(H/T – Allahpundit)
Dr. Neal Krawetz, who is good enough to get a C|Net story, did some video/audio and image analysis of the “new” Osama bin Laden video. The money quotes:
The big question is: is the audio from Bin Laden? I’m not an audio expert (yet) and since I don’t know Arabic, I cannot tell if there is an accent or if the accent changes. I do know that the room echo and background sounds change during different audio clips. And there are so many splices that I cannot help but wonder if someone spliced words and phrases together. I also cannot rule out a vocal imitator during the frozen-frame audio. The only way to prove that the audio is really Bin Laden is to see him talking in the video, but all references to current-events come during the frozen-frame section.
I’m shocked, SHOCKED that there would be so many splices in the audio-only portion of the M-m-m-m-max bin Laden tape. How about the under-4 minutes of video?
There are some very obvious places where the video has been spliced. Here’s some examples:
- 1:39 — A little more than a minute and a half into the video is a splice. He goes from looking out to looking down in less than 1/25th of a second.
- 13:13 — The second splice. Not as big, but definitely there.
There are actually six splices in the video as far as I can tell.
The video itself was filmed in two takes. The first section opens the video and ends at 1:56. The second section begins at 12:29 and continues until 14:01. That’s right: the entire 26 minute video has less than four minutes of animated footage. The rest of the video just shows a still-frame of Bin Laden. The two sections are clearly from different recordings because the desk is closer to the camera in the second section.
Let’s see; 3:28 of live video, 6 splices. They couldn’t get more than 35 seconds out of “ObL” before they had to cut. M-m-m-m-max Headroom got more than that. Let’s continue with the video analysis, with my note that Krawetz believes the 2004 video was made in 2004 (I have my doubts on that):
Yet here is Bin Laden in the same clothing, same studio, same studio setup, and same desk THREE YEARS LATER. In fact, his stack of papers that he reads are moved between the exact same stacks. If you overlay the 2007 video with the 2004 video, his face has not changed in three years — only his beard is darker and the contrast on the picture has been adjusted.
What are the chances of nothing changing (except his beard) in three years? Virtually zero. The clips appear to have been recorded three years ago.
Or longer. However, I do not put as much stock in the sameness; a studio in Milwaukee can be made to look exactly the same as one in New York City. Morever, others have noted differences in the face between the 2004 video and the 2007 one. On to the image analysis:
As far as my tools can detect, there has been no image manipulation of the Bin Laden portion of the image beyond contrast adjustment. His beard really does appear to be that color. (I’ve asked another graphics researcher to also look at the image I analyzed, as a cross-check.)
One of the limitations of image analysis is that staged environments are not digital fakes. For example, when China Airlines painting over their logo on crashed planes, the pictures did not analyze as being faked — because they were not. In the case of his beard, it could be a costume mask, or a trimmed and dyed beard.
Let’s stop for a moment. It could also be a look-alike. Do recall that the late Saddam Hussein reportedly employed up to 25 look-alikes to try to prevent his assassination.
Another limitation concerns image size and resaves. If you make a picture small enough or resave it many times, then the fine details vanish. A picture that looks obviously like a fake cannot be detected as being a fake.
Neal goes on to note that the bin Laden frame and border were both saved at least twice and not at the same time, and that the various elements of the video came from different sources. The conclusion:
So is Bin Laden still alive? I see no proof of his existance that is newer than three years ago. Bin Laden is as alive as Elvis.
It is a lot easier to hide a corpse than a living body.
