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Bin Laden confession tape...

The Silver Shadow

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The Silver Shadow
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Jan 13, 2007
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I thought about this last night when I went to my uncle's house. In December, my grandmother died and my mom and my uncle went back to Iran for the funeral. When they returned, my uncle brought back some video tapes (VHS) of an old Iranian sitcom from the 1950's-1960's (Apparently, it was a hit up until the revolution of 1979 and after). He was saying that he would convert them to DVDs and give us a copy because my mom loved that show. The problem was that in Iran, the VHS tapes were all in PAL format, and since my uncle still has a VCR, which plays NTSC format, they wouldn't work here in Canada. So, what was required was that they had to be converted to NTSC format, and when they were converted, the picture was blurry and required some editing in order to match it up with the audio. We saw the finished product last night on a DVD, it was great to watch, but the picture was still blurry, even after editing.

So anyways, this got me thinking about the formats of video. If the Bin Laden confession tape was released on a VHS tape, then wouldn't the quality be terrible anyways since the US, Canada and a few other places use NTSC while the rest of the world uses PAL format? My guess is since this video was found in Afghanistan, a place which doesn't use NTSC format, it had to use PAL or something to the equivalent. I bet that the original tape, in PAL format, showed the entire picture perfectly, and the "fat Bin Laden", as has been proven beforehand, was just one frame out of thousands that were in the tape and could have been used.

Shouldn't Dylan know about the differences in format?
 
This part of the wingnut's diabolical grand conspiracy has always confused me. Not so much because of the "fatness" in CERTAIN frames, that I can see the extremist CTers grasping to, but look at the people in the tape with Bin Laden, fake or otherwise. His righthand man and another AL-Qaeda top ten guy are in the room with him for the whole tape.

TAM:)
 
I'm not entirely sure I agree with their analysis, for a number of reasons.

1) PAL and NTSC analogue television formats, as specific to geographic region, are based on the frequency of mains power supply. I don't think there's any logical reason to assume the camera used to make this recording was specifically manufactured for the Afghani market, thus there's no reason to assume it is in PAL format.

2) Conspiracy theorists use cropped versions of the videos, thus we can't see the actual screen aspect ratio. Also all versions released include changes that were done by the US Government (such as adding translations).

3) Although the number of lines is different for a PAL and NTSC system, aspect ratio is the same. Thus a converted video would retain whatever aspect ratio it was recorded in. Most non professional cameras record only in 4:3 ratio, even on "widescreen" mode (they actually crop the image, it's not wider at all). Were it recorded in 16:9 (the only other ratio available for video cameras in 2001) it would appear thinner when played in 4:3, not fatter.

4) Osama Bin Laden appears as normal at other points in the video, indicating the video ratio is not to blame.

-Gumboot
 
gumboot said:
1) PAL and NTSC analogue television formats, as specific to geographic region, are based on the frequency of mains power supply. I don't think there's any logical reason to assume the camera used to make this recording was specifically manufactured for the Afghani market, thus there's no reason to assume it is in PAL format.
Click to expand...

NTSC is used only in a few select countries, namely North America, Japan, South Korea, Philippines and some other countries in Americas. Most countries in Europe, Middle East and Far East use PAL. Although the camera was certainly not manufactured for the Afghani market, it most certainly would have been manufactured for the PAL market. In Finland, a PAL market, there are no other formats available in the shops. So it would seem to be fair to assume, that if you buy any piece of equipment in the PAL area, it most certainly would be of PAL format, regardless of the country itself.
 
ref said:
Although the camera was certainly not manufactured for the Afghani market, it most certainly would have been manufactured for the PAL market. In Finland, a PAL market, there are no other formats available in the shops. So it would seem to be fair to assume, that if you buy any piece of equipment in the PAL area, it most certainly would be of PAL format, regardless of the country itself.
Click to expand...



You're assuming the camera used to record the video was purchased in Afghanistan.

-Gumboot
 
gumboot said:
You're assuming the camera used to record the video was purchased in Afghanistan.

-Gumboot
Click to expand...

Actually, I'm assuming it was not purchased in a NTSC country. Countries in that area support PAL. Purchased in any of those countries and it would be PAL.

But I agree with you on the main point. I think that linked conversion analysis misses something. When converting between the standards, the conversion does not simply flatten the picture. It adds the missing lines with some conversion technique, keeping the ratio somewhat similar to the original. Still, I have no doubt it is Osama on that tape.
 
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ref said:
Actually, I'm assuming it was not purchased in a NTSC country. Countries in that area support PAL. Purchased in any of those countries and it would be PAL.
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I think there's probably a pretty good chance it wasn't purchased at a retail store in any country.

I'm not sure where international terrorists get their video cameras from, but I wouldn't be willing to assume it was of a given format.

-Gumboot
 
gumboot said:
I think there's probably a pretty good chance it wasn't purchased at a retail store in any country.

I'm not sure where international terrorists get their video cameras from, but I wouldn't be willing to assume it was of a given format.

-Gumboot
Click to expand...

Well, we will never know the format for certain :) But we don't have to. The format doesn't change the people appearing on the video.

I tried to learn more about the conversion, whether it has anything to do with this video or not. It seems that standard conversion techniques require that the differences between line resolution and field frequency be interpolated. This results in some of the original image data represented in the source material being lost as the signal is averaged across signal formats.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Standards_Conversion
 
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