Osama — the secret video
posted at 7:00 pm on September 15, 2007 by Allahpundit
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Impressive. Bryan will know how this was done, I’m sure, but it’s not obvious to me. I’m guessing they simply superimposed the lips of some other guy, but if so then they did a very slick job of it. The alternative is that they used AQ’s own footage, cut various frames showing Bin Laden’s lips in various contortions, and then painstakingly stitched them together to sync them up to a 90-second audio track. That’s a long way to go for a gag, though. Any other theories?
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whoever did this should make an Osama “Stop Picking on Britney!” video, I would pay to see that.
AdrianG on September 15, 2007 at 7:07 PM
The ants/worms which ate him have been overheard “BS, we tell you, and we don’t mean Bush, heh”.
Entelechy on September 15, 2007 at 7:07 PM
Things sure have improved since the days of Clutch Cargo.
eeyore on September 15, 2007 at 7:08 PM
That’s a hoot!!!!
hahahahahah
JimK on September 15, 2007 at 7:09 PM
I’m glad to see this. It helps me believe he is dead. But it probably also will make the DU types convinced that Bush issues these tapes every now and then to keep his war on terror alive. That was the thrust of many of their comments. So the more important question becomes not whether OBL is alive, but who is faking his tapes.
JiangxiDad on September 15, 2007 at 7:10 PM
Man I have an overwhelming desire to link this link as a reply to some Al jazeera news article on Youtube.
The Jihadist heads would explode !
William Amos on September 15, 2007 at 7:12 PM
!!!!!!!!! Score !!!!!!!!!!
Amazing….and funny.
And why isn’t our magnificent CIA not making tapes like these and beaming them all over the ME? Short of funds? Yeah right. Because they can’t. Then some smart fella with a couple of days on his hands makes one in his den while drinking a six pack.
American ingenuity at it’s finest.
Limerick on September 15, 2007 at 7:13 PM
They should make one of him cracking on Mohammed and then put it on an AQ site.
Stevel on September 15, 2007 at 7:15 PM
A technical theory: One of the ways they make animated figures seems to move realisticly in movies. I’m sure it has a name, but – a series of lights (data points) are attached to – in this case – someone’s mouth, and that person creates the dialog. An area of the video to be altered is isolated within software, and the data point info creates the movement in the altered video.
eeyore on September 15, 2007 at 7:20 PM
Boo! Lol!
GoodBoy on September 15, 2007 at 7:21 PM
I’m skeptical, when mentioning current events the video is a still shot!!!
Free Constitution on September 15, 2007 at 7:22 PM
There is software that can sink lip movements to the words being spoken. We see it being used in TV commercials. It is, therefore, not necessary to superimpose someone elses lips on OBL’s video.
pocomoco on September 15, 2007 at 7:23 PM
I love it.
FireDrake on September 15, 2007 at 7:29 PM
Bwahahahahaa!!!
“BOO!”
csdeven on September 15, 2007 at 7:31 PM
Personally, I didn’t know OBL’s English was that good.
eeyore on September 15, 2007 at 7:32 PM
I see what you mean.
Guardian on September 15, 2007 at 7:35 PM
This is the wide shot including subtitles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLnfRNQYj74
bnelson44 on September 15, 2007 at 7:41 PM
Thanks, I needed that!
major john on September 15, 2007 at 7:44 PM
…and death to America.
lowandslow on September 15, 2007 at 8:03 PM
Didn’t the guy just look at the lips and make up words to go with them?
pedestrian on September 15, 2007 at 8:11 PM
I’ll venture a guess. The way that the flesh folds up on either side of his nose looks unnatural. In fact, the nose doesn’t flinch and move with his speech as you would expect. So maybe the guy superimposed the bottom half of his face (minus the nose) over UBL’s. Then with various shading techniques he was able to blend the edges of his face with UBL’s. Just a guess.
Weight of Glory on September 15, 2007 at 8:36 PM
I have a feeling we will be hearing an awful lot more from OBL from now on.
Dusty on September 15, 2007 at 8:53 PM
I just listened to this and he referred to “current events”. He used “…and such”.
I’m sold. He’s alive – because he knew of Ms. South Carolina’s “and such”.
Entelechy on September 15, 2007 at 9:05 PM
That was hilarious.
Wish I had the mad video skilz myself. There are many things I’d have him say.
Anyway, I keep telling you guys, it’s ISEEMA bin Laden on those tapes, not Osama.
Meryl Yourish on September 15, 2007 at 9:20 PM
Has Osama sung “Chocolate Rain” yet?
JetBoy on September 15, 2007 at 9:25 PM
Wonderful!
petefrt on September 15, 2007 at 9:33 PM
And actually, I believe the video is simply a voiceover parody…no special video tricks, it just almost matches up. If you compare this to the original, it looks like the mouth moves the same.
JetBoy on September 15, 2007 at 9:33 PM
yes, those are someone else’s lips; automatic tracking software keeps them in place.
wordwarp on September 15, 2007 at 9:58 PM
A six pack over two days? No way! That took at least a twelve pack – probably a case.
RedWinged Blackbird on September 15, 2007 at 10:06 PM
After Dialogue Replacement at its finest.
Mojave Mark on September 15, 2007 at 10:50 PM
and ……BOO!
.
.
.
I cant stop laughing…..
shooter on September 15, 2007 at 10:53 PM
For the next one they should use Jackie Mason’s voice. That one could be title of a course at Bryn Mawr: Cultural Confrontations in Contemporary Media. heh.
smellthecoffee on September 16, 2007 at 12:19 AM
I was really hoping this would have gone for the full monty and been another spoof of the “Leave Britney Alone!” video. Good illustration of how pictures–even moving ones–aren’t worth quite so many words these days.
Blacklake on September 16, 2007 at 12:31 AM
There are a lot of tools specifically for lipsyncing video out there. The higher-end you go the more powerful they get. Most post-production houses that do, say, television advertising work would be able to do this kind of thing easily, probably just by manipulating the source video.
Alternatively, similar results could be produced by mapping Bin Laden’s face onto a 3D model (most 3D animation packages having built-in lipsyncing capability, too). At such low resolution and high compression for the final video, it wouldn’t be easy to tell. Or just his lips could be built and animated in 3D, rendered out, and composited into the video.
It’s not something that just anybody could do, but for those with the skill and the software it isn’t extremely hard, either. All it’d take is the motivation.
Blacklake on September 16, 2007 at 12:42 AM
All they have to do is get the video stuck on the “m”s and we’re good to go ;-)
steveegg on September 16, 2007 at 1:24 AM
Someone’s trying to get hired by the daily show or conan or jay leno or . . .
- The Cat
MirCat on September 16, 2007 at 2:26 AM
Didn’t we do a low-tech but effective version of this vid almost a year ago?
ScottMcC on September 16, 2007 at 2:31 AM
Next: Osama’s Ramadan Favorites!
Silent Jihad, Unholy Jihad.
Hark, the IED’s Are Triggered.
Oh Little Town of Ramadhi.
etc.
profitsbeard on September 16, 2007 at 4:10 AM
Osama is just another sand fly carrying a sort of Bagdad brain boil as undesirable as the infectious disease leishmaniasis.
Currently, the Leishmania parasite is spreading from Mexico into Texas via the sand fly that bites both rodents and humans who then become hosts.
…Sounds like another problem along with TB infiltrating the USA via illegal immigrants and non-inspected trucking from Mexico.
maverick muse on September 16, 2007 at 8:51 AM
Dude, I love the guys voice, the accent makes it even more funny.
emmaline1138 on September 16, 2007 at 12:04 PM
I’m amazed. My jaw literally dropped when he started speaking English.
Esthier on September 16, 2007 at 1:14 PM
Think Smeagol. That’s my guess as to the process.
FireDrake on September 16, 2007 at 1:39 PM
Even low end stuff like DAZ3D could lip-sinc something like this if one has the time and pateince.
Truth is any1 with a slightly above average PC (or possibly a Mac) could do this with out too much trouble.
opusrex on September 16, 2007 at 2:13 PM
That was good.Since the head does not move side to side to change the profile this one is a little easier. Multi-point motion tracking is built into Adobe After Effects. Here are a few steps to allow you to re-create this effect.
A) Motion track Osama’s had movements.
B) Create a new video mouth of your the new surrogate mouth and motion track the lips edges.
C)Create a composite layer mask that is pinned to the mouth of the surrogate’s lips. This will leave only the lips showing.
D)Place the new layer over the original Osama.
E) Pin the New layer to the Motion Tracking of Osama.
F) Adjust the surrogate’s video contrast, hue, etc to match original.
G) Redner
If the head is moving side to side or change orientation and distance from the camera. Then It becomes a little more complicated his can also be done more accurately but with more work as a rendered video head.
You will have to perform multi axis motion tracking. X,Y,and Z. Your will keep the same surrogate video but you also must create a rendered 3D layer of a head matching it’s dimensions. The Surrogate must be mapped to the 3D rendered layer. Then the 3D rendering must be then mapped to the original head movements of your target. Then you must create a shape mask to the angles. That will take a little more time than the previous example and a little more skill.
See Gizmo’s site for a Primitive example of facial mapping.
Egfrow on September 16, 2007 at 2:15 PM
Too late now, but this should have been “injected” as a terrorist release by Laura M so the MSM could “intercept” it and put it on the nightly news.
Now THAT would have been cause for a conspiracy theory. LMAO!
desertdweller on September 16, 2007 at 7:28 PM
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