Bret,
That is a pretty broad question. People have obviously been
manipulating video (real-time: VJ, non-real-time: mashup/remix) for
quite a while. But perhaps you mean programmatic video manipulation?
As far as real-time programmatic manipulation, you have things like
augmented reality, which lots of smart people are thinking about.
There are a few good toolkits out there like ARToolkit that make it
pretty easy to get into.
In terms of non-real-time (pre-recorded) programmatic video
manipulation, obviously all digital video editing is programmatic on
some level, but opening up the playing field to let people code up
their own filters is exciting to me. Think about what Processing did
for dataviz/interactive installations.
It's interesting because of the amount of pre-recorded video that is
out there on the web. In order to navigate and engage critically with
all of this video, people need as many tools as possible, including
programmatic tools.
FFMPEG+HTML5 also introduces new possibilities for streaming modified
video into a webpage. Something like the Perpetual Art Machine.
Real-time algorithmic video mashup.
Sorry -- this is a bit all over the place. I am definitely interested
to hear what other people think, though! Thanks for getting the
conversation started, Bret.
-Jeff
--
Jeffrey Crouse
phone: 917-472-9693
cell: 646-246-5999
http://www.jeffcrouse.info