1. Introduction

Paper is an excellent display medium for photos because of its high resolution, ease of handling, and no power consumption. One obvious method of printing video on paper is the flip-book. However the effort required for constructing, distributing, and rendering video on flip-books is quite high. Also, the large amount of paper used for the construction of these books makes them impractical.

In this paper we describe a method for storing an entire media clip on paper. The method is based on encoding time-based media, such as video, in a still image format that is printable. The still image based representation is obtained by separating a time-based media object into two components: 2D reference information and auxiliary information. For example, if the media object is a video sequence, the reference information is a key frame and the auxiliary information is motion vectors. This is illustrated in Figure 1. A key frame from a video clip is already a 2D still image that is printable. Motion information, which is binary data, is encoded in a barcode format to obtain a still image representation. When these two representations, the key frame and the barcode, are combined, a complete 2D visual representation of the media object is obtained. This can be printed on paper to obtain a still image representation of the time-based media. The decoder on the client device captures this image representation, i.e., key frame and barcode, segments the key frame, decodes the motion information in the barcode, and constructs the video sequence by applying motion to the key frame. The barcode can also include additional binary information such as audio and animations.

Figure 1. Process of creating a self contained still image representation for video and playback without accessing a server.

Our experiments showed that it is possible to encode several seconds of video on paper without needing to access a server for playback. Such video clips can be used on greeting cards, children's books, and video albums. Since maintaining a video server is not required, users are able to playback video sequences as long as they have the physical paper and the decoder. Moreover, since the users must have the paper to access to the video, the system is inherently secure.