The Visual Microphone: Passive Recovery of Sound from Video

Abe Davis's Research · 1.9M views · 2014-08-04 · 4:32

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Overview

MIT researchers show that sound can be recovered from silent video by analyzing tiny vibrations in objects such as a potato chip bag. It works even with consumer cameras by using rolling shutter.

On Hacker News

HN commenters cite it as the classic demonstration of audio recovery from video in surveillance and privacy discussions.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2015–2026

Topics

Information theory & signal processing Computer vision, speech & NLP Privacy, surveillance & cybercrime

What people said

eesmith · 2017-12 · Recommendation
"security cameras outside of stores" would be in public areas, yes? The Lifehacker link you pointed to says "Generally speaking, you have the right to record video in all public spaces without need of consent." Now for the fun part - it can be possible to extract audio from video, by careful processing of the small motions the sound induced in objects in the frame. See [VIDEO] . High-speed camera is best, but at the end they show how a regular consumer-level camera can also be used.
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spyder · 2026-02 · Reference
with a high speed camera any vibrating reflective object like a potato chips bag can become a microphone: [VIDEO]
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bbbobbb · 2020-07 · Reference
Here similar experiment, 6 years ago: [VIDEO] If you think that actual government agency cannot do even more easily with better equipment in 2020 you're kidding yourself.
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Sources

Video by Abe Davis's Research, played through YouTube.

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