[stephentmcm]

Source? I'd hazard a guess that it's likely only marginally more accurate than lip reading?

[bradbeattie]

http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/VisualMic/

[stephentmcm]

Pretty cool. But I'll eat my hat if a regular webcam can pick up enough detail in regular lighting to do this. Plus 90% of the time the webcam will capture a users chest and the wall behind them, hardly useful for visual microphones.

[sillysaurus3]

Interesting technique. This requires 60fps 1280x720 video. People would surely notice the slowdown. I wonder if it's possible to improve on this?

[Shorel]

The range of the human voice goes from 85hz to 255 Hz, and that means a webcam should record at about 500hz to be able to capture enough information to reconstruct voice with good quality.

Because webcams record at 60hz (max), they can only capture enough data to reconstruct sound at 30hz, way below the human voice range.