The "Salient Still" is a technique developed by the News In the Future Consortium here at Media Lab for creating high-resolution, variable-aspect ratio stills from video that give an idea of the temporal qualities of a scene. Although the computation is automated, there are many aspects of the process that must be set and tweaked by hand, making the creation of Salient Stills an art that requires skill and patience.
Below is some of the students' work. To appreciate the constraints on the authors fully, read The Salient Stills Assignment. On each student's home page you may find their design journal or leave comments if you wish.