robinp89•13d agoMost Upvoted

Unpopular opinion: That "blink blink" glitch people keep posting is actually just bad compression, not a deepfake tell

I used to be one of those people who thought any weird flicker around the eyes meant a video was fake. But then I watched a 4K video of my niece's birthday party from last year that got compressed to hell when I uploaded it to Facebook. Same exact blink flicker pattern. The file went from 2GB to like 12MB and it created all these artifacts around her face. Now every time I see someone in this sub point at pixelation as proof of a deepfake, I just think about that file. Has anyone else run a real video through heavy compression just to see what happens to facial details?

4 comments

4 Comments

ivan_harris13d ago

Download a 4K video from your phone, run it through Handbrake at like 500kbps bitrate, and watch what happens to eye movement. It's basically instant proof that most of these "tells" are just compression ghosts.

dylan46313d ago

Compression ghosts" sounds like a band I'd accidentally see at a bad music festival lmao.

blair7012d ago

Man, I don't know, I've seen some wild artifacting from low bitrate encodes that genuinely looked like ghosting or weird lighting changes. It's worth testing for yourself before you write it all off.

sammartinez12d ago

Gotta point out that 500kbps on a 4K video is a bit extreme even for testing purposes. Most people don't compress their files down to that level unless they're trying to break things on purpose. Try something like 10-15mbps for a more realistic compression scenario, that's closer to what streaming services use. You'll still see some weird stuff in motion but not nearly as much as with the crazy low setting.