Come to think of it, in a time with all that high-tech, why are all videos always of crappy quality?

This really bothers me. I see a link to a video where someone supposedly caught something interesting and the video is always shaky, pixelated or has a terrible color palette.

We live in a time where camera lenses have a high resolution and I'm sure, every [hobby] ufologist (or tech nut) has a tripod with his/her camera ready, but why do these videos always turn out like they where filmed by their grandparents with an 8mm camera?

Naturally, the crappy quality steers away from the believability of the content and ultimately prevent finding out what the hell these people were filming in the first place.

Anyone with me?

Originally posted by blue dome
We live in a time where camera lenses have a high resolution

The lens are not the ones with high resolution, the resolution is a characteristic of the sensor used in digital cameras.

I see some possibilities for the bad quality of most videos.

1. Shakiness is expected when the object filmed was at some distance and the zoom was used. If you ever tried to keep a zoomed in image steady you will know that it is at least difficult to do without a tripod.

2. Excessive compression is usually a result of the need to upload the video to those sites like YouTube that host the videos. As a streaming video, file size and quality could turn a real time playing video in something like a slide show, so they usually want highly compressed videos. Some have also a reduction in the number of colours used.

3. Reduced frame size is the same problem as the one above, it is related to the file size of the video.

4. Some people, knowing that a small sized, highly compressed video is something that we should expect to see on the Internet use that as a way of making fake videos that are difficult to show as fakes because of the high compression and small frame size, that is why here on ATS we see people asking for the uncompressed file. The type of answer will sometimes show what the idea of the poster was.


The only physical reason for not having thousands of good videos on the Internet is the fact that most people (like me) do not carry a video camera, a digital photo camera or a cell-phone with video capability with them all the time.

Most UFO sightings are at night, and as anyone who has ever used a camera knows, its not easy to take shots at night.

Try take a photo of an airplane after midnight. Its not easy!

Now even if it is daytime, try keep steady frames on say, a bird in flight. Its not easy!

Most videos on the web are heavily compressed making them look even worse.

It's clearly NOT an hi-tech era, as you saw. Almost not for US.

In reality it's a CRAPPY era. Mostly bad sound, bad video, etc.

Video cameras are a clear example: no one NO ONE, there's no way, comes with a REAL zoom. DV quality it's what it is, irrealistic crappy colors and chopped luma&color bandwidth.

And only a very few ones comes with an optical stabilizer (the only decent one).

Maybe it's jut becuse they don't want we take video proofs?

Short answer, no they are not all bad, I have seen some amazing ones, by professional tv crews with good cameras. But to see those, you need to watch them on dvd, or some kind of good documentary, which isnt quite like typing youtube.com on a computer.

Now even if it is daytime, try keep steady frames on say, a bird in flight. Its not easy!

Actually, its pretty easy, just kneel down, and rest your elbow on your leg. Or rest the camera on some low wall. Or someones shoulder. Its easy.

[edit on 29-7-2007 by Rikhart]