So I just called the non-emergency number and they’re going to have an officer call me. Hopefully, we can get that license plate number. They said they can’t do anything without it.
So I created a Police report and gave them the 4 original videos. They’ll run the license plate if I can get it to them. The Police report is going to be sent to a detective. I told them you guys are helping me. I doubt the detective will do anything to figure out the plate since no damage was done. Keeping my fingers crossed!
Does the cloud software tell you how long it takes?
Replied with a video link to the private message. Not great but better than the original video.
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Nope. No indication. I’d have expected it by now.
I’m downloading the offline version. I had the download paused because it was sucking up bandwidth. I’ll check on it in a minute.
I am running the offline software on a hopeful section of the left-side video. It says it’s going to take an hour (one frame per ten seconds).
If that doesn’t turn out well enough, there are other settings / algorithms to play with. They can be batched up to run unattended.
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Thank you so much! What is the name of the software? I’d love to read about it.
It’s called Video Enhance AI by Topaz Labs. Funny enough they are right here in town.
I downloaded some sort of functional demo.
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Sorry, accidentally posted before I was finished.
I just got a look at the first try and I still can’t make out the plate.
I can tell you that from the right-side video, the driver is a white guy and his passenger is not. When you pass them, the passenger sticks his head out the sunroof and the driver seems to yell something.
It was the passenger that hurled something at your car, and he did that through the sunroof.
For anyone with a Tesla, don’t rely on the onboard cameras for anything important. They store the video at such a low bit-rate that only big shapes and general motions can be gleamed from them. The camera sensors are fully capable of more but most of the data is thrown away when the data gets recorded. A dedicated dash camera would probably be a better option.
Yup. When watching the video, I was surprised at how little detail is actually there, especially given that the raw resolution isn’t terrible. But clearly compression has thrown lots away.
I’d be very interested to see what the native sensors are truly capable of doing because it’s a potentially very useful feature (for cases just like this, among others).
What does the Tesla use that video for, other than the obvious (“No, HE ran the light.”) stuff?
Would it balk if its cameras were rewired to a different DVR that didn’t trash the video?
@mdredmond & @lukeiamyourfather so the cameras were originally meant only for the autopilot and machine learning, but people made a big stink asking why we couldn’t use the cameras as a dashcam. Musk finally agreed to it and that’s what we got.
Sadly, the best angles in this instance were the outside side cameras. The dashcam only would have caught the front and back. I don’t know if I would have been able to get the license plate from those angles. I actually do have a Blackvue dashcam I can install. I just need something to power it when the car is idle because my Tesla doesn’t have a 12v to connect to or a fuse box that will allow it to run while the car is idle. It would only provide power while the car was being used. The external battery Blackvue sells is ridiculously expensive. If you guys have any suggestions, I would love to get the dashcam installed.
Can you get a partial read of the tag?
Knowing it’s a Tesla and its color may be enough for law enforcement to narrow it down to the one.
Offending car looks to be a Kia.
Sorry, misread at the start.
Yes I tried to use a different AI upscaler 6 months ago to enhance the Zapruder film, but didn’t notice much difference, I may give it another go.
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Yup, even recruited here a while back.
Without question a Kia. And with pretty distinctive styling (color, wheels, etc.). If this happened to me on a morning commute I’d stake out the route and find them. Knowing the tag number that way might be enough for a police detective to elicit an incriminating statement that makes the tag in the video moot.
As far as I know, throwing an object (“missile”) at a moving vehicle is a felony.
So @lukeiamyourfather did a great job playing with the levels and getting a better view of the license plate. He also figured out it was a 2014-18 Kia Forte. From his video I figured out a partial plate. I have LSF-(5/6)43(7/2). I’m just not sure of those last 2 numbers. The car color/make/model should narrow those other numbers down and possibly find the actual car. I wish I knew someone that could do a search of license plates using the information we now know to get the exact plates to give to the detective.
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Funny I was searching for 75F and 7SF. I will run those others when I get to the other house where I have access to that stuff.
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Sorry missed that. I do!
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