I found this interesting, somebody stabilized the famous Zapruder film of JFK’s assassinaton.
I saw this sometime last week and it is very interesting. They also did some graphical cleanup so while also stabilizing it so its slightly cleaner and such. As with any good conspiracy theory, the magic bullet shall remain I’m sure but this is damn impressive - if somewhat sickening to watch.
Yeah, it’s even more gruesome, what with the “easier” viewing.
I’m a little surprised this was never done before. I’m sure it’s easier now, but given the importance of this film it could have been done by hand.
I can’t remember…was the shot supposed to have come from the front, or from behind? The stabilized image looks very much to me like the shot entered the back of the head and exited the right front forehead…
So, what exactly was done to stabilize the film? Did they take out parts of the left side (it’s all black) in order to make the camera appear to shake less?
In any event, it’s chilling to watch.
I suspect that the confidential files will show it wasn’t needed from a Gov. stand anyways, or if it was they wouldn’t release it.
They expanded the viewing area and black it all out then found a way to center around JFK’s head I assume such that it stayed in the relative same spot and the video moved around it. So his head remains motionless to us, but the video rectangle is moving all around him and around the blackout area to keep him stabilized.
It can be a bit disconcerting at first, but if you focus on him and not the video as a whole you can see how it helped.
Holy *&?#!
That’s the first time I’ve ever seen that.
Scary.
My understanding is that image stabilization of this kind is done by going over the film frame by frame, marking similar points of reference that do not move on each frame, then lining up the stable points of reference to the same x-y coordinates in succeeding frames. Example: you mark one corner of one of the street signs (which was not moving, as it was planted in the ground), then line up the same point in each succeeding frame (until it goes out of view–then you find a new reference point; or actually, you map several reference points for each frame). Run the shifted, lined-up frames together and you get a stable image, though because of the movement you have to expand the image area (the black areas).
I think that’s how this sort of thing is done. I saw done on some show on the National Geographic channel a few weeks back (not to the Zapruder film; it was some kind of lake monster, Loch Ness thing).
That said, the image is interesting, because it really seems to me like the kill shot does come from the front. That explosion coming out of his head looks less like an exit wound and more like an impact explosion of the projectile hitting his skull. (It’s the same thing as why modern weapons do so much damage vs. old guns–the speed of the bullets is so great that when they hit the body, they explode on impact, like a meteorite hitting the earth. They crater, in other words. That’s why getting hit with a high-velocity bullet is so damaging–it turns the impact point almost literally into hamburger. No way to repair the damage.)
From the angle we see, if that is an exit wound spray, then the bullet would have come from behind and his left–which is not where the Book Depository is, if I remember the diagrams of Dealey Plaza. Something’s fishy there, but I guess we’ll never really know the truth.