When Facebook held its annual F8 conference a few months ago there was a big overarching lean towards augmented reality (AR), with the company putting significant effort into the technology. As with any giant business, it does this through internal R&D or by acquiring another company. Recently it’s been revealed that Facebook has bought German startup Fayteq, which has developed software that can add or remove objects from videos, even if they’re live.
First reported by Deutsche Startups, Fayteq’s own website has shut down all sales of its products and services, simply listing a contact email address. Business Insider has now confirmed the sale.
Fayteq’s software is a plugin for video editors like Adobe After Effects, offering not only the ability add or remove tracked objects from videos, but also effects as needed. This may certainly prove useful to Facebook, not only for its standard or 360-degree videos but AR as well.
Revealing a bit more about the startup, Siegfried Vater, a business angel and partner of Fayteq,said that the startup offered “innovative technologies in the area of off-line and real-time video manipulation, removing the border between reality and fiction,” reports TechEu. As well as: “sophisticated solutions for digital product placement, i.e. insertion and replacement of advertisements, seamless object insertion in and removal from video streams as well as logo removal from video sequences”.
How Facebook plans on integrating Fayteq’s technology remains to be seen, when it does VRFocus will report back.