Surveillance cam captures....

[withoutlimits09]

Yes, everything about the video smacks of CGI fakery. But apart from our assumptions based on the behavior of the person who created it. How do we objectively know? What information is in the pixels that could tell us the original video has been doctored. That sort of thing. If we simply go on our gut feeling and opinion, that's not really debunking anything. At best it's just an informed opinion. There was at one time a website you could upload a photo to and it would do a detection based on digital photographic signatures between the object and the background and give you a really objective analysis as to why it's fake. I've never seen anything like that for video. It would be really handy if someone could come up with an online app for detecting fake YouTube videos using an objective technical analysis.

It does just smack of CGI fakery, and sometimes you just have to follow your gut instinct IF the only thing in existence is the video. If there are no secondary witnesses, no additional footage to examine and cross reference, it might be nearly impossible to detect the footage as a fraud. This is why you have to look at the totality of the evidence, and if there is none, well that speaks volumes.

Take for example the infamous Alien Autopsy video. Many people's gut reaction was that it looked like a dummy laying on the table, yet despite this, the producers were still able to find legitimate visual effect experts, like Stan Winston, to argue the footage was legitimate.

I know I can take a photo of Trump, and composite him into a totally different background/scene, I will match the grain perfectly, leaving no signs of manipulation. As a digital image, it will look totally legitimate. You won't be able to disprove the image based on the pixels. You would have to disprove the image based to the secondary information. For example, if I have Trump composited into an image at the Vatican, on a day in which he appeared on FOX News, live from the Rose Garden, then we have reasons to doubt the composite.

So with today's technology, having the secondary information is required. The fact there is no sound, no reference to this sighting anywhere else, no one else in the area photographed or recorded the objected, coupled with a handful of suspicious and telltale video filters (forced camera movement, out of focus, etc....) then you have a collective case against the video.

However, with enough time, some people can find mistakes at the pixel level, but if the hoaxer is thoughtful, it might be much tougher.

 

[Randall]

... I know I can take a photo of Trump, and composite him into a totally different background/scene, I will match the grain perfectly, leaving no signs of manipulation. As a digital image, it will look totally legitimate ...

Good tutorial. Thanks!
Fake photo detection sites use more than consider the grain and edges. It also looks at compression and gamma for different sections and could easily pick out what had been composited in. Here's a site with some links:
- 13 online tools that help to verify the authenticity of a photo
But I've never seen anything for video. There might be something out there. I dunno. This site says that if you have access to the timecode on the video it's fairly easy:
- https://www.quora.com/How-does-an-expert-detect-fake-videos-from-real-videos

 

[withoutlimits09]

Good tutorial. Thanks!
Fake photo detection sites use more than consider the grain and edges. It also looks at compression and gamma for different sections and could easily pick out what had been composited in. Here's a site with some links:
- 13 online tools that help to verify the authenticity of a photo
But I've never seen anything for video. There might be something out there. I dunno. This site says that if you have access to the timecode on the video it's fairly easy:
- https://www.quora.com/How-does-an-expert-detect-fake-videos-from-real-videos

I just uploaded a heavily retouched food photography image that I took. I stripped out the EXIF data, so that step defeated many of the tools listed on the sites that rely on that data to determine things. The one forensic site just compares pixels and edge contrast to see if there are any glaring issue, but didn't detect the fact I added another scallop to the photo, and cloned out multiple pieces of parsley and reflections in the plate.

Ultimately, it gave my heavily edited photo, the thumbs up.

 

[Thomas R Morrison]

So I just learned about this footage today. It's not exactly surveillance cam footage; apparently it's genuine leaked Nellis AFB video of an anomalous object that was tracked and filmed with a sophisticated radar-video camera system as it executed exotic maneuvers in the area. Transcripts exist which clarify the dialogue of the baffled camera operators taking the footage. I've read that the embebbed waveform near the bottom of the screen indicates the radar return, which suddenly flattens out toward the end of the video while the device is darting around. Does anyone have any insight into this case? I find it fascinating, but I haven't dug into it much yet: