Reading Plates - New User

[Dashmellow]

Yup, and long one. Too complicated for me, I'm afraid.

Yeah, it's basically professional video forensics software used by law enforcement and investigators according to the web site. I think they really make their money from the training but offer the software for free.
Well, you did ask for "CSI-like picture enhancing software" and that was bound to be way more complicated that your average smartphone "app".

 

[Dashmellow]

Wasn't me (or if it was I don't remember ). I just did because it looks interesting and I'll try to find time this week to play with it for a while.

OK, apparently, I mis-remembered.....sort of. I found the thread and your post from two years ago and what you actually said was:

"I just went and watched the installation and tutorial videos on YouTube and it's a pretty impressive program - especially given it's price.

It has a lot of functionality but the installation procedure is a bit convoluted and the user interface is different than any program I've seen. That said it is well covered in the tutorial videos."

 

[SawMaster]

I am sure that the process could be 'automated' but it would be complex to design and code plus it would be slow- each frame would have to be optimized individually, then all enhanced frames collated and compared, anomalies rejected, then re-compared repeatedly until a single most likely solution emerged. Or a small group of possibilities if no major concurrence was possible. Could be hours on a home computer to get one plate and you may want several plates to have some other eyewitnesses emerge

Even with success, all you have is a plate number which may lead you to that car. The car may not be where the government's address information indicates. The plate may be stolen or altered. That car may be uninsured. How well your info is followed up depends on the Police agency and personnel involved- without their diligence you still get nowhere. With so many factors involved having good insurance is about the best you can do

So what would be the average for clear plate captures of cars which could directly affect you; maybe 15% at best overall? And what would the enhancement add, maybe 10% more? That's still not a lot but it's better than nothing and when you're desperate any help is good. It would probably cost a fortune to get a cam which could improve those numbers substantially and I doubt such a cam has been made for public dispersal but I'll bet the CIA has several of them which they won't admit to knowing about. Maybe all of us here together could afford to buy one but we'd need a mighty big car to get all of us in it with just that one cam for all of us

I think we're getting our money's worth now, for even just 25 years ago dashcams like we have now were nothing more than a far-away dream No, they're not perfect but IMHO they are a bargain in what you get for their cost. Crashes you are involved in will be very close to your cam and at that short range the odds are decent that it will capture enough of the plates to be useful to you

Phil

 

[DT MI]

OK, apparently, I mis-remembered.....sort of. I found the thread and your post from two years ago and what you actually said was:

"I just went and watched the installation and tutorial videos on YouTube and it's a pretty impressive program - especially given it's price.

It has a lot of functionality but the installation procedure is a bit convoluted and the user interface is different than any program I've seen. That said it is well covered in the tutorial videos."

Cool, you remember better than I do.

As I said, I did just D/L it and will try to play a bit in the next few days. I'm away the beginning of next week so if it doesn't get done this week it will be a while.

 

[Dashmellow]

Cool, you remember better than I do.

As I said, I did just D/L it and will try to play a bit in the next few days. I'm away the beginning of next week so if it doesn't get done this week it will be a while.

Looking forward to your results and commentary. In fact, I think you really need to cancel your trip. It's time for you to reconsider your priorities.

 

[DT MI]

...In fact, I think you really need to cancel your trip. It's time for you to reconsider your priorities.

Let's see:

Option 1: Sit on my computer playing with software with a difficult learning curve just for the academic exercise.

Option 2: A nice extended road trip with my wife and photo gear to Michigan's upper peninsula during (hopefully) the best week of the year for fall colors, with stops at a couple wineries going and/or returning.

You make the call - if you pick #1 I'll give you my wife's cell number so you can explain the change of plans to her.

 

[Dashmellow]

Let's see:

Option 1: Sit on my computer playing with software with a difficult learning curve just for the academic exercise.

Option 2: A nice extended road trip with my wife and photo gear to Michigan's upper peninsula during (hopefully) the best week of the year for fall colors, with stops at a couple wineries going and/or returning.

You make the call - if you pick #1 I'll give you my wife's cell number so you can explain the change of plans to her.

The software, no question.

You're a lifelong computer guy, a pioneer who's experience goes back to the glory days of the IBM mainframes. You KNOW what you need to do!

Send me her number, I'm sure I can make her understand.

 

[DT MI]

The software, no question.

You're a lifelong computer guy, a pioneer who's experience goes back to the glory days of the IBM mainframes. You KNOW what you need to do!

Send me her number, I'm sure I can make her understand.

I'll let you know what kind of wine we bought.

 

[DT MI]

Looking forward to your results and commentary....

OK, it's installed and functional - well, it starts up anyhow.

It IS important to follow the installation guide exactly. I did get one Windows (Win7 Pro) message, not mentioned in the installation guide, that the application may not have installed correctly. I just ignored that and continued on. It also was necessary to do the file association mentioned on page 4 of the guide as that was not done as part of the install.

Now to 'RTFM' and figure out how to use it. Where's my wine glass?

Edit:

From the first page of the manual -

VideoCleaner does little to help with videos that:
 Are visually perfectly clear, but include noisy audio
 Show motion smearing where video details blend into adjacent video details
 Require a television crime show's fantasy level of resolution enhancement

Disappointing...

 

[lacibaci]

Seems obvious, but has anyone tried using two cameras with long (narrow) lenses and stitch resulting video?

 

[Leopold]

Seems obvious, but has anyone tried using two cameras with long (narrow) lenses and stitch resulting video?

Intersting idea, you would get two almost identical frames to stack for increased resolution.

But I think few people would like to have more than one camera facing front, possibly one rear camera.

I'd like to return to the image stacking approach. Dashmellow talked about how it is used in astro photography, I googled a little on that and found some interesting info for instance this about the Drizzle method: http://www.stark-labs.com/craig/resources/Articles-&-Reviews/Drizzle_API.pdf

On a similar basic idea there are tutorials on how to use Photoshop to use multiple frames for increasing resolution quite drastically: https://petapixel.com/2015/02/21/a-...eating-superresolution-photos-with-photoshop/

In our case, we have a slight problem: the consecutive frames from a video are capturing a moving object, not a static image as in the two examples above. I don't know if it is possible to produce nearly identical multiple frames by normalizing viewing angle manually for each of the frames (or assisted with some suitable software) onto a uniform size and format. It would be interesting to try though, to see if it makes possible to read illegible plates where resolution is the main problem.

That said, there are lots of commercial license plate recognition software based on research that has been going on for decades. The market is huge for fully automated License Plate Recognition used by authorities all over the globe for all kinds of purposes and the approaches are quite a bit more advanced than we have been discussing so far.

Personally I see it just as an interesting challenge to attempt to dig out more pixels than is actually present in a single frame by using more frames of the same object.

 

[Module 79L]

OK, it's installed and functional - well, it starts up anyhow.

It IS important to follow the installation guide exactly. I did get one Windows (Win7 Pro) message, not mentioned in the installation guide, that the application may not have installed correctly. I just ignored that and continued on. It also was necessary to do the file association mentioned on page 4 of the guide as that was not done as part of the install.

Now to 'RTFM' and figure out how to use it. Where's my wine glass?

Edit:

From the first page of the manual -

VideoCleaner does little to help with videos that:
 Are visually perfectly clear, but include noisy audio
 Show motion smearing where video details blend into adjacent video details
 Require a television crime show's fantasy level of resolution enhancement

Disappointing...

My experience with the software:

- Installation on Win7: OK
- Load a video: OK
- Noticed the code lines and lots of talking about scripts, menus full of terms and functions I'm clueless about and a long list of sliders that only have a 0 and a 1 position: uninstalled it.