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Meanwhile, Buzzfeed have run an article about why it's not in fact clear that it was doctored: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/acosta-video-t

by makomk 8y ago

Meanwhile, Buzzfeed have run an article about why it's not in fact clear that it was doctored: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/acosta-video-trump-cnn-aide-sarah-sanders https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/acosta-vi... And Motherboard's expert says there's no evidence that it is: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvqpp5/no-evidence-the-white-house-video-of-jim-acosta-was-doctored-forensic-expert-says https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvqpp5/no-evidenc... Basically, there's nothing clear about this. (Except for the fact that AP's contention that the audio was removed to make it easier to doctor is dubious. It was a GIF. GIF files don't support audio.)

p49k 8y ago
I don't see why it would matter. If you cherry-pick the single version from the various transcodings of a video that happens to portray an inaccurate version of the event, then you're still intentionally being deceitful.
- thedream 8y ago
  > cherry-pick the single version from the various transcodings of a video that happens to portray an inaccurate version of the event Where is the evidence that this happened?
  - EpicEng 8y ago
    Just watch the original and it's obviously different than the GIF in question.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - thedream 8y ago
      "video is different than GIF" != "proof of cherry-picking with the intention to deceive"
- borkt 8y ago
  Sounds like 95% of scientific studies these days. People always try to pick the best option given multiple items to select from. It's basically what you learn in persuasive argument courses - show the best evidence as it is not in your best interest to show the weakest evidence. If they altered it I would find that truly deceitful, but if they just picked the transcoded version that looked best they were just doing their job. Beyond that its just as likely they posted the first one they saw and had no intention to even find the "best" one.
  - p49k 8y ago
    I don't find this to be a valid comparison. The goal of scientific studies typically don't overlap 100% and there are lots of differences between how they are conducted, whereas high-resolution, high-framerate, non-cropped video is always more valid than a wonky GIF of the exact same recording, so if the two versions portray a different version of events, it's clear which one to use.
cm2012 8y ago
Both links say that it may not have been purposefully doctored, but rather accidentally doctored from the conversion from video to GIF, because the lower frame rate makes it look much choppier with removed frames. That's still incredibly misleading.
KirinDave 8y ago
Framerate hacking aside, the real question is why there was motion blur directly applied to the motion. As Malki's comparison shows, it's not at all clear why that's there. No default GIF conversion would do it, it's not present in the original source video even under the zoom factor. So even if these subtle framerate shifts are simply artifacts of very bad encoding software (which is weird... the free tools are much better than this), the fact that there are significant changes to the pixels of the motion is much harder to explain away. Unsurprisingly, the ars article DOES mention this but the Buzzfeed and Vice articles, which represent less technically savvy sources, don't.
- makomk 8y ago
  Whatever software was used to create a proper video from the GIF seems to have done some kind of framerate doubling by inserting interpolated frames. It alternates between a clear frame and one with odd motion blur throughout. Also, I reckon the weird frame duplication is an interaction between the software used to create the GIF and the software used to turn it into an edited video later. More specifically: - The GIF has a non-standard framerate of 14.56 FPS. This means that it's probably playing about 3% slower than the original video, which isn't perceptible and isn't particularly important by itself. - The video has a more standard framerate of 29.9 FPS. The software seems to mostly handle this by doubling the framerate with interpolated frames, as described above. However, this doesn't quite fix the problem - roughly every 40 frames it'll be a frame short. - Sure enough, there's another frame duplication about 40 frames after the first.
  - KirinDave 8y ago
    I find this analysis unobjectionable, but it does not explain the motion blurs.

by makomk 8y ago

p49k 8y ago

I don't see why it would matter. If you cherry-pick the single version from the various transcodings of a video that happens to portray an inaccurate version of the event, then you're still intentionally being deceitful.

thedream 8y ago
> cherry-pick the single version from the various transcodings of a video that happens to portray an inaccurate version of the event Where is the evidence that this happened?
- EpicEng 8y ago
  Just watch the original and it's obviously different than the GIF in question.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - thedream 8y ago
    "video is different than GIF" != "proof of cherry-picking with the intention to deceive"
borkt 8y ago
Sounds like 95% of scientific studies these days. People always try to pick the best option given multiple items to select from. It's basically what you learn in persuasive argument courses - show the best evidence as it is not in your best interest to show the weakest evidence. If they altered it I would find that truly deceitful, but if they just picked the transcoded version that looked best they were just doing their job. Beyond that its just as likely they posted the first one they saw and had no intention to even find the "best" one.
- p49k 8y ago
  I don't find this to be a valid comparison. The goal of scientific studies typically don't overlap 100% and there are lots of differences between how they are conducted, whereas high-resolution, high-framerate, non-cropped video is always more valid than a wonky GIF of the exact same recording, so if the two versions portray a different version of events, it's clear which one to use.

cm2012 8y ago

Both links say that it may not have been purposefully doctored, but rather accidentally doctored from the conversion from video to GIF, because the lower frame rate makes it look much choppier with removed frames. That's still incredibly misleading.

KirinDave 8y ago

Framerate hacking aside, the real question is why there was motion blur directly applied to the motion. As Malki's comparison shows, it's not at all clear why that's there. No default GIF conversion would do it, it's not present in the original source video even under the zoom factor. So even if these subtle framerate shifts are simply artifacts of very bad encoding software (which is weird... the free tools are much better than this), the fact that there are significant changes to the pixels of the motion is much harder to explain away. Unsurprisingly, the ars article DOES mention this but the Buzzfeed and Vice articles, which represent less technically savvy sources, don't.

makomk 8y ago
Whatever software was used to create a proper video from the GIF seems to have done some kind of framerate doubling by inserting interpolated frames. It alternates between a clear frame and one with odd motion blur throughout. Also, I reckon the weird frame duplication is an interaction between the software used to create the GIF and the software used to turn it into an edited video later. More specifically: - The GIF has a non-standard framerate of 14.56 FPS. This means that it's probably playing about 3% slower than the original video, which isn't perceptible and isn't particularly important by itself. - The video has a more standard framerate of 29.9 FPS. The software seems to mostly handle this by doubling the framerate with interpolated frames, as described above. However, this doesn't quite fix the problem - roughly every 40 frames it'll be a frame short. - Sure enough, there's another frame duplication about 40 frames after the first.
- KirinDave 8y ago
  I find this analysis unobjectionable, but it does not explain the motion blurs.