Real-time Video Disinformation

slaytanic killer writes "Stalin-like realtime filtering of live video has recently been demoed. This article on Tech Review analyzes the myriad uses of this technology, from disappearing Nancy Kerrigans (shadows, ice & all), to dynamic product insertions of Win98 in 'Frasier.' Each frame rendered in less than 1/30th of a second, regardless of motion or changing camera angles."

Comments

nothing is real.

[Niac]

Welcome to the wonderful world of being unable to verify the authenticity of anything. You cannot prove that the inserted content is actually false, so how is it any different from /being/ the real content? It's not. :)

Welcome to a brave new world. :P

Re:nothing is real.

[rgmoore]

Of course this is actually the way that things have always been. If you can't directly witness something yourself you are inherently trusting someone else to pass it on to you. You have no real knowledge of, to pick an example, whether there really was a Russian sub lost in the Barents Sea or whether it was an elaborate hoax. You're trusting that the people who bring you news are being honest and not showing you a bunch of crap.

Certainly this has always been the case in print media, hence the saying that you can't believe everything that you read. This invention doesn't really change anything, except that it makes the need for trust in your news deliverer more explicit- and in some well publicized cases so far showing how untrustworthy some of those news deliverers actually are.

Some Potential Uses

[Calamity Jane]

One of the better uses I've seen in the vein of the yellow down line used in American Football to show the down, is in swimming. They add a line that moves at the speed of the current world record- so if a swimmer stays in front of that line, they've broken the record.

It adds a lot of excitement, instead of watching the clock, you see the swimmers fingers just behind, or in front of the record. No confirmation, but I think they'll by using it in Sydney at the Olympics.

Obviously this tech could be be ported to a lot of other sports. A line in the sand for long / triple jump, a moving line for running track races, ghost cars in motor sport, etc. Adding ads is boring; adding value by showing records I think is very interesting- it effectively combines many events / races into one, if we can see the best result everyone's trying to beat.

MTV blurrs all logos on all shows...

[SethJohnson]

This brings up a question that has been pestering me for a couple years now.

It seems that every piece of video shot by or broadcast by MTV has the clothing logos (actually all logos) blurred out. This is especially prevalent in their dumb REAL WORLD tv show and the MAKING THE BAND show they have sold to ABC that plays on friday nights. Every single clothing article they're wearing will have the logos blurred out. When the kids walk into a room with posters on the walls, bang!, everything's blurred. Sometimes it's as if the people's faces are the only thing in focus. They'll even blurr the triple stripe pattern on a kid's addidas sweat pants.

I always thought this was strange considering no other networks do this. I interpreted it as a step MTV had taken in order to try to get money from companies to have their logos featured in the content.

I was talking to my roommate about this as we watched those poor, sodomized, teen boys get modelled into the next 'N Synch. He suggested that perhaps MTV has some clause in their advertising contracts that says no competing products will be featured during the shows (i.e. the dorks on Making the Band won't be shown wearing Addidas baseball caps right after a Nike commercial airs). Since the network has no idea what advertising is going to get picked up, they're just blurring everything that pops in camera.

Perhaps this is unrelated, but does anyone know why Beavis and Butthead were always wearing Metallica and AC/DC shirts on their show, but every piece of merchandizing (keyrings, posters, mugs, etc) had them wearing 'Deathrock' and 'Skullz' shirts? I suspect the merchandizing couldn't feature the logo because of trademark law while the show was considered 'fair use'... You'd think Metallica would be rushing to sign a licensing agreement with MTV in order to promote themselves via such a lucrative medium. Oh, whoops! I forgot. I'm talking about Metallica here. Never mind.

Seth

Re:does this surprise anyone?

[Kris_J]

There are many times when I know that the little "live" written in the corner is accurate; usually because another channel is also live at the scene. I suppose they could be collaborating, but I doubt it.

And this is also how you'll know if something is real or not. Imagine the joy that one station would feel if it caught another doctoring footage and the shit storm that would erupt. Checks, balances, redundancy and indepenant sources keep everyone honest (more or less)

So that's how they did it!

[Elvis Maximus]

This explains all those African-Americans at the Republican convention!

-

I think you're on to something here

[A nonymous Coward]

Right now I imagine it takes a fair amount of cpu power to do this, so only networks can afford it. However, in 5 years or so, it will probably be within reach of ordinary folk -- like you!

I imagine junkbuster will be much different then, zapping out product placement ads, replacing bilboards with your email summaries, and so on. I haven't thought about this much yet.

I will guess that this instant artificial product placement, like the network show mentioned, will be common place within a year or two, and annoy the heck out of consumers. However, it may reduce the number of distinct commercials as product placement becomes more common and as Tivo and Replay make it easier to ignore separate commericals. In 5 years, it will be the ordinary way to do things. Then -- Gnoview! It will start out primitive and for geeks, get better, then proprietary programs will jump in, and it will be a war between the new junkbuster trying to find ads to zap, and the producers trying to get ever more tricky with placement to make the ads harder for a program to spot.

This sounds like a lot of fun!

--

Use your powers for good, not evil.

[KFury]

All kidding aside (just for this post), just think of how handy this would be if it were in the hands of people other than censors and advertisers.

I would love if information specific to me was able to be incorporated into my everyday sensorium. I'd really like it if, for example:

• Instead of seeing a wendy's ad behind home plate, I saw an infographic of how many messages were in my inbox
  
• When someone opens their fridge on tv, I see what's in my fridge (ooh, I need more jolt!)
  
• When watching Tiger drive a ball down the fairway, I see text messages from friends trimmed into the green instead of the Nike Swoosh
  
• My portfolio scrolls at the bottom of the screen instead of whatever random stocks CNNfn highlights

Of course, this is just the beginning. Soon, commercials and then sitcoms would be prepared in VXML (video-extensible-markup-language) so that you could choose whatever theme you want and personalize the show to you.
For example:

• UPN Tuesday Theme: All black, all the time
  
• UPN Wednesday Theme: All sci-fi, all the time
  
• Simpson Animation Theme (animated La Femme Nikita with Lisa's spiky hair?)
  
• NBC YuppieVision

You get the picture...

but of course we won't see this, because the dollars are driven by the ads.

Kevin Fox

It all comes down to reputation

[Mr. Slippery]

When you can't verify the data itself, you've only got the reputation of the source to go on.

Soon it may not be the video itself, but the digital signature on it, that carries veracity and inspires trust. Maybe tamper-proof (or at least tamper-evident) digital video cameras will each have a unique private key and will sign the video with the reputation of the manufacturer; maybe the operator will provide his key to the camera and sign the data himself.

Digital signatures don't guarantee truth; but they stake the reputation of the signer (whether named or psudononymous) on the contents. In a data-driver world, your reputation as a source of good bits becomes vital. (Look at how excited peoplke get about /. karma, only a pale and distorted reflection of reputation.)