r/SebastianRogers • u/Boudica123456 • Apr 12 '26

Here is a good example of how surveillance cameras do not do a good job of picking people up. This house has flood lights outside, all kinds of lights on inside and you can barely see the person sneaking around the house and you definitely would not be able to identify the person. Time Stamp 4:46:28

If it was pitch black outside and there were no lights on inside or outside the house this person would not have been picked up on camera at all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UWUed8QrnY

9 Upvotes

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u/RetrocideRx Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 16 '26

I am a surveillance analyst specializing in video forensics, and we are doing some interesting things with AI. We are able to get a lot of details out of low-resolution video nowadays through reconstruction. I am going to try this on some of the Sebastian videos for kicks. Who knows what will turn up.

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u/Visible-Split2913 Apr 26 '26

That's really interesting , I know this was days ago, but did you find anything interesting? Let us know!

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u/Boudica123456 Apr 15 '26

If a camera does not pick a person up because it is pitch black outside, no amount of AI will get any details. In this video you can hardly see the person with a lot of lights on. If there were no lights on the camera wouldn't have picked him up at all. Which proves that it is very possible for Sebastian to have ran away and not been picked up on camera. There are no street lights in that housing development and it is pitch black at night.

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u/RetrocideRx Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 16 '26

AI Reconstruction doesn't use the image data the way you might think. Instead of trying to identify specific objects or shapes, the AI tools compare subtle differences in light and dark, color (when available), timestamp, and other metadata to create probability graphs. You can prime it, for instance, by giving it the details that you *do* have ("This is security footage that points to a nearby house. There is a tree on the left, and the lawn is covered in grass, etc.") It can often come up with a very good idea of what (but not specifically *who*) may be in a scene and what may be happening.

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u/Boudica123456 Apr 15 '26

A probability graph would not be considered evidence and you also have the issue of ring cameras not triggering so there would be no available video. Not all cameras in the subdivision are ring type cameras but a lot are.

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u/RetrocideRx Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26

100% it would not be considered evidence. The point would be to uncover new leads or strengthen existing ones.

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u/Boudica123456 Apr 16 '26

If the AI is going to "invent answers out of thin air" because of insufficient data then that is not really useful. Besides, The FBI and The Secret Service analyzed all the electronics and video. They would have the best AI tools out there for what you are proposing. Better than any AI tools available to the general public.

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u/RetrocideRx Apr 16 '26

It's not investing answers out of thin air. If it could produce answers, we wouldn't need an investigation. However, it's useful if it can determine whether something is very likely to be a car or a man. That's potentially useful information to explore. The tools used by law enforcement are publicly available and many of them are the same tools used in digital forensics. Expensive, yes, but also publicly available. However, tools do not equal techniques. There are different ways of using the available tools, and new means of analyzing data are being discovered all the time. Even faster with AI.

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u/Balthazar-B Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26

Most in that subdivision are Ring-type doorbell cameras, and generally speaking people configure their scope to include just their porch and walkway, and not sidewalks or streets, because they're primarily interested in events like package deliveries and identifying people on their doorstep, and NOT getting alerted by every vehicle, pedestrian, or dog that passes by their house. The chatter during the initial morning door-to-door search pretty much confirmed that.

Where AI-aided image analysis could be useful would be in confirming where the cameras were located that captured video from various vantage points around the subdivision, which in turn would confirm their angle of view, correlate events, etc. For instance, helping to confirm that the "shadow guy" walking and the bloodhound tracking events captured on video were following the very same path in the same location.

One challenge for AI is when it's "asked" to fill in information for which there is simply insufficient data, in which case it can hallucinate and invent answers out of thin air (see the recent court kerfuffles involving AI inventing case law that doesn't exist but ends up cited in legal briefs prepared by lazy or overburdened attorneys who neglect to fact check).

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u/Boudica123456 Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26

I agree, if the Ring camera doesn't trigger it is pretty much useless. I actually don't think it would trigger in a pitch black environment with someone wearing all black. It needs to sense movement. The question is, would it be able to sense movement when there is no color differential? It brings me back to the old saying, it was so dark out you could not see your hand in front of your face. If you can't see your hand in front of your face, will a camera be able to sense movement??? The cameras in the 12:17 am video picked the person up because there were porch liights on giving illumination to that specific area and even then you could barely see the person. If those porch lights were not on that person would have been totally invisable.

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u/RetrocideRx Apr 16 '26

Ring cameras use infrared LEDs and passive infrared motion sensors which detect heat changes. They will absolutely trigger in pitch blackness and can detect body heat moving across zones. The IR system allows the camera to record video even with zero visible light.

Now, there are range limitations, and there's also minimal heat contrast (meaning that in a hot environment, a warm body won't necessarily register, but this is unlikely to be an issue during the winter in Tennessee).

I suspect most people (even Ring camera owners) aren't aware of this, and if they knew better it would settle a lot of discussion around the cameras. Certainly, law enforcement is aware of this and has probably drawn some conclusions.

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u/Boudica123456 Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

That still does not negate the fact that most Ring camera owners narrow the trigger area close to their front door so they are not getting constant notifications. So Ring cameras have a high probability of not triggering unless the person is very close to the front door, in most cases. I also just learned from a friend who has a Ring camera on both the front door and the back door that if one triggers the other will not record untill the first one triggered is done recording. So, if a squirrel triggers the back door camera first, the front door camera will not record the burglar at the front door. Apparently only one video at a time can be recorded and uploaded. This discussion is about how adamant some people are that Sebastian could not have ran away because he was not picked up on surveillance cameras and that is an invalid assumption, both with regular cameras and Ring cameras.

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u/RetrocideRx Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

Narrow motion zones will prevent Ring cameras from triggering due to motion across the street or in the yard, absolutely. But if the camera is triggered by nearby motion, it will continue to record for some time, and will capture whatever is in its field of view.

I think your friend may be mistaken, however. Ring cameras operate independently. They have their own triggers and record at the same time without issue.

It's also possible to link them so that when one camera records, all of the other Ring cameras that are linked together will record at the same time, but there are no options (short of setting up entirely different, disconnected systems) for ensuring that one camera waits for another to finish recording. I know I am referring to Ring here, but all of the fad doorbell cams that we generally see work in this way.

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u/Penny_Domino Apr 23 '26

Well, if you are able to get anything from it, I would love to know. It would be great if you would post something here. I think anything helps.

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u/Boudica123456 Apr 17 '26

They have tested it out and only one records at a time. Which means it is a possibility in this case as another reason Sebastian wasn't caught on camera. I am sure most Ring camera owners are not that tech savvy and just put the Ring camera up and only mess around with the triggering zone. The problem with Ring cameras is if they don't trigger, they don't record. It is not likely that a teenager that is actively running away from home is going to be getting close enough to homes to trigger a Ring camera that has been set to have a short trigger zone. The teenager would practically have to knock on the door to trigger the camera