The producers of the 1999 sci-fi martial-arts extravaganza The Matrix used elaborate and costly movie camera technology to circle around characters frozen mid-kung-fu kick. Such vertiginous visual effects can now be generated on the cheap from live images provided by stationary video cameras. But even more pertinent in the post-September 11 era, the package of video-processing and 3-D modeling technologies delivering these tricks promises to set a new standard for surveillance and security systems-and bring new meaning to the term "reality programming."

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