Wednesday, June 11, 2008

No Flying Object

Why video fakery proves no flying objects, and why they wouldn’t use flying objects anyway


9/11 video fakery has been proven. The videos showing a plane look fake because they are fake. So cheesy are they, that composi-traitors like Evan Fairbanks felt compelled to appear on television and declare that a commercial airliner “disappeared like a bad special effect”. News perp Peter Jennings memed, “It’s like a graphic artist, isn’t it?” Yes, indeed. 

Live Video Compositing Rules Out Flying Objects

To be specific, the 9/11 airplane videos are video composites. Each has had a flying airplane image inserted into what is otherwise legitimate footage. Most of these approximately 30 videos came after the fact, but 2 of them were shown live. Focusing on the live airplane videos, and understanding compositing technology, we can rule out a number of scenarios which have been proposed to explain the damage that occurred to the twin towers.

In fact, accepting video fakery on the live shots, we can rule out any flying object as having caused the airplane-shaped holes. Inserting an airplane image into a live shot is doable, under certain very specific circumstances, as I explain in the Theory of Live 9/11 Composites. If there is really an empty sky, an airplane image can be made to appear to fly right across. If there is high contrast between a nice, straight, dark tower, and a bright sky, the airplane can be made to disappear behind the edge.

However, covering up and/or erasing a real flying object on video is a different matter altogether, whether the object is a missile, a UAV, a Global Hawk, an A-3 Skywarrior, or anything else. A flying object could literally be covered up with an overlaid airplane image, provided the airplane is bigger, and provided the motion can be matched.

Matching the motion of a video object in real time involves real-time motion tracking. Motion tracking software was in its infancy in 2001, and even today, in 2008, an incoming small flying object could not be reliably tracked in real-time.

Motion tracking works by identifying by a pattern of pixels on a particular frame. The software then looks for a similar pattern on each subsequent frame, and keeps track of the change in position. The identifying pattern must be selected first, on a frozen frame. Only then can the software attempt to track. For an incoming object like a missile, there is simply no time to select what is being tracked.

Even if a selection could somehow be made, motion tracking is notoriously finicky. Any small error in tracking would give the overlaid airplane image an unnatural motion. With current technology, there is no possible way to reliably track a flying object live in real-time.

So the perpe-traitors might have considered attacking the twin towers with a missile and replacing it on video with images of a 767. For non-live video, this is doable. But factoring in the necessity of showing the television audience live footage of an airplane, this entire scenario can be ruled out as technically impossible.

They Wouldn't Use Missiles Anyway  

In fact, even ignoring the problems with live motion tracking, I think we can rule out flying objects with logic. The same reasoning that allowed Gerard Holmgren to rule out the use of real planes in his 2006 article, may be extended to rule out the use of all flying objects.

Accepting the general notion of 9/11 as an inside job, and that the perpe-traitors wanted to sell a story about suicidal Musilm hijackers using airplanes to cause catastrophic damage to the twin towers, Holmgren methodically goes through options. There are simply too many problems with using real airplanes.

Real pilots could never be trusted to actually commit suicide, so any real-plane scenario must involve remote control guidance. If the real flights AA11 and UA175 were electronically hijacked, the pilots and flight attendants would be on the radio, and the air-phones, screaming “Help! We’ve been electronically hijacked!”. Even if those systems could be sabotaged, at low altitude, personal cell phones would work.

Perhaps the real passenger flights could be landed somewhere, and switched with military 767s, flown by remote guidance. Can a 767 really be reliably targeted with accuracy down to 1 foot? I doubt it, and that is what is needed in this situation. If the “collapse” begins obviously below where the plane hit, how would that be explained away?

Worse, what if the plane partially misses the tower? If even a wing tip were to break off and land on the street somewhere, it could be found and photographed by the wrong person. A passenger aircraft has over 1 million serial number parts. If the serial number on that military plane doesn’t match the records for UA175, how is that explained away?

As difficult as those problems are to solve, the fundamental unsolvable problem with real airplanes is physics. The people must believe that there is extensive damage to the core structure of each tower. This requires what Killtown calls “Guaranteed Penetration”, an apt phrase. And to carry off the “collapse” hoax, the demolitions must begin at the location of the airplane holes. Therefore the airplanes must appear to penetrate and completely enter the tower, at very precise locations. There is no way the engineers could guarantee that.

An aluminum passenger jet simply will not enter a steel and concrete tower . The tower is much, much stronger. The twin towers were specifically designed to withstand the crash of a commercial jetliner. A real plane would mostly crash up against the side of the tower, exploding and sending serial number wreckage down to the street below. Such an occurrence would do very little damage to the building, but would obliterate the official story.

Holmgren knew enough about physics and airplanes to reason that far, and concluded that it must have been a missile strike. Missiles can be precision targeted, at least more so than airplanes. And missiles are good for blowing large holes in strong structures. But he didn’t know enough about video technology to rule out live motion tracking, as I have done.

And there are other problems with missiles. Missiles blow the hell out of things. How could a missile be controlled to create a plane-shaped hole? Could pre-planted explosives in the building help determine the shape of the hole? Yes, but then why not just use the pre-planted explosives by themselves? Why complicate things with a missile?

What About Amateur Photographers?

Further, even if an incoming missile could be replaced on live TV with an airplane image, what about amateur photographers? With anything flying towards the twin towers, chances are very good that many people would shoot photos and videos. This becomes a sticky problem. On the other hand, if there is no flying object of any kind, the chances of an incriminating amateur video drop drastically. People shoot pictures of flying things. But how does someone shoot a picture of nothing?

It’s possible that someone would inadvertently shoot video of the tower exploding. But there would be far, far less of those to deal with, than there would with any sort of flying object to attract attention.

The strategy for dealing with amateur photographers is first to confiscate. We know for certain that agents were in position around the towers confiscating cameras and deleting digital files. If incriminating footage slipped through the Gestapo, the next strategy would be to co-opt. “What We Saw” by “Bob & Bri” is very dramatic home video shot from an apartment just northwest of the towers. They began shooting shortly after the first “airplane strike”. They captured both of the demolitions. But the second “airplane strike”was evidently edited out.

If confiscating and co-opting fail, and someone did decide to go public with footage of no plane, the perpe-traitors would simply claim that this footage was faked. They would claim that the photographer removed the airplane from the footage. They would seize the no-plane footage, composite an airplane into it, and claim that was the original. A computer with editing software and files would be planted as evidence, and the photographer would be charged with being a terrorist. He would be sent to prison, and silenced.

The hole in the north tower shows a few perimeter columns which are bent inward. This has been cited as proof that the tower was hit from outside with some sort of flying object. But this is not necessarily true. A sagging floor will create an inward pull between the core and perimeter. We see this trick occurring shortly before the main demolitions, where the outer wall sections are bent significantly inward, at places where nothing is alleged to have hit from the outside.

Can the perpe-traitors really control the amateur video? If you are inclined to think not, then answer this: Where is the video of the hole forming in the south tower? The best video to show that would be CNN Ghostplane. Ghostplane is edited. We see the airplane image enter the tower, we see the wings pass through the wall without creating the hole. We see the white explosions come out of the wall, then we see the orange and black fireball coming from deep within the building.

Ghostplane is supposedly amateur footage shot by Michael Hezarkhani. Who edited it? What did the missing footage show? What format was the original? Where is that tape? Why does Hezarkhani say that he is not allowed to speak about his video, on advice of his lawyer?

And what about Chopper 5? Shouldn’t there be thousands, or at least hundreds of different copies around, recorded by hundreds of different people on their home VCR decks? Where are they? There are only two (2) versions of Chopper 5 – the west coast and the east coast. The two are quite different from one another, and are suspect. Where is an actual original recording off of the television?

I have advertised and sent out numerous requests for original television recordings from 9/11. When it comes to Chopper 5, they simply do not exist. WNYW FOX 5 TV in New York has refused all requests to license the footage.

Gelitin

The airplane–shaped holes were blown with pre-planted explosives. I strongly suspect that “Gelitin” were the crew in charge of setting up the explosives in the North Tower. Who are Gelitin?

Get this: According to an August 2001 New York Times article "Balcony Scene (or unseen) Atop the World", a group of “artists” calling themselves “Gelitin” took over and occupied the 91st floor of the North prior to 9/11. In what was dubbed a work of performance art entitled "The B-Thing",  they built a structural balcony and were photographed out on it.



They made drawings that included the layout of the core columns, and the perimeter columns. A surviving drawing is made showing precisely the correct number of 240 perimeter columns.



“AA11” allegedly struck at the 92nd floor of the North tower. How suspicious is it that “Gelatin” were holed up at floor 91, and outside on the perimeter doing who knows what? Does anyone believe these were performance artists?

The Smith Act

This article is fictional. It is dialog from an unpublished screenplay, where a fictional character called "John" researches 9/11 and questions the legitimacy of government.

I, Alexander Baker, do not wish to advocate, abet, advise, nor teach the duty, necessity, desirability, nor propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States nor the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, nor the government of any political subdivision therein, by force nor violence, nor by the assassination of any officer of any such government; and

I, Alexander Baker, do not intend to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, I have not printed, published, edited, issued, circulated, sold, distributed, nor publicly displayed any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, nor propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force and/or violence, nor attempted to do so, and

I, Alexander Baker do not wish to organize nor help nor attempt to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, and/or encourage the overthrow and/or destruction of any such government by force and/or violence; nor do I wish to become nor am I a member of, nor am I affiliated with, any such society, group, and/or assembly of persons, and I do not know the purposes thereof.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Do You Want to Overthrow the United States Government?

The following is fictional. It is dialog from an unpublished screenplay, in which a character named "John" researches 9/11 and questions the legitimacy of government. Please see this disclaimer.

If 9/11 doesn't make you withdraw support for the continued existence of the government, what would?

Most people support the official story of 9/11. That's a far cry from believing it. Some actually believe it, I suppose. But those people are simply stupid. For better or worse, half of all people are below average in intelligence. But none of the reasonably intelligent upper half actually believes the official story of 9/11. Not a single one. The details of the narrative range from far-fetched to physically impossible.

Q: Why do people support it?

A: Fear.

If the truth of 9/11 were to become widely acknowledged, it could very easily lead to a Constitutional crises or revolution of some sort. What form it might take is not knowable. A very volatile situation though.

Most people are afraid of revolution in any form. They don't necessarily like what "their" government and "their" media did on 9/11, but even those who are diametrically opposed to the endless war, nonetheless support the concept of continued government as such. I find that unfortunate, for the free market would provide all the same services as government, and would do so cheaper and more efficiently. I agree with a large body of literature which finds central government harmful and unnecessary.

But that is the answer to the human riddle of 9/11 story support. Fear of revolution. That explains why the engineers go along with the absurd gravity collapse theory. That's why so many alternative news outlets play along. They can put 2 and 2 together. If the revolution is to be avoided, the official story of 9/11 must be upheld.

I turn the question around. If you are a 9/11 truther, do you support a revolution?. Do you support the abolishment of the United States? So many truthers say the goal is "a new investigation". I find this laughable. Truthers elaborate: "A new and TRULY INDEPENDENT investigation". I laugh harder. A government is a territorial monopolist of jurisdiction and taxation. Thus government is a corrupt, criminal organization by definition. It is no more capable of investigating its own crimes than any other criminal organization is.

And people know this in their hearts. Yet they fear revolution. They have been so conditioned to equate "government" with "society", they imagine the world flying apart in the absence of an all powerful state running every aspect of their lives.

So people stop short. Somewhere along the line, nearly everyone stops short of the inescapable conclusion, that is that government must be abolished. It cannot be fixed. I would point out that the true founding document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, makes it quite clear that "it is the right of the people to . . . abolish it".

If 9/11 doesn't make you withdraw support for the continued existence of the government, what would?

So I must confront a very harsh reality about people. People like 9/11. People like the war. Whether they benefit outright, like the defense contractors, or mistakenly BELIEVE they benefit, people like 9/11 and the war because they fear the alternative more. They are conditioned to believe in the goodness of government. They are wrong, but if 9/11 won't convince them, what will? Nothing I can think of.

So I must confront a very harsh reality about myself. I am unlike you. I'm different. What makes me different is that I am physically incapable of experiencing fear. This, owing to some bizarre nerve damage I suffered in 2002. This loss of fear allows me to contemplate the unthinkable, while most cannot. It also involves an escalating pain syndrome that is getting pretty unbearable.

Everyone wants to fit in somewhere. To be on a team. But I do not fit. I fully admit this. I am the different one. I do not belong among people.

Nose Out Challenge

How does debris, or smoke, become a size and shape indistinguishable from the nose of a Boeing 767?




If you support the plane theory, tell me, which are noses, and which are debris exiting the building?

Monday, June 9, 2008

Chopper 5 and the Missing Shadow





Chopper 5 was a live, real-time composite. Adding proper shadows was not feasible. The shot was composed in such a way that all surfaces requiring shadows were hidden. But, as we all now know, a terrible mistake was made. The nose of the airplane image accidentally was allowed to come out the back side of the layer mask, so that it appeared to come out of the back side of the building.

So the second generation composites had to attempt to cover up the screw up. The "Gamma Press" shot includes an object exiting the tower that looks a lot like the fuselage.



It's consistent with Chopper 5. Then a strange, 2D looking flame gobbles up the object, it disappears, and is never seen again. StillDiggin named this the "Venus Plane Trap". We could sort of believe it was the fuselage, or maybe an over-sized engine, or. . . something.

The Fairbanks video also shows a cylindrical "nose cone" exiting, but does not show the Venus Plane Trap. It is from such a low angle, that the real explosion expands far enough to simply overtake the nose cone image.



Alas, there was a terrible problem with the 2nd generation composites also. There is no exit wound on WTC2.



So then the third generation of composites was born, those which show a dust explosion. The clearest example of this may be Naudet. The Naudet footage shows a dust explosion for the nose out, and it looks nothing at all like the fuselage of a plane. The frames of Naudet that would show the Venus Plane Trap have been edited out. Highly suspicious editing.



Both GammaTV and Naudet show a very dark shadow from the "nose out", a shadow cast diagonally across the building face. No such shadow is present in Chopper 5. Whether it is supposed to be a fuselage, an engine, debris, dust or anything else, the missing shadow in Chopper 5 is irreconcilable with reality. Shadows do not take a day off.

All the observations in all of these videos are consistent with the following narrative:

1. Chopper 5 and Chopper 7 are live composites, carefully composed to be doable in real-time.
2. The nose of the airplane image accidentally slipped out of the layer mask.
3. Composites were created throughout the day on 9/11 which showed a metallic, cylindrical object exiting, complete with (more or less) correct shadows.
4. It was discovered that there was no exit wound.
5. New composites were created that showed a dust cloud instead of any solid object, complete with (more or less) correct shadows.

I am not aware of any other narrative which satisfies the evidence.








Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Theory of Live 9/11 Airplane Composites

Introduction

I present a demonstration of the technique used to create the two live 9/11 video composites, first Chopper 7, then Chopper 5.





Higher quality versions of the compositing demonstrations may be downloaded here:

Chopper 5
Chopper 7


No airplane crashed into either Twin Tower. The various videos which depict a plane entering a building, such as Naudet, CNN Ghostplane, Evan Fairbanks, Luc Courchesne, and Spiegel TV, show just that – a plane entering a wall. They are devoid of the crash physics we would expect from an aluminum aircraft interacting with a steel and concrete structure. The plane does not twist, bend, break, explode or slow down. A certain frame of the CNN video shows no damage to the wall, after the wing of the airplane has passed through.

The composi-traitors would never attempt a live composite showing the plane entering the tower. The timing, positioning and lighting are too critical. It is currently impossible to accomplish that effect in real-time with the precision needed to avoid detection. If the explosion went off even one frame before the plane hit, that would be very difficult to explain away.

However, the live shots do not show a plane entering the tower. In fact, the live shots were cleverly composed in such a way as to make them doable. Only 2 shots showed airplane images live – Chopper 5 and Chopper 7.




Objective

My present objective is to offer a theory of how the live 9/11 airplane videos were accomplished, and how one of them went wrong.

Concept and Methods


The live 9/11 composites were created using a real-time digital effects environment, such as Avid. To demonstrate, I will recreate the technique of the 9/11 composites using Adobe After Effects, because it is software that I own. After Effects is a layer-based compositor that does not operate in real time. However, the principles of compositing are exactly the same, regardless of software. I maintain that any parameters in After Effects which can be set one time, and then operate correctly without need for frame-by-frame adjustment, are parameters which will operate correctly in real-time, given a real-time environment such as Avid.

Here are listed features for Avid Symphony, which include:

# Real-time Chroma and Luma keys
# Real-time full-motion alpha keying

These are precisely the features which made the 9/11 real-time composites possible.


Shot Composition

Creating a convincing live composite of the 9/11 airplane event requires several important attributes that simplify the job enough to be doable.

1. Very brief appearance and disappearance of plane.
2. High contrast between sky and tower
3. Plane path is across sky only.
4. Plane will disappear across straight vertical edge.
5. All surfaces requiring airplane shadows are hidden. 
6. Actual impact point is hidden.
7. Exploding walls are hidden.
8. Camera is as stable as possible.
9. No panning, tilting, zooming or focusing while airplane is on screen

Violating any one of these 9 requirements makes realistic live compositing impossible. How likely is it that all 9 happened by chance, on both shots? 

Compositionally, Chopper 5 and Chopper 7 are nearly identical. Both shots are from a mechanically stabilized helicopter platform. In both shots the helicopter is drifting slowly and steadily to the left. In both shots there is no zooming, tilting, panning or focusing while the camera is on screen. Both show a plane entering from the right side of the screen. Both have a straight, vertical , high contrast tower edge and clear sky to the right. In both shots, the plane crosses in less than 1.5 seconds, and disappears behind the edge. In both shots the (exploding) south and east faces of WTC2 are hidden.

Both shots satisfy all of the requirements for a doable live composite. The only compositional difference is that in Chopper 7  and the plane appears to approach from an angle, in Chopper 5 the plane crosses perpendicular to the camera view.

Test Shots

Test shots of the towers are made ahead of time and studied for luminance keying suitability. They are made at about 9 a.m. on a clear day, the easiest (only) type of atmospheric conditions to reliably duplicate. It is shown that it is quite easy and effective to pull a key from this footage.

The positions of the helicopters are known via GPS. The goal is to compose the shots in a way that can be duplicated within a margin of error. With Chopper 5, the idea is that the left edge of WTC2 goes smack in the center. In Chopper 7, WTC2 is completely obscured by WTC1, which is positioned dead center.

The Airplane Layer

With the tower test shots in hand, the airplane layers are made. Each airplane must match the corresponding tower shot in color, and must appear to travel 550 mph.

The two airplanes could originate as real video, or be drawn on computer (CGI). There are advantages and disadvantages to each method.

Real video has the advantage of looking like video. Noise patterns will be authentic. Properly composed, the lighting will automatically be correct. A real plane is shot 59.94 progressive, simultaneously from two (or more) cameras. It is done at a secure airbase location, with camera positions corresponding to the positions of the test shots. Since it is extremely unlikely that a real Boeing 767 can fly 550 mph at low altitude, it flies 275 mph, and every second frame is removed, doubling the velocity on video. 

CGI has the advantage of being able to create a single flight path in 3D space, then render a video of that flight from any virtual camera position. CGI would automatically create a plane on a transparent layer, with no need to remove any background.



Either way, color, lighting and motion blur are adjusted as needed to blend into the test shots. The airplane layer ends up as a 59.94 fps progressive video plane flying right-to-left on a transparency.

Since the airplane will be disappearing into a layer mask, there is a danger that the plane might run too long, travel too far, and escape out the back side of the mask. One safeguard against this is to have the plane slow down significantly after it has traveled far enough to enter the mask, and before it exits the mask. After doing test shots, it is possible to know the position of the tower within approximately 20 pixels.

Each frame of the airplane overlay is positioned. The plane flies across at full speed until it will surely be inside the mask, then it will slow down. It will slow down gradually, not all at once, in case any part of that deceleration is seen, it can be explained as the natural deceleration from impacting the tower.

Masking

It is necessary to remove the sky from the top layer. This is done by real time luminance keying (luma key).



Luma key makes transparent all pixels above an adjustable brightness threshold. A real edge on video is not perfectly sharp. The edges of the mask are made softer by adjustable degrees, with a parameter called “edge feathering”. The mask parameters are dialed in and tested during the minutes just before the actual event.

Synchronization

There is about a 1/2 second margin of error with respect to the explosions. As long as the explosion doesn’t begin before the plane crosses, and does begin no more than 1/2 second after the plane crosses, then each live video should look OK. This is good because we cannot know with frame-accurate precision when the explosion will become visible on the “impact” wall.

There is no margin of error with respect to synchronizing the two airplane shots to each other. They are synced using SMPTE time code. SMPTE clock stamps every frame of video with numbers for hour, minute, second and frame.

The explosion is set to go off at a known time on the wall clock - 9:03:11:00.  The airplane layer videos have embedded time code beginning 20 frames before impact, 9:03:10:10. On that video frame, the airplane is just outside the picture, to the right.

Master time code is transmitted via satellite from the studio to both helicopters. Airplane layer is set to “receive external sync”. At 9:03:10:10, the airplane layer plays automatically.

Stabilization and Motion Tracking

The motion of the airplane must appear steady. Unstable camera motion would necessitate  motion tracking of the towers. Real time motion tracking is unreliable in this situation, especially on Chopper 5, because the towers are in silhouette. There is not enough detail to reliably track them.

Without motion tracking, both live camera shots must be as stable as possible. A gyroscopically stabilized camera mount, such as Wescam is used. Helicopters cannot hold still. The best option is to fly very slowly, in the same direction as the airplane image, maintaining as constant and steady a speed as possible. Stability will not be perfect, but will be good enough. Deviations from perfect flight path will be small enough, and video quality will be poor enough, that the resulting unstable motion can be blamed on resolution and measurement error. True broadcast-quality copies of the final result must be kept top secret.  


On-Board Compositing

For several reasons, the shots must be composited with an AVID system on-board the helicopters, as opposed to at the studio. Communications satellites are set up to relay standard NTSC video signals. The composite is created in a different format, then converted to NTSC. A raw camera shot could be intercepted and recorded by the wrong people. Even if they could guarantee a secure transmission, they would want to minimize the number of eyes that ever saw the raw shot.

American television conforms to the NTSC standard, which is interlaced video at 29.97 fps. Compositing is done using progressive images, not interlaced. The video is shot at 59.94 fps progressive, and the composite is done in this format. Each frame of the composited output is converted into one interlaced video field, thus becoming 29.97 fps NTSC. This NTSC signal is transmited back to the studio as an ordinary news helicopter feed.

On board requirements:

Avid system
59.94 fps progressive camera, Wescam mount
Small broadcast switcher
Receiving master SMPTE clock from the studio


A total of three video layers are required for the effect:

1. The raw twin tower camera shot.
2. The airplane flying across a transparency.
3. The twin tower shot, with sky masked out in real time.


At the correct time, the airplane flies across the screen, right to left, and disappears behind the tower. The engineer stops the plane layer. If it is stopped too soon, the plane freezes or disappears in mid air. If it is stopped too late, the nose of the airplane will poke out the back side of the mask.

In case of emergency, the last resort is to pull down the master fader, and transmit a black picture until the situation is rectified.

Report Card

Chopper 5 

Grade: F

The crew on Chopper 5 blew it. They zoomed in too late, after the network was already broadcasting their shot. There is, of course, no plane in the wide shot, as it is quite impossible to realistically composite an airplane into a zooming shot.

The motion of the helicopter (and therefore the airplane) is stable enough to the eye. But careful measurements show that the airplane motion is slightly more stable on the unstabilized version of the footage.

The nose of the airplane pops out of the back of the layer mask.

The engineer faded to black (too late), stopped the plane layer, then faded back up again.



Chopper 7

Grade: A

The crew on Chopper 7 did a nice job.




Detonation Flashes as Sync Pops

The "airplane" strike on each twin tower featured a quick bright flash, right at the nose, just as it appeared to enter the wall. What were these flashes?



In trying to answer this, as usual, I wonder how I would create these video composites, and what problems I would have. After thinking it through, I know what the flashes were: Sync pops. They were a vital element in video fakery. Without the flashes, getting the 9/11 airplane composites right would have been far more difficult, and taken a lot more time.

Everyone has seen the countdown which precedes a motion picture. It ends when the counter reaches the number 2. On that exact frame, there is a bright flash, and often a beep tone. Known as a "two pop" or a "sync pop", the reason for having this flash is synchronization.



The video and audio elements of a show are created separately, and assembled together later. If a special effects artist created, say, a video composite sequence, he could deliver it back to the editor with a sync pop on the correct frame. The editor could then visually align that pop with the pop on his master, and he would quickly and confidently know that the effects shot was at the correct place on the timeline.

If I was in charge of the 9/11 video composites, I would not want to attempt to actually show an airplane hitting a tower in real time. I would insist that all live videos avoid showing that. This is, of course, the decision that was made for 9/11. Neither of the two live shots showed a plane hitting anything. For a theory of the live 9/11 videos, please see this. The present article concerns those videos which actually do show a plane entering the tower, none of which were live.

Without a flash, synchronization would be a major headache. We are going to insert a plane into various pieces of footage, from different cameras, at different angles. Presumably we've scouted the locations and done the test footage, and we've already got the airplane overlays done.

The angles and sizes match. But how do we determine where in time to place the airplanes? If the plane on one video enters the tower a little too early or a little too late, compared to another video, it could be a dead giveaway. For example, if there is a particular feature in the falling debris that is known to occur 123 frames after airplane impact, it had better be the same 123 frames later on all videos which show it.

As composi-traitors, we could try to use the same strategy, and key in on some identifiable feature, and work forward or backward in time. But what if there is no such feature readily apparent? Or if there is, what if one angle shows it, but another doesn't? And remember, we're under a deadline here. We need to crank out these composites as quickly as possible, and get them right. We don't have time to scour these explosion videos looking for a key piece of falling aluminum.

There is time code, which can be embedded into video and used to synchronize elements. But for this to be useful in this situation, we would need a live time code feed from a single master clock, going to all of the cameras as they are recording the tower explosions. This requires a satellite connection from the studio, and a pro camera. The idea is to pass off these videos as "amateur".

How will we know where in time to place the airplane sequence?

Enter the flashes. The flashes are very brief, lasting about 1 video frame, or 1/30 of a second. They make a very handy marker for where to place the nose of the airplane, in both time and space. On all of our prepared airplane layers, we have already designated a particular frame to be the one where the plane impacts the tower. In the editing software, we simply slide the impact frame to line up with the flash frame.

The flash frame also tells us when to begin erasing the plane with a mask. The flash frame is the last one before the nose starts to disappear.

The flashes on the 9/11 airplane videos are real. They are explosive detonations. They may or may not have been a necessary beginning of the huge explosions which followed. Either way, they were an essential element in synchronizing the airplane videos that fooled the world.