One of these Osamas is not like the others...

duh.

I shouldn't laugh at crimestop, but...

:rofl:

"the foam got in your eyes again" and "crimestop" is truther codespeak for "quit kicking my ass on the facts!".

It seems he uses that ROFL smiley when he's totally confused and when he's totally embarrassed.

It's Osama: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=125&topic_id=147622

... your linked Boloboffin OP is from this same video they tried to pass as Osama? How utterly desperate can you get?

"Released by the Pentagon"

:rofl:

... if that's not too much to ask.

ETA: Also note, Boloboffin's link is to a "truther" site, muckrakerreport.com, not to the Pentagon.

...Are you now claiming that the Pentagon is not the source of the Osama picture in Boloboffin's OP?

The claim that this picture came from the video they tried to pass for another Osama tape is a mind numbingly desperate, and transparent lie.

Are there no limits to what you'll try to get people to swallow? Amazing.

A "truther" discovered that the PAL to NTSC conversion that was used is what distorted the images. If you correct for the vertical compression that conversion caused, it's Osama.

...I'll try again: Are you seriously claiming that the picture in Boloboffin's OP came from the same video (the most recent one) they tried to pass for another Osama tape?

Seems a simple enough question.

:eyes:

...For the third time: Are you seriously claiming that the picture in Boloboffin's OP came from the same video (the most recent one) they tried to pass for another Osama tape?

What's so tough about answering this question, William?

... came from the same tape that Boloboffin's did. The same pic is on that muckrakerreport.com page. You "read" it? You sure didn't "get" it: The original was shot with a PAL-format camcorder, which is the format used in M.E.; the Pentagon released the "fat Osama" version, which had been converted to NTSC, which caused vertical compression by dropping some horizontal scan lines; and the pic in Boloboffin's post (which is also from the muckrakerreport.com page) has been stretched back to the original aspect ratio. It's Osama. Get it now? The PENTAGON released the version that DOESN'T look like Osama, and a "TRUTHER" figured out why.

...with a great deal of BS sprinkled in because you didn't like the way just answering "yes" sounded.

The "fat Osama" version.

:rofl:

... and perhaps stop embarrassing yourself. "Fat" chance of that, huh. :eyes:

Try again.

Sooo... every OTHER known picture/video *wasn't* shot with PAL format cameras? If not, were they made by our government? Wouldn't all the videos released to al Jazeera be shot in PAL format... you know, since that's "the format used in the M.E.".... and stuff?

... since there are film and digital still pictures to compare against, which wouldn't be subject format conversion distortions. It would be kinda stupid to say anything at all about "every OTHER known picture/video," dontcha think? Show me the specific "*other* pictures/videos" you would like compared, and maybe this thread will serve some useful purpose after all.

On October 29, 2004, at 21:00 UTC, the Arab television network, Al Jazeera, broadcast excerpts from a videotape of Osama bin Laden addressing the people of the United States, in which he accepted responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks, condemns the Bush government's response to those attacks and presents those attacks as part of a campaign of revenge and deterrence motivated by his witnessing of the destruction in the Lebanese Civil War in 1982.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Osama_bin_Laden_video

Was this video shot in non-PAL? Does Al Jazeera broadcast in PAL?

Please note, I'm not arguing against you here, I'm asking questions because I don't know, and I'm trying to understand the difference between the one "fat osama" video and all the rest....

According to this page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videos_of_Osama_bin_Laden , all of his videos have been released by al Jazeera... so what makes the one with "fat osama" different?

Thanks,

Ghost

But first, the Wikipedia page you linked to says:

"Many of the Osama bin Laden tapes have been released directly (by mail or messenger) to Arabic language satellite television networks like Al Jazeera."

... which is in better agreement with what I thought.

You pic is very small, but I found a somewhat larger version from the same video that looks like this when compared to an older photograph (from Getty Images) and to the "confession video" with a corrected aspect ratio:



So, it doesn't look like this video suffers from the squashing effect of a bad PAL-to-NTSC conversion. But that doesn't necessarily prove that it was originally shot in NTSC format. If you read the link in Boloboffin's post, the theory about the "confession video" is that the PAL-to-NTSC conversion used for that particular video was the type which simply discards scan lines to get from PAL's 576 down to NTSC's 480. That's a crappy way to do it; a much better method is to completely resample 480 lines, interpolating as necessary on the 576 line fields, which doesn't distort the aspect ratio. (The horizontal resolution of both formats is usually stated as 720, but that's really just what's typically used when either is digitized. The scan lines in both broadcast formats are continuously varying analog, not pixels, so digitizing requires creating arbitrary horizontal pixels. Both formats have an overall picture aspect ratio of 4:3, so the "pixels" are not really square, and PAL "pixels" are more rectangular than NTSC's.)

So this video may have been (and probably was) shot in PAL, but by comparing it to the Getty photograph, any conversion that might have been used doesn't appear to have caused the vertical compression that we see in the "confession video."

So, you ask, why would the "confession video" be different? One possible explanation is that it was not released to a television network like most others. According to the Pentagon, it was found in a house in Jalalabad after a Taliban raid, presumably by the military or intelligence officers. If Al Jazeera converts a tape from PAL to NTSC, their technicians are likely to be aware of the difficulties and to use the best available conversion software. A Pentagon PR-type person might be more likely to use the first conversion software he found, and might even be oblivious to the fact that some are not as good as others -- or at least be oblivious to what CTists would make out of a bad conversion.

..."it was found in a house in Jalalabad"

:rofl:

although I don't *fully* understand all of the technical parts, it sounds reasonable enough...

Now let me ask this: If I took a digital camcorder I bought here in the US, then went to Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iraq and bought one there, then recorded myself on both of them and came back home and downloaded the digital recordings on my computer.... would I look different on the video shot on the camera bought over there than I would on the one I brought from here?

... so both images should appear fairly close to true aspect ratio after uploading and when played, so they should be very similar. (I wouldn't expect them to be exactly identical, however; I have had a half-dozen camcorders over the years and in all of them I've noticed that circles aren't exactly circular, and that the aspect ratio of objects differed slightly from digital still photos of the same scene. But the differences are small enough to be unnoticeable for practical purposes. You'd need a fairly large difference before a person's face becomes hard to recognize.)

No kidding... if you convert one thingie into another thingie than the first thingie is really the second thingie and the Osama is the Osama regardless if it is an AP or CIA photo... the important thingie is that all thingies are the real thingies... and we are supposed to believe that thingie.

...finally, a straight answer.

Thank you.

:D

a muslim of many faces and clever disguises! damn that sneaky Arab!

... Be on the lookout, he's been spotted recently. This photo was snapped only a few days ago by an alert OCTer who's been hot on Osama's trail:





You may notice at first glance it doesn't really look that much like him, that's because it was shot with a Pillsbury format camera, which as you know, when converted back to Bizarro World format causes that pesky vertical compression making him look chubby and unnaturally pale. Fortunately, all you have to do is stretch it back to it's original aspect ratio and... voila:

the Pillsbury dough boy disguise almost had me fooled.

:rofl:

they're practically twins!