Abe Davis: New video technology that reveals an object's hidden properties 

My favourite part of any good TED talk is when something so mind blowing is presented that the audience doesn't know how to respond. He mentions around 13:20 that the following tech is a few months old and then does magic. The reactions from earlier compared to this segment...

Incase this hasn't been thought of already. Point a ridiculously HD, telescopic, long exposure camera (Hubble) out into the universe, use our knowledge of redshift etc to determine distance, then use these algorithms to better estimate Density and movement of planets without the need for worrying about gravity and it's inconsistencies. We could detect the size, shape and velocity of a potentially life threatening asteroid many years in advance just from a few thousandths of a few million pixels. We could interpret the sound of the universe expanding and listen to it as music. Also, on the micro level, we could use microscopes to listen to bacteria, virus's and cells and learn from a completely different sense, just how this world operates at that level. There's so many things to learn from this amazing invention. Maybe with powerful enough cameras that pic up more than just the small bandwidth of the electromagnetic field that we see, maybe x-rays, inferred, UV and powerful enough interpretive algorithms, we can learn the resonating frequencies of certain things, like diseases, bone defects and brain functions... Maybe we'll be able to record our brains and listen back to our very own thoughts in our minds voice. The possibilities are endless.

I wanna hear sound from a silent film back in the day.

Best TED talk on tech I've seen in awhile. Great scientific work with enormous potential!! Well done.

Who's here from Veritasium? Super cool stuff

I am literally speechless from the ingenuity of this research. This is absolutely incredible! This is what we call out-of-the-box think. It was right there infront of all of us, always but it took a different perspective and a curious mind to morph it into an entirely new thing we didn't even know was possible. This is research at its finest. What a great presentation too!

Only 129,158 views for one year for this amazing official TED video ? Something's wrong with the youtube users.

Wait... I've seen this talk before...

We've seen this video technology used to retrieve sound in another TED talk. But a new (and impressive) application is revealed at 12:16

The interacting technology with just recording is just awesome work. Guess this can be modified and helpful for "space" research as well.

One of the best Ted talks I've watched

I'm impressed a third time. This work is like a gift that just keeps on giving.

This is an absolutely amazing discovery and is very inspiring! I never even heard about this until today. This was an incredible TED talk!

Absolutely wonderful! Question: what about filming a plant without any additional stimulations, to observe any sounds the plant makes thru its own vibrations? Maybe its singing it's own song.

Truly mind blowing!

I would LOVE to see this applied to some of the Mars Rover video footage!

Truly incredible. Shear brilliance!

They've progressed a good bit since I last heard of it, good job. EDIT: Wow...they really progressed.

phenomenal work....

My prefered discovery by far ! Thanks !

there are a lot of practical applications here. very good!

For those who may not know, A.R.I.I.A (or just "ARIIA") is an Artificial Intelligent (A.I.) computer/robot/mecha that appears in the movie "Eagle Eye" (2008), and in that movie, she was able to recover sound from video by using the vibration sources from a coffee cup - essentially doing what is shown in this video! NOTE: Many note that this is highly exaggerated, because the camera she uses would not be fast enough to sense the vibration frequencies! 🤙

YOU ARE INCREDIBLE !!

Amazing talk! this is the reason i subscribed to ted!

I wonder what kind of sound it could extract from old old silent videos .... probably not enough frames per second ... but I wonder

This is pure genius, this is going to implemented into Virtual Reality tech for sure.

In this engaging talk, Abe Davis reveals the new technology that shows the hidden properties behind every object. It's a path-breaking video technology that could potentially alter the audio-visual medium in a big way. He also shows the amazing behind-the-screen experiments that is awe-inspiring. Highly recommended to those who are in the media, TV and Video production.

This is going to allow some very interesting material analysis.

This is still the best talk on TED.

oh man you guys are so lucky, we were pretty psyched when we watched this video :D

This has an amazing potential, good science :-)

Well done.

Crazy! New feature on the GoPro 5?!

The wire figure and bush simulations were incredible. I, too, think this technology has a lot of potential.

OMG, they're latest work with this tech is just blowing my mind. Ohh the possibilities.

Beyond the boundaries!!!!

Hats off to the smart work these guys have done! I think one day we will be able to talk to nature too. Wow! That'll be awesome! :)

EAGLE EYE, 2008. I remember that when the computer analyze sounds through vibrating a glass of coffee.

Where to download the Video Microscope Amplifier?

Fascinating/terrifying.

Is there a way I can download the program used to interact with objects? Has anyone released the code?

Awesome.

Amazing tech. Endless potentials

would this work to study microscopic organisms? or materials on a microscopic level?

Wow, this is classic MIT stuff! The kind of thing one imagines when MIT comes to mind :) Though it does raise lot of concerns about privacy, for example getting security credentials from a guy using a keyboard will be so easy ;)

Cool technology!

Reminded me the scene from movie Eagle Eye from the soundproof room (time 1:27:53).

4:23 that MAN who laughed 😂😂😂😂😂💀

amazing to learn - I would love to become involved with this and if there is any possibility to help I will

Indeed good tech for the nsa too

Incredibile!

Oh, Mr Rubinstein was involved as well. I've cited him quite a bit in the past.

I would be curious to see 1 or 2 minute exposure of micro-organisms growing in culture. There has already been some work done on yeast moulds that suggests some sort of cognition or coherent movement.

Could silent films if the quality was good enough be analysed in such a way so we could hear all the ambient noise? That would be freaky weird.

Mind = blown

so if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it and you film a near by bush with a high speed camera does it make a sound?

use it on on ocean sonar..?

I see two applications here, forensics and listening to space.

So you could take an old video and interact with the surroundings after processing with software. Awesome. Not worried about the spying implications.. We're already well past level 9000 there with the PA

mind = blown

Who is here after Terence Howard explanations regards vibrations? WOW God is great!

Thumbs up!

Anyone thought of the observers in Fringe using the same technology in the future?

I can imagine some pretty cool AR games and apps using the second technology shown later in the video

This is an excellent technology! :O

Can we use the software on the Zapruder film?

Is this a re-upload?

Wow this is why everyone wants to get into MIT; their ideas are just so out of the box and innovative :D :(

But then also what if you took it backwards, having the mathematics of how things interact with vibrations and reverse-engineer an image/structure/model. At large-scale, you could get an image pf things that we can't see for whatever reason. Assuming technogy ever got so far as to really record the sounds of space/our satelites went further you could literally construct visual structures of stars and stuff. But if we even use sound to get images, maybe somehow we can use the same sounds to give us readings on structure. What if we could look for habitible planets by knowing how sound reacts with water, and then grabbing the data on what it sounds like on Earth, and use that understanding to be able to distinguish water on other planets. Idk. This is great stuff!

the ending experiment, Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow

hmm if I recorded an animated character could I use the program to move the animation without re drawing it?

This kinda reminds me of one of the first ever "telephones" which used light to code information and then it was shined on a piece of paper which vibrated

The work is great, but let us not be over enthusiastic. I'm no expert in this field, but I can sense immediately some hidden issues. 1) All the wonders here largely depend on the super-precision of the special cameras. For a regular camera at a reasonable distance, I suspect the noises will overwhelm, and it will become a problem like chaos - undeterministic. 2) Highlighting pulse sensation in this visual way is really a fake exaggeration which does not correspond to reality; it's no more than the authors' personal interpretation. 3) I suspect the sound detection is done through checking the resonance frequencies on the leaves via the pixels or shapes, and is fundamentally prone to massive noises; radar type of detections will do infinitely better. 4) Visual extrapolation of a bush movement does not imply its feasibility. The visual detection of those tiny movements serves as some sort of initial motion vectors which can be utilised as the salt or seed for visual extrapolation. So it's a good work, but it is not really shocking to me.

I'm a film director and I must have this wonderful technology!! Tks for creating this new toy !!!!! 👏👏👏👏👏👏

Using this, can someone.. say, record my house.. and then use this software to see the minuscule vibrationson the walls, and find out when I take a fap break?!!!!!!!

Can it measure the firmness of the ground and detect underwater streams? Or sinkholes, (I fear sinkholes)-? Or gold, or oil deposits?

When I read the title I had assumed it was going to be a camera that uses sound to find objects that are behind other objects.

I`m interested, can be pulled out sound from silent films, as Charlie Chaplin, Garold Lloyd and other?

I wonder if this technology could be used to predict how certain buildings or land masses would react to earthquakes, before they actually happen?

Whoa!!

ooooh... I want this app ! :)

Best dubstep ever

So can you get sound out of animation with no sound. Like sliding a square across a screen.

How do you get data for a fraction of a pixel out of a video frame?

Surveillance tech? ... yep, it is. I like the animation tech idea.

We have everything. -- Q

It won't just tell us about our world but others also. By videotaping a distended planet we can detect so much of its being.

gautham mysore.............from mysore? super... make our place proud

wonder how well this could work on objects outside of Earth or even our solar system.

This could be used for listening on people without needing a bug or microphone

Reminds me of Johnny English 2 :))

Will we be able to listen to sounds on distant planets with this technology ?

can this technology be used to study space?

This will help solve crime in the future, imagine being an investigator and using this technology one day to take video and try and extract sound in a place were a murder occurred.

Magic. Magic. Magic.

That is fucking genious.

Wow this sounds so 'geekish', I am almost afraid to put this comment on RU-vid. I could see this turning into a substance analyzer to allow remote detection of the materials an object is made of. Using this technique of film analysis along with a bank of libraries of elemental motion studies, you may be able to create one of the first 'tricorders'.

There is something uncanny about "Merry had a little lamb" recorded through a plant.

could they use that tech on silent movies to recover sound?

what was that hollywood movie I watched years ago with this idea in it.... They show people in the house and what they were doing at the time.