Sometimes, a posted video is the only clue to the whereabouts of a missing person, or a terrorist group. Unfortunately, unless that video has already been geo-tagged, it can often be very difficult to tell where it was shot. Now, however, scientists have created algorithms that can determine a video's location by comparing its background imagery and audio to that of thousands of other videos. The researchers, from Spain's Ramón Llull University, utilized the existing MediaEval Placing Task database. It's a collection of videos and photos from known locations, used for developing geolocation software. Given that the videos being scrutinized presumably wouldn't show well-known landmarks, the algorithms instead look for distinct images in seemingly generic scenes (such as streets or wilderness areas) that have a match in the database. Random ambient audio also plays a key role. "The acoustic information can be as valid as the visual and, on occasions, even mor
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