VFX Artists DEBUNK CSi 'ENHANCE' Effects

THIS EPISODE ► Wren and Niko debunk some classic photo enhancement scenes from Hollywood shows and movies. Can modern technology even compare?

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[iseriver]

I love the simpons joke where Barts on a computer, says 'zoom in and enhance' and Lisa just shrugs and pushes barts head closer to the screen.

[maxpelletier]

There was a French canadian show where they parody this. From security footage, they zoomed in a client's sweat drop, and now had a 360 view of the store, and zoomed toward the door where the suspect was exiting, then zoomed in his hand, he was holding a credit card, then zoomed in to read the guy's name. But that CSI eye reflection tops it all because it was intended to be serious.

[JoelGustafsson]

I have had better results with Topaz Video Enhance AI, because that does not only use the one pixel, but takes into account how it changes over time. It's a bit like image stacking.

[AaronBacon_]

The trick is that the cameras just take 8K photos and they only have 1 team member that knows where the Zoom button is.

[GuyWithAnAmazingHat]

You guys should make a CSI video where the characters try to enhance images with the most ridiculous results

[buddha]

A tv show that really took the whole enhance trope to the extreme was one episode of Red Dwarf, where they were zooming and enhaceing through reflections in reflections several times over and each time was just as clear and crisp as the first.

[TheRealGuywithoutaMustache]

The technology in CSI is simply advanced alien technology that humanity hasn’t even come close to replicating yet.

[StRoRo]

Several years ago in the UK a driver was charged for speeding caught by a camera. They used computer algorithm to read the plate and that was submitted as evidence. The defence asked for a copy of the original picture where the plate was completely unreadable. The defence argued the evidence was generated by a computer algorithm and who can say how accurate it was.
The defence won.

[matthewwright]

I love how they always have the tech furiously click-clacking away at the keyboard for these enhance sequences, as if every calculation by the computer required a key press

[sabelch]

There was a case I remember reading about where the investigator had a blurry image of a license plate but he also had precise locations of the lights and the camera (it was at night) and geometry for the car and street. So he recreated the scene on a computer and rendered it many, many times. Each time he used a different license plate number trying to match the pixels in the blurry original with the pixels in the blurry render. He ended up with a few matching license plate numbers (fewer than 10 I think), which was enough to find the car and solve the case. IIRC this was the first time this technique was used.

Seems like you guys are well qualified to do something similar.

[jesterlampoon-tj]

Y'all should do "Sound Designers React!"

Like: How they made the T-Rex or Godzilla roar; How they make body sounds for creatures that don't even exist; Even the subtle ways they have to add basic clothing, movement, and walking sounds into animated films.

You know those punching sounds in old action movies? WHAT IS THAT?

[Spikeba]

You did a good job demonstrating how predictive AI should not be court admissible. It is the equivalent to an artist's rendition from a blurry image.

[MelangeToastCrunch]

I'd like to imagine the CSI crew just has access to an advanced neural net with centuries of training, just vibing underneath their building. Catching criminals is the only way to satisfy its bloodlust

[tayzonday]

The Klingon “Enhance” blew up the Enterprise D in “Star Trek: Generations” and I was like “If Klingons built computers; they’d be like Ataris”

[outofdarts]

Enhance! Great video. I’m actually blown away by how much you’re all able to do. I remember using genuine fractals ten years ago, it’s come a long ways with AI.

[dancovich]

The most impressive thing isn't the enhancement, but the fact the investigator needs to tell the technician to enhance. I mean, if the algorithm always work why even present the blurred image? The image/video app should just enhance by default when zooming in

[MattStryker]

As a graphics artist at a TV station, I want to say THANK YOU for doing this video! Cops bring video to us all the time, and my producers are always saying, "just zoom in and enhance this"

[thomaskaldahl]

One could argue that the CSi "Enhance" feature exists because the team has huge arrays of sensors lodged in every crevice of everywhere in the world, and the Enhance feature simply loads in data from those sensors and displays it in a way that is consistent with the viewing angle of the footage, or in some cases, completely inconsistent with the viewing angle for a better view.

[Notacet]

The mark ruffalo thing could benefit from some temporal solver. You know, combining data from 30 frames instead of one. Is there any AI-solvers that could handle that?

[peterehowell]

I used to work in this area, so here's some insight: The rule of thumb is that any image clarification needs to be performed in a way that can be reproduced by a third party using the same tools. and by "reproduced" I mean each step in the process needs to produce identical md5 or sha hash values. Some people may be using AI, but I wouldn't touch that stuff.