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March 20, 2008

Oddcast to Let You Put Your Face on a Movie Star’s

Mark Hendrickson

32 comments »

Just days after competitor Gizmoz announced more funding and AIM integration, Oddcast is previewing a new service called 3D Videostar that will let users import their faces into movie clips to replace those of movie stars.

There’s no word yet on when this service will be available, but Oddcast has provided us with a few sample videos to get a sense of what it’ll be like (they lose points in my book, though, for not even let us embed them - you’ll have to go here).

From looking at these samples alone, the results appear mixed. Some face swaps look quite good while others leave something to be desired. I assume Oddcast will license this technology to movie studios who want to use it as a viral marketing gimmick.

  • Sphere It

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Comments

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  1. Peter Harrington

    March 20th, 2008 at 12:34 am

    Seems rather pointless to me

  2. Jesus H Christ

    March 20th, 2008 at 12:56 am

    God if i was a vc i would invest all my billions into this great idea.

  3. Neo

    March 20th, 2008 at 1:18 am

    ‘the results look mixed’…no they don’t, the videos look absolutely amazing if they can do that with automatic algorithms and with minimal hand work.

  4. bigontech

    March 20th, 2008 at 1:22 am

    Yo Oddcast people, isn’t it a kind of a “Me Too”? It looks like a “Me Too” strategy that Oddcast wants to show the world that they are working on it.
    After JibJab (2D) and Gizmoz (3D) as Arrington wrote about few times and many others!
    http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....ids-do-it/

    As to the nice image above and QT videos you oddcast show, I must say, it shows nothing yet just some special effects anyone can do with high-end software - there are few anyone can by and use!
    The challenge is always the user experience - how easy will it be for me - the user to do it all by myself online! Hollywood had done it many times by people who work in ILM etc - I want to see how Oddcast enables users to do it. Is it simple? quick? automatic? scalable?
    The only company I saw that dose it simple on line in 3D is Gizmoz and JibJab offers a simple 2D version.

  5. Ran

    March 20th, 2008 at 1:24 am

    This technology is working in the movie biz for a while now. For the general public its nothing more then a facebook app

  6. NickeyD

    March 20th, 2008 at 1:55 am

    Nintendo should add this in Mii Channel.

  7. designspace

    March 20th, 2008 at 2:15 am

    OK big deal - so what? now you too say you do what Gizmoz and JibJab showed last year? dose it work online? for users? simple? Show us.
    I never gets it when companies only hint to you they do something and only show an image - just PR

  8. Lisa Miller

    March 20th, 2008 at 2:24 am

    Nice image above, however it shows nothing yet just some special effects anyone can do with high-end software.
    The challenge is always the user experience - how easy will it be for any user, like me to do by myself online! Is it simple? quick? automatic? scalable?
    Gizmoz showed they can let me do it in 3D online and JibJab offers a simple 2D version which works well.

  9. 113.com

    March 20th, 2008 at 3:06 am

    lol… :-D

  10. simon

    March 20th, 2008 at 4:51 am

    nice technology demo but pretty useless for most people. what would you do with it?

  11. anon-guy

    March 20th, 2008 at 5:12 am

    That the Va. Tech shooter?

  12. Matt

    March 20th, 2008 at 5:38 am

    What would you do with it? Are people asking this?

    How about GAMING? Every nerd on the interwebs tries to pretend to be a superhero in their game, but with this technology it would actually be them!

  13. Didi

    March 20th, 2008 at 6:38 am

    Amazing stuff. This has so many marketing applications. The guys at Oddcast don’t cease to surprise.

  14. Ghaus

    March 20th, 2008 at 7:01 am

    Holy Smoke! I will never risk my investment in this kind of stuff …

  15. shane

    March 20th, 2008 at 7:11 am

    seems pretty cool to me. for the end user, the ultimate in personalization. for brands, a chance to play in the UGM space while keeping some control. win-win

  16. EH

    March 20th, 2008 at 7:53 am

    Obviously they’re going for some kind of buyout, since Oddcast has been a streaming audio utility for some time now. They’d sure have trouble getting a trademark otherwise.

    Besides that, I doubt there’s anyway they’ve got the science down to do this automatically. I imagine they’re as automatic as Mahalo or the “speech-recognition” company I worked for in the late 90s that used minimum-wagers in Scotland to “verify” the automated output.

  17. EH

    March 20th, 2008 at 7:55 am

    Matt 10: Wouldn’t it be easier for a game to merely have a texture map for the in-game faces? You’d load an image of the front of your face and the game would apply it to the character. No AI necessary.

  18. BR

    March 20th, 2008 at 8:10 am

    In response to EH -

    Seems you’ve got Oddcast the company (who does 3D VideoStar) confused with Oddcast the product (put out by the company Oddsock).

    Oddcast the product is an audio streaming utility: http://www.oddsock.org/tools/oddcastv3/

    Oddcast the company builds web applications: http://www.oddcast.com

  19. Social Marketing Journal

    March 20th, 2008 at 8:27 am

    Everyone is saying it may be useless but there are plenty of entertaining applications on the web that are again, for entertainment only. Isn’t that a good portion of the web? You play around with it… maybe take some screen shots, have fun with it!

  20. Andy Freeman

    March 20th, 2008 at 8:34 am

    It’s unclear whether porn or gaming will be the biggest market.

    Another big opportunity is putting famous people into new situations. For example, “John Wayne” can now appear in Battlestar Galactica.

  21. Niraj

    March 20th, 2008 at 8:52 am

    I just saw an article about something similar a couple of weeks ago…you can put your face in the Thriller music video. Though that one lets you get the result as a YouTube video so you can embed it:

    http://www.realityprime.com/articles/thrilling

  22. Matt

    March 20th, 2008 at 9:10 am

    SWEEEEEEEET!!! That’s bad-ass right there.

  23. Greg

    March 20th, 2008 at 10:19 am

    Everything OddCast does is incredibly creepy and horrifying.

    Not that the tech behind it isn’t impressive, and I really respect them for it, but holy god do their avatars creep me out.

  24. dale

    March 20th, 2008 at 12:21 pm

    kool stuff I am going to try it out!

  25. Marius O

    March 20th, 2008 at 8:43 pm

    Add porn to the equation and imagine the possibilities…

  26. EH

    March 20th, 2008 at 10:52 pm

    BR: I was referring to “Oddcast the word.”

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