Digital Effects for MSN Messenger Demo

This demo version of Digital Effects for MSN Messenger is for testing only. It is important to understand that this demo version will not reflect the stability of a shipped Microsoft product. You may encounter problems with this demo version that could possibly result in a loss of connectivity to the .NET Messenger Service. If you are having trouble using this demo version, please uninstall it by clicking Windows Start/Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs.

WARNING: This computer program is protected by copyright law and international treaties. Unauthorized duplication or distribution of this program, or any portion of it, may result in severe civil or criminal penalties, and will be prosecuted to the maximum extent possible under the law.

Download(DitigalEffectsInstall.zip)

1. Install

Download and run "setup.exe". The digital effects will be automatically enabled in your MSN Messenger after your machine is restarted. All versions (e.g., 7.5, 8.0, 8.5) of MSN Messenger are supported!

2. Start

When you start a video conversation with your friend, a "Digital Effect Setting" control panel will pop up. To enable digital effects, please follow these two steps:

1. First, help Digital Effects find your face. Make sure you are looking straight at the camera and your face appears upright in the video. You should be facing the camera directly (not looking left, right, up or down). Then, press the button "Locate Frontal Face" in the "Digital Effect Setting" control panel.
2. Select different digital effects in the control panel. There are two kinds of effects: image effects and 3D costume effects.
   • "Background blur" blurs the background to protect the privacy.
   • "Magic Lens" distorts your face.
   • "Fly Text" draws text flying from your mouth. You can type the text to appear in the edit control at the bottom of the control panel.
   • "Costume" attaches 3D virtual objects to your head.

You should repeat the above two steps whenever the appearance of the environment or your face changes.

(We also provided an offline version for your evaluation. Run it from Start->Digital Effects 1.0->Digital Effects offline tool 1.0.)

3. Uninstall

You can uninstall this demo by clicking Windows Start/Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs/Digital Effects for MSN Messenger.

Related publications:

Qiang Wang, Weiwei Zhang, Xiaoou Tang and Heung-Yeung Shum. Real-time Bayesian 3D-Pose Tracking. IEEE Tran. on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, 16(12), 1533-1541, 2006.

Jian Sun, Weiwei Zhang, Xiaoou Tang and Heung-Yeung Shum. Background Cut. 9th European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) 2006.

Please contact jiansun@microsoft.com andfyang@microsoft.com for any issues. You feedbacks are very important to us.