What does it do?

 

This is the default for motion. There are lots of things moving - the trees, grass and sea - and motion finds them all! As the wind blows, however, I get more and more detections so I have to raise the detection threshold to stop being swamped by false alarms. Unfortunately, if I raise the detection threshold too high then things will sneak past without being detected.

If you look at the motion image on the right, you will notice that although I am getting lots of detections they are all very small ones. So if I can remove these small detections, I can lower the detection threshold and then only snap the real motion.

 

For this image, I have applied the despeckle option, which has removed the small detections and only left the pigeon to be snapped.

Why not use a mask file?

A mask file can be used to block off parts of the image where motion is unwanted, but the mask needs to be aligned with the image. If I move the camera I need to generate a new mask file. With the despeckle patch, the algorithm ignores small movements wherever the camera is pointed. Also, if I tried to use a mask for this particular scene, there wouldn't be much of the image left, which is a pity as I get nice sunsets.

How do I use it?

The size and shape of the noise you don't want detected will vary from webcam to webcam and from application to application, so I tried to set up a general method for despeckle.

There are two basic structural elements:

These can be used as many times and in any order to achieve the despeckling you need. So, for instance, the square (red) structural element followed by the cross (green) structural element is specified by the option despeckle Ee and will produce this effect:

Repeatedly applying the cross will produce diamond shapes while the box will produce squares. You can use combinations of these to produce circles. Each time you use a structural element, you add or remove a layer of pixels from the outside of the detection.

Some examples

 

In this image I have used the option despeckle EedD to erode with the box structural element and then the cross structural element. This removes the small (noisy) detections, but also shrinks the real detection of me on a bike. I then use dilation to expand the detection back up to full size so the threshold is correct.

   

In the left hand image motion has correctly found the person walking in the rain, however there is some noise at the top of the image I would like to remove. Applying despeckle e removes nearly all of these noisy detections (click on the middle image to see the full size version). There are just one or two left so for completeness, I try despeckle eE to remove them all (right hand image).

   

In the left hand image, the sun has come out after rain and so motion thinks that there is a big change, however the image is very noisy, so lets see what despeckle can do. Applying despeckle ee to the middle image removes many of the detections, but since I have used the cross structural element twice I get diamond shaped holes (click on the middle image to see this).

If I use despeckle eE instead, which applies the cross and then the box structural element, I get much more circular holes appearing. (click on the right hand image to see this).

Alternatively, you might be a rainhunter and want to capture even the tiniest spot of rain. No problem, use despeckle Dd to emphasize the small dots.

   

This is a very windy day and a lot of things are being blown around. Without despeckle, motion is detecting over 200 events an hour, so I've sifted through the images and eventually found one of a car. Applying the cross structural element with despeckle e removes many detections, but also starts to open up a hole in the middles of the car. If I apply more erosions then the car will disappear along with everything else. So I fill in hole in the car with a dilate and then experiment with more erosions.

 

Finally, I apply despeckle edeEedDed and find just the car. The power of motion!

This is not a practical use of motion and despeckle, but it demonstrates how the erode and dilate options can be tuned to find just what you're looking for.