Analyzing Photos

Hi there,

I have done some searching for this topic on the forum but with no success so apologies if this subjects been done to death

When you get a video of stills of possible UFO sightings, are there any standard filters as it were that you use to look at them to check for things like evidence of mistaken identity or a hoax?

I have the usual graphics programs and access to some more advanced stuff as well so I was wondering how people generally go about checking this kind of thing.

It's a learned process usually taking awhile to get to know the different aspects of several different mediums, and the programs that can show alterations. Honestly if you dont know, throw it to someone who does. The world is littered with alot of people who do "analysis" who have no clue what theyre doing.

You can surely do some looking in channels, alot can be seen there alone.

Originally posted by jritzmann
It's a learned process usually taking awhile to get to know the different aspects of several different mediums, and the programs that can show alterations. Honestly if you dont know, throw it to someone who does. The world is littered with alot of people who do "analysis" who have no clue what theyre doing.

You can surely do some looking in channels, alot can be seen there alone.

I see what you're saying, and thanks for the tip about channels, but the way I'm looking at it is that I would rather not have to rely on anyone else's interpretation, at least at first which is why I was wndering if there was a sort of base starting point that most people work from.

Even the people who know what they're doing had to start somewhere

Unless you have access to some real juicy source material most 8bit footage won´t show you anything more than what an adjustment of brightness/contrast will forward. Like mentioned, peeking into the channels might give you a clue and also make sure you view anything at 100%. For video you might also benefit from using motiontracking software but i assume most hoaxers already have utilized motion tracking in their hoaxes and so forth you need to be better at analyzing than they are at producing

The bottleneck as far as ALL the material i´ve seen is lousy 8bit in combination with poor compression.

Here you go you can practice on this, there are some obvious errors but its something to play with

Originally posted by JackJuice
Here you go you can practice on this, there are some obvious errors but its something to play with

Thanks for that, I'll have a play and see what comes up

Originally posted by Motorbike Man
I see what you're saying, and thanks for the tip about channels, but the way I'm looking at it is that I would rather not have to rely on anyone else's interpretation

Understandable, however many, many UFO footage tapes really more or less demand knowing the nature of individual aspects related to the camera and it's filters (if any), as well as the mode of the camera's operation at the time (such as night vision, IR etc)

Many misconceptions arise from people having no idea how the image gets from the environment to the tape, nor how the actual event might have looked as opposed to the camera's interpretation. Then in the extreme you get people who tell you they can do spectral analysis on video tape (physically impossible) just because they havent a clue what it means, or how a CCD chip "sees" light and so forth.

Often, the people who claimed to have "analyzed" video or stills have only done minor enhancements of clarity or averaging. I'd tell you to enroll in a basic photoshop course, and all the progressively deeper courses right down the line, though advanced ops. It'd be a good course in basic imaging, and might help you get rolling.

Originally posted by jritzmann Honestly if you dont know, throw it to someone who does.

Originally posted by Motorbike Man
The way I'm looking at it is that I would rather not have to rely on anyone else's interpretation, at least at first which is why I was wndering if there was a sort of base starting point that most people work from.

Regardless if your a seasoned professional or just starting out, having one or two opinions is extremely advantagous to you and/or your analysis. The reality is that someone else could possibly detect something that you (or someone else) may have missed. Also with various other ones looking at the same image/video can help substantiate an aspect or fallacy that you've all found. There is to, the power in numbers when a conclusion has been made and/or determined. It carries much more weight when the same point of view is (pro or con) reported and backed up by other analyzers. When you do ask for assistance, do not share your opinion but rather wait to see if their analysis corresponds with yours.

Although it has not been mentioned, if it's at all possible to secure a report from the photographer or videographer this can help determine (or at least weigh heavily) on a decisive conclusion. If the witness is unable to answer simple question such as the direction or POV of the phenomena, it's quite possible that the credibility of the capture itself may lean more towards a fabrication. Was there any audio removed from the video capture? Does the Exif (Exchangeable Image File) data exist? Camera settings and scene information are recorded by the camera into the image file. Examples of stored information are shutter speed, date and time, focal length, exposure compensation, metering pattern and if a flash was used. If the submitted jpeg photo does not have this information, it's quite possible that the photo sent to you has been manipulated, cropped and/or filtered in some way by some popular editing program (IE: Photoshop, Corel, PaintShopPro, etc.). Of course for a true analysis to be conducted, the analyzer wants a untouched original (if possible).

One of the hardest aspects in both still and video captures is in the judging of the distance of the target/object/phenomena from the camera. Distance and the focal aspects of how the UFO was captured can really be decieving. Did the witness have his/her videocamera on autofocus? Was the photographer shooting at 1/60 or 1/1000 of a second, or was it also set on a 'auto-mode' feature? if it was a auto-feature, was it in 'sports-mode', 'portrait-mode', 'twilight-mode', (etc.)? All of these if shot at the same object would reflect differant results.


If you remember nothing else, use Occams Razor Golden Rule:
Occam's razor states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating, or "shaving off," those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. In short, when given two equally valid explanations for a phenomenon, one should embrace the less complicated formulation. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae (law of succinctness):
"entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem",
which translates to: entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.

This is often paraphrased as "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one." and has been popularized by, among others, the scientist Carl Sagan. (That is, the fewer assumptions an explanation of a phenomenon depends on, the better it is.)


I've barely scratched the surface here as there are so many differant aspects to learn, I could go on and on, but instead I'll direct you to some excellent and informative links that should help back what I've said and increase your knowledge on what to look for in an analysis and what questions to ask in regards to it. If you don't mind investing a few dollars, MUFON has an excellent manual available to its members.


Wishing you much luck in your endeavors,
Johnny

BLURFOs Are Not UFOs

UFO Tools

Physical Evidence Related to UFO Reports, Photographic Evidence

Offical UFO Investigations in France: the GEPAN/SEPRA Project

Triangulation - "Pre-Trigonometry"

CSICOP

UFO Sighting Questionnaire

"BLURFOs Are Not UFOs"

that is so true...haha

Firstly you need to start with a good quality video. Most streamed videos.. real/flashvideo etc are no use since the compression artifacts destroy or obliterate the subtle cues you're looking for..

Assuming you have good quality footage. A few things to try/look for

1. Lighting/. Is it consistent for all elements of the scene. (direction/colour/intensity/ambient light etc)
2. white point/black point/contrast. Are these consistent for all elements?
3. video/camera compression/edge artifacts...to all elements show consistent edge detail/sharpness/colour bleed etc?
4. Depth of field. Are all elements correctly focused for it's place in the scene?
5. interactive light/reflections/glows etc. Are these consistent?
6. motion blur. does this match for all elements? is the length/brightness and gradient falloff of the motion blur consistent with the medium and the lighting conditions?
7. Is the file type/size/date/embeded meta-data consistent with the back story surrounding the video?
8. compare the footage with other similar scenes. eg when looking at footage of UFO over a city, make sure you compare it with footage of planes, baloons etc as well.

In terms of processing, try stabilizing the footage to get a clearer view and look for tracking inconsistencies. Try averaging stabilized frames together, which helps eliminate random video-noise. this will show more detail, and help identify sloppy hand masking/tracking etc. Pushing the contrast can bring out more detail in flat looking skys, and again, help you spot tracking inconsistencies or compositing artifacts.

The main thing is observation though, and experience. try shooting a few test videos to see how something "should" look. try faking a few things, and see what issues you come up with, and learn something about optics/lighting/atmospheric effects etc..

In terms of software, Apple Shake is the best bet by a country mile.. Not cheap at $499 but about a tenth of the price it was a fews years ago, and you can download a 30 day trial. Only for Macs, though there was an earlier NT version though, which might be floating around the murkier corners of the net of you know where to look.

Some great tips here now and some great links as well, many thanks.

While I do believe we are being visited by ET's and that governments know a whole lot more than they are letting on, I'm also a firm believer in the fact that most average people's sightings of what they believe to be UFO's are generally explainable (Not all obviously, just most of them. I guess you could describe me as a sceptic who believes ) hence wanting to learn my way around image processing as I have had a few friends in the past bring me photo's and video footage as they know of my interests.

The point about letting other people have a look without them hearing my opinion first is very definitely a good one and I had always intended to (With the owners permission of course) post anything that I couldn't explain easily here anyway.

And quite apart from anything else, I'm finding the whole subject of picture analysis a whole lot of fun and extremely interesting