Impact of Video Processing Operations in Deepfake Detection

The detection of digital face manipulation in video has attracted extensive attention due to the increased risk to public trust. To counteract the malicious usage of such techniques, deep learning-based deepfake detection methods have been developed and have shown impressive results. However, the performance of these detectors is often evaluated using benchmarks that hardly reflect real-world situations. For example, the impact of various video processing operations on detection accuracy has not been systematically assessed. To address this gap, this paper first analyzes numerous real-world influencing factors and typical video processing operations. Then, a more systematic assessment methodology is proposed, which allows for a quantitative evaluation of a detector’s robustness under the influence of different processing operations. Moreover, substantial experiments have been carried out on three popular deepfake detectors, which give detailed analyses on the impact of each operation and bring insights to foster future research.