Microsoft's free ICE download now works its magic on video

If you haven’t already downloaded Microsoft's free Image Composite Editor (ICE) there's a new version that might give you another excuse to take a look.

We included ICE in our Big List of 97 Free Apps You Can't Do Without - it's free software which stitches together multiple images to create panaoramas. Nothing new there, in fact cameras can now do that for you.

ICE's drawcard is in dealing with big images - The video demo on Microsoft's site shows 200 or so images being dropped into the system. The software manages to piece them together in order, apparently without any help from the user.

The new version 1.4.3 includes a new feature - in Windows 7, you can use the software to turn video into panoramic images. This can produce results like this snowboarding "motion summary" shown here.

Perhaps more interesting though, is turning your video into a scene others can view in 360 via the Microsoft Photosynth site. Photosynth lets you take lots of photos of a scene, then lets Web viewers view the scene from different angles. Usually it's a bit like pulling forward pieces of a photo jigsaw (here's an example) - but by using ICE to stitch everything together seamlessly, the result is a bit like controlling a remote controlled camera and looking around the scene seamlessly.

A Photosynth image created from video footage (click to jump to the site)