More on the Bin Laden tape: Digital analysis proves heavy editing.

[backscatter712]

We pretty much already know that the recent Bin Laden video's fake, but I thought it'd be fun to show a little analysis from a true expert.

I'll just give you a couple links here:

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9777136-7.html?tag=head which has the news.com mainstream media summary, and

http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/ which has the actual analysis, by Dr. Neil Krawetz, a well known figure in computer security and hacking circles, who also knows quite a lot about computer graphics and digital imaging.

Let's see how I did on my Friday prediction...

* "Assuming the video includes animation and not a still picture, the clips will contain splices."
I nailed this. There are some very obvious places where the video has been spliced. Here's some examples:

o 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.

o 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. In the audio track are even more splices.

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.

In short, he does mention the beard - there's no sign of digital manipulation of the beard, though that doesn't mean he isn't wearing a falsie or using Just For Men.

But yeah, the video does remind Dr. Krawetz of Weekend at Bernie's...

[Igel]

1. If A --> B,

what conditions on A and/or B are necessary for B --> A ?

Did Krawetz meet them?