Fun with Microsoft Research's I.C.E. and Photosynth and a video

First of all, let's get the video on here, to start this little experiment:

Then, after I'd made this video of what's basically a moving panorama of the scene outside today, as the storm cleared away, I wondered what might happen if I took this video and simply used drag-and-drop to drop it into the processing window of Microsoft Research's Image Composite Editor ('I.C.E.' for short) which accepts many separate images and turns those into one big or even huge image made of all the separate ones. At this point, I hadn't read all the specs on 'I.C.E.' you see, so I didn't know it's also designed to gobble up videos, separate them into their component images, and then re-assemble those for viewing as panoramas or navigable larger images, like this.....

So when I discovered that 'I.C.E.' can process a video as well as stills, I went one step further, and signed into Photosynth, which can take a project from the 'I.C.E.' program, and turn that into a 2D or 3D navigable composite which you can then upload to the web for others to enjoy. It looks something like this:

You can move it left or right, zoom in or out, and if it had more to it vertically, you could also move up or down in it. My original was a very simple one, but if I had shot it differently, such as both forward and backward, as well as up and down, then Photosynth and 'I.C.E.' could have turned it into a 3D image that could be viewed in detail using all the various controls. You can find the program for 'I.C.E.' by clicking here, and Photosynth by clicking here.