Video recapture detection based on ghosting artifact analysis

Paolo Bestagini, Marco Visentini Scarzanella, Marco Tagliasacchi, Pier Luigi Dragotti, Stefano Tubaro

Abstract: Video forensics is becoming a popular field of research and an increasing number of forensic techniques have been proposed in the last few years. However, a simple yet effective method to fool many detectors consists in recapturing a video sequence with a camcorder. For this reason being able to detect video recapture is a topic of interest for a forensic analyst. In this paper, we first characterize the video recapture model, focusing on the common scenario of a sequence recaptured from a LCD monitor using a digital camcorder, then we propose a recapture detector for this case. The detector is based on the analysis of a characteristic ghosting artifact left by the recapture process. The presented algorithm is finally validated by means of tests on original and recaptured sequences. These tests prove that the algorithm achieves high accuracy results.