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Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Video "Perfection Tool"

This just in from the Hindu News Update Service:

Washington (IANS): You must have seen how cops in TV programmes zoom in on a security camera video to read a number plate or capture the face of a hold-up artist.

But in real life, enhancing this low-quality video to focus in on important clues hasn't been an easy task. Until now.

Leonid Yaroslavsky of Tel Aviv University (TAU) and colleagues have developed a new video "perfection tool" to help investigators enhance raw video images and identify suspects.

Commissioned by a defence-related company to improve what the naked eye cannot see, the tool can be used with live video or with recordings, in colour or black-and-white.

"This enhancement of resolution can be a critical factor in locating terrorists or identifying criminal suspects," said Yaroslavsky, a professor.

The new invention enhances the resolution of raw video images from security cameras, military binoculars, and standard personal-use video cameras, improving the quality in which the images were originally recorded or transmitted.

This can mean the difference between seeing trees blowing in the wind and finding a terrorist hiding in those trees.

Read the rest of the story by clicking here.

I wonder if they've used actual crime scene evidence, or the usual simulations. It gets a little tiring having people make sales calls and offer a product or service that simply doesn't work as advertised. It's also poisonous to the potential jury pool ... people read these press releases, and the news media picks them up and puts them on air ... and the juries expect that this stuff works - and every department has a copy. Just press the "P" button and your video becomes perfect. Hardly the case in real life. Maybe some day ...

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