# Resolution limits on visual speech recognition

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.01073 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.01073/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 3 Oct 2017.

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Visual Speech Recognition for Multiple Languages in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.13084/) (2022)
- [Automated Speaker Independent Visual Speech Recognition: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08314/) (2023)
- [Comparison of Conventional Hybrid and CTC/Attention Decoders for Continuous Visual Speech Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13004/) (2024)
- [Evaluation of End-to-End Continuous Spanish Lipreading in Different Data Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.00464/) (2025)
- [Cross-Modal Masking for Robust Silent Speech Synthesis Using sEMG and Lipreading](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.09667/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Visual-only speech recognition is dependent upon a number of factors that can be difficult to control, such as: lighting; identity; motion; emotion and expression. But some factors, such as video resolution are controllable, so it is surprising that there is not yet a systematic study of the effect of resolution on lip-reading. Here we use a new data set, the Rosetta Raven data, to train and test recognizers so we can measure the affect of video resolution on recognition accuracy. We conclude that, contrary to common practice, resolution need not be that great for automatic lip-reading. However it is highly unlikely that automatic lip-reading can work reliably when the distance between the bottom of the lower lip and the top of the upper lip is less than four pixels at rest.