Help Is isolating voices in video possible?

[Android Question]

I was in China last week and picked up an P9 phone.

Someone from Huawei told me that if you take a video of a bunch of people talking (like at a party or dinner table for example) -- when you play it back, you can isolate what each person is saying by clicking on them in the video.

That is a great feature that I want to test, but I can't get it to work on my phone. What am I doing wrong? Is this a real feature?

Thank you!!!

 

[mikedt]

I've been in China for a long time, and never heard of such a feature on a Huawei, or any phone for that matter. Frankly that sounds like it might be bullshit or science fiction.

 

[psionandy]

Sort of... It sounds like something that they were demoing recently.

The trick is that not only was the video taken with a 360 degree camera, it was also recorded with a 360 array of microphones... So that when the video is played back in a VR headset, the directional sound syncs with the video playback.

 

[mikedt]

Yeh, that sounds plausible. So could be that someone at Huawei wasn't telling you the whole truth, because he was trying to sell you a phone. And to do this I think would require a battery of mics in 360 degree and multiple sound channels, in addition to the 360 degree VR camera.

 

[DaisyandRose]

Ya'll rock. Thank you for responding!

 

[svim]

I'm not even aware of technology like this available for computers that are capable of high res video and multi-channel audio, much less any smartphone. Sounds (pun intended) more like something from a Hollywood movie.
Audio pros have multi-track capable set-ups that run pretty sophisticated software, and while they can work with separate voices those are recordings made using different sessions or with separate microphones. The single, minimal quality microphones in our phones are hardly in that category, plus even if you could add multiple, external, self-powered microphones to your phone, the processing resources necessary to be able to record a video with synced, multi-track audio would drain a smartphone battery within minutes.