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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Um... Can anyone say shenanigans?
Thomas E. Witte, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Cincinnati | OH | USA | Posted: 8:52 PM on 08.29.11 |
->> I was sniffing around the Cincinnati Enquirer's website for another story when I saw a link to WUSA's earthquake footage from last week. I clicked on it and couldn't believe what I was looking at. Tell me this is a joke.
http://news.cincinnati.com/videonetwork/1125724085001?odyssey=mod|tvideo|article
Excuse Anthony Munoz's abysmal ad at the beginning. |
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Alex Menendez, Photographer
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Orlando | FL | USA | Posted: 9:01 PM on 08.29.11 |
->> Thanks for the laugh....!
:-) |
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Andrew Knapik, Photographer, Assistant
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Lincoln Park | MI | USA | Posted: 9:02 PM on 08.29.11 |
| ->> Watch the wall @ the 10 second mark - only some of the bricks move. Fake!! |
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Mark J. Terrill, Photographer
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Simi Valley | CA | USA | Posted: 9:23 PM on 08.29.11 |
| ->> I'm not prepared to say that this isn't real. It could be video compression that is making it look fake. |
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Mark Loundy, Photo Editor
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San Jose | CA | USA | Posted: 10:08 PM on 08.29.11 |
->> Thomas, I watched the video. What, specifically, are you referring to?
--Mark |
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Patrick Fallon, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Houston | Texas | USA | Posted: 10:15 PM on 08.29.11 |
| ->> Looks real to me... have you ever been in an earthquake? |
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Jack Kurtz, Photographer
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Phoenix | AZ | United States | Posted: 10:42 PM on 08.29.11 |
->> I don't know if it's fake, I've never been in an earthquake, but the way the floors and cars move but the bricks don't is bizarre.
I do think it's kind of tacky to run a 15 second ad in fronts of a pretty bad 30 second clip of raw video. |
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Jeff Gammons, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Niceville | Fl | USA | Posted: 11:07 PM on 08.29.11 |
| ->> Can I have my 30 seconds back please? |
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Thomas E. Witte, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Cincinnati | OH | USA | Posted: 11:40 PM on 08.29.11 |
->> Patrick- Yes. But how does that relate to me raising an eyebrow at this? You don't need to have been in a Port-o-potty to know what crap looks like after all.
- Typically everything moves because it's all attached to the moving ground... This includes the building and the camera itself. Lets say this camera was mounted like a rock to the building - the same building which magically has some parts move while others do not. I'm not a structural engineer but I wasn't aware that they alternate between rubber and mortar between bricks on the same wall.
- Door frames move independently from the walls.
- Cars move but their shadow's break.
- trash (center bottom) moves while the ground its on doesn't flinch.
- The quake lasted 45 seconds.
I kind of thought the same thing Mark Terrill was saying, but this is the first time I've seen compression act like this. Every other time I've seen it, only the areas of high detail update to the next frame, like on a DVD... High detail here would be of course the brick wall, but not just a few (of the same bricks) moving - the whole thing moving. If part of a wall moves and another doesn't, then the wall comes crumbling down.
So baring that in mind, the HVAC system on the right is not a free-floating system like the pipes to the left. (Unless they used flexible connections on the pipes (top out of frame) which they probably didn't do for costs reasons since it's not in an earthquake prone area.) ... So if the HVAC bounces and the trash under it bounces, why doesn't the wall in the background bounce as well since it's the more complicated mosaic? I mean the wall to the left bounces after all.
If you watch it over and over again, pick one spot and just stare at it and notice the only areas that move... It's always the same areas. I understand the compression argument but it just seems so odd to me that the same spots move rather than alternating around the frame.
I dunno. Maybe I've been watching too many conspiracy documentaries on Netflix. |
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Israel Shirk, Photographer, Assistant
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Boise | ID | US | Posted: 1:17 AM on 08.30.11 |
->> I'm not normally one for joining in on the witch hunt, but that's no video compression. That's just some good old After Effects. If it is compression, the compression makes the final presentation unethical to present.
Door frames, walls, and floors don't move independently, or if they do, there's a gotta be a gaping hole somewhere. Just watch how that door frame stretches up and down at the floor. The shadow around the door and the wall along the door distort and soften and straighten and sharpen over time all together, while at the same time the cars move about the same distance up and down, and other objects which are
The thing that really gets me though, is the huge amount of vertical motion, and how it selects just certain parts of walls, parts of the cars, etc. Aliasing then severe compression and upscaling maybe? I can see that argument. But aliasing usually doesn't select an angled line and distort it, distorting several distinct sets of objects certain set distances in each one.
It'd have to be an extremely special set of circumstances to make any of this happen. Any kind of real motion would at least make the cars' suspensions respond differently, especially with an suv next to a sedan. And there's no way in the real world cars with suspension are going to move up and down the exact same amount as concrete walls.
The bumper on the sedan stays precisely still, while the rest of the car moves up and down significantly - the difference between the two motions is much greater than the size of the compression artifacts.
So, I've gotta agree with Thomas. Someone slapped it around with After Effects and just used a single mask on a bunch of it. Motion tween'd that masked layer a few times, and bob's your uncle. It's a photoshopped news video. |
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Israel Shirk, Photographer, Assistant
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Boise | ID | US | Posted: 1:20 AM on 08.30.11 |
| ->> On a slightly less technical note - every earthquake I've been in has had significant longitudinal waves, but much less significant transverse waves. I know this is dependent on your position and direction from the fault breaking, but that might provide some less speculative insight. If the quake was primarily longitudinal waves, we'd see more of a swaying of moving/flexible parts such as the long stretch of HVAC and pipes, rather than a bouncing effect. |
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Mark Perlstein, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Plano | TX | USA | Posted: 8:35 AM on 08.30.11 |
| ->> Could this just be from a loose camera mount? |
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David Harpe, Photographer
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Denver | CO | USA | Posted: 9:32 AM on 08.30.11 |
->> The odd look is a byproduct of the compression algorithm being used with the security system. Compression works by eliminating redundant, non-changing elements from successive frames and only recording what has changed.
At some point you have to decide what denotes a "change" - i.e. is it a one pixel change in location, a two pixel change, etc. If you set the threshold low (meaning you call it "changed" if only one pixel changes), then you use up a whole lot of space because essentially every frame is transmitted in it's entirety. Higher thresholds mean you get more space savings with the cost of missing subtle changes in the scene.
Security cameras - since they record 24x7, typically have very high thresholds to make them more space efficient. That means an area of the frame has to change quite a bit before the change is recorded. Usually this is desirable because security cameras are looking for big changes - like someone walking through a space or a car driving by. They want to ignore small changes because they cause false positives and eat up storage - so it's good for them to ignore things like subtle light changes, a small bit of paper floating, etc.
In this case you have some of the objects moving enough to be above the threshold and some objects not. That's why there is the disconnect between elements. Combine it with the low dynamic range of the camera and you end up with an odd effect.
It's not a "fake" in the context of someone doing something malicious to make it look like it's a real video. It's just not a completely accurate representation because of the technical limitations of the system. |
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Garrett Hubbard, Photographer
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Washington | D.C. | USA | Posted: 1:24 PM on 08.30.11 |
| ->> Thomas. FWIW the quake didn't seem like it lasted 45 seconds. The big tremors lasted 10-15 seconds max. It sure was scary on the third floor of the USA TODAY building. The glass was was flexing and bowing in and out in a really freaky way. |
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Mark Loundy, Photo Editor
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San Jose | CA | USA | Posted: 1:39 PM on 08.30.11 |
->> I think that if they faked it they would have made it more spectacular. This is simply too ordinary for anybody to have bothered faking it.
--Mark |
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Israel Shirk, Photographer, Assistant
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Boise | ID | US | Posted: 2:24 PM on 08.30.11 |
->> David-
MPEG compression doesn't track pixels moving around because it's extremely processor intensive; it only concerns itself with the changes that take place inside of each block. That said, if you can find another example where this kind of motion takes place because of MPEG or a similar compression method, I'd definitely be interested in seeing it. |
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Matthew Jonas, Photo Editor, Photographer
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Evergreen | CO | USA | Posted: 4:23 PM on 08.30.11 |
->> I'm with Mark. I don't believe this looks suspect. It's boring, low res, low frame rate, CCTV cam footage.
Did that footage actually air? Not real compelling. |
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Corey Perrine, Photographer
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Augusta | GA | USA | Posted: 5:28 PM on 08.30.11 |
->> I think you should apologize to the security camera operator for calling him out like this.
This could hurt his career.
Let's just say this will not make his edit reel. |
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George Bridges, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington | DC | USA | Posted: 5:46 PM on 08.30.11 |
| ->> I won't make a call on if it's real or not, but why would you fake footage from a garage security cam? I'm with Mark, if they are going to recreate something, it would be much more interesting, at least a person falling in the garage. |
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David Scott, Photographer
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Portland | OR | US | Posted: 5:51 PM on 08.30.11 |
->> I've been in 3 decent quakes. One, everything shook and rattled. One, the building swayed back and forth. One, the ground moved kinda like waves. I think this video is just bad security vid but real.
-- Dave |
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Baron Sekiya, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Hilo | HI | USA | Posted: 6:20 AM on 08.31.11 |
->> I think the white car has an awesome sub-woofer system which is causing the shake.
As for the commercial, it would have been funnier if they had said, "It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."
Here's what a quake looks like in Hawaii from my security camera in my messy apartment. Excuse the firewire drive which fell in front of the camera due to the 6.7 magnitude temblor in 2006.
http://mediabaron.com/blog/2006/10/15/rock-n-roll/ |
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Thomas E. Witte, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Cincinnati | OH | USA | Posted: 1:46 PM on 08.31.11 |
->> LOL. The Shenanigans part was tongue in cheek, but I still couldn't believe how ridiculous video looks. I mean it looks like someone with elementary knowledge of using the lasso tool was screwing around with it.
I've hand-to-God never seen compression do this before and for the sake of my anal retentiveness I hope I don't see it again for a long time. |
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Thomas E. Witte, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Cincinnati | OH | USA | Posted: 1:47 PM on 08.31.11 |
->> BTW, sorry for the late reply. I've gotten so used to getting notifications when someone replies to something I post...
Damn you Facebook. |
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