People can be inaccurate at matching unfamiliar faces shown in high-quality video images, even when viewpoint and facial expressions are closely matched. However, identification of highly familiar faces appears good, even when video quality is poor. Experiment 1 reported a direct comparison between familiar and unfamiliar faces. Participants who were personally familiar with target items appearing on video were highly accurate at a verification task. Unfamiliar participants doing the same task performed very inaccurately. Familiarity affected discriminability, but not bias. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that brief periods of familiarization have little beneficial effect unless" deep" or" social" processing is encouraged. The results show that video evidence can be used effectively as a probe to identity when the faces shown are highly familiar to observers, but caution should be used where images of unfamiliar people are being compared.(PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)