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Investigators used Visar software to enhance home video taken of the Olympic Park bombing RELATED VIDEO CNN's Marsha Walton reports a NASA technology that may apply to home video cameras Windows Media 28K 80K NASA's Sammy Nabors describes some NASA tools that are in common use today Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K The software may be able to help scientists determine wind speeds in a tornado    Before and After VISAR enhanced images before after

June 18, 1999
Web posted at: 11:29 a.m. EDT (1529 GMT)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama (CNN) -- There may soon be a way for millions of home videos to focus on cute kids and adorable pets without making friends and relatives dizzy from all those jerky moves and out-of-focus shots.

The solution comes from NASA solar physicist David Hathaway. He has dealt with grainy and jittery images, but the real "star" of his videos is sometimes 93 million miles away.

"If you've ever looked through a telescope on the ground, all this shaking and shimmering going on (is) because you're using high-magnification track," Hathaway says.

The FBI's need to get a better look at some videotaped images led Hathaway and NASA colleague Paul Meyer to create "Visar" software. Investigators wanted help enhancing videotape shot after the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta. The software NASA developed could soon be used to improve everything from law enforcement surveillance pictures to medical ultrasound images.

"It's fairly crisp in this, whereas over here in the original image you can see how broken up it is," Hathaway says, pointing to initial and Visar-improved images of a license plate.

The process starts with investigators selecting a key frame to enhance, say, a suspect's face or a license plate. The Visar software then compares and manipulates other frames around the central frame, creating a clearer composite.

"We've had some examples (where) we've had ten seconds of video, 300 images we can add together," Hathaway says. "With 300 images you can quite literally turn night into day." He says the software can even transform a bouncy shuttle launch sequence into stabilized video.

Meyer, an atmospheric scientist, also sees possibilities for understanding weather with the new process.

"If we can stabilize some tornado videos, we can better estimate wind speeds that are occurring within and around a tornado."

Visar can operate on a standard personal computer, so in a year or so, you may not need a seat belt to watch that latest batch of home videos.

Correspondent Marsha Walton contributed to this report.

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