though you’re standing on the same spot.

In all real-time video analysis, especially in Vidhance, all operations are time critical. Video frames arrive at a steady rate and need to be processed in real time before the next frame arrives. Every millisecond counts.

Complex real-time video enhancement algorithms require work to be done on both the CPU (Central Processing Unit) and the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) to achieve the highest performance. This is due to the fact that these algorithms depend on both sequential and parallel operations.

High-quality video files still consume a relatively large amount of storage space. With stabilized and enhanced video, the small unnecessary changes from frame to frame that otherwise occur in recorded video are minimized. This allows video compression algorithms to more easily minimize the file size and bandwidth required to store or transfer video files.

In turn, this improves communication with, and storage of, video in small devices with limited storage space - such as smartphones. At the same time, video quality is dramatically improved in live scenarios such as video conferencing tools, and all private video recordings.

Ever since video first started to be stored digitally, the problems with storage and bandwidth requirements arose. Today, with a lot of video streamed online and the skyrocketing use of video on smartphones, the problems have only become larger and will continue to entice engineers and mathematicians for the forseeable future.

In order to reduce the size of a video file we use a codec, which is short for compressor and decompressor. This concept is closely linked to compression. Codecs are not to be confused with the concept of container which contains all the information about the video file, including what codec is used. Common video codecs are H.264/MPEG-4, WMV (Windows Media Video) and VP8, while common container formats are AVI, MP4, and MKV (Matroska).