Alleged Flight MH370 UFO Teleportation Videos [Hoax]

[JuliettPapa]

Next huge suspicion: The decimal coords may just be pixel coords, or some multiple thereof. There are many places during panning that the decimal digits drop trailing zeros. I cannot see how any serious software would do so.

[CHECKED]

The decimal coordinate ratio is very close to 10.

Approximately:

• for every pixel on x the lon increases by 100
• for every pixel on y the lat increases by 10

Can anyone with more knowledge on lat lon comment?

 

[FatPhil]

I wanted to be more rigorous concerning the "stereo video" so I used pyelastix to estimate the affine transform between the two sides.

I get this transform matrix :
[ 1.0001702e+00 -7.4857669e-03 7.6533375e+00]
[-1.5309395e-05 1.0002457e+00 -5.2175015e-02]

Parts in 10000 are going to be noise. How big was the source video, was it 400 lines? Because the above looks suspiciously like:
[1 3/400 x]
[0 1 0]
i.e. a 3 pixel sheer of a region 400 pixels high. I seem to remember 3 pixels of sheer being mentioned upthread, this seems to confirm it.

 

[RobertBillyBob]

Parts in 10000 are going to be noise. How big was the source video, was it 400 lines? Because the above looks suspiciously like:
[1 3/400 x]
[0 1 0]
i.e. a 3 pixel sheer of a region 400 pixels high. I seem to remember 3 pixels of sheer being mentioned upthread, this seems to confirm it.

Source video was 640x720. This gives a x shear of 5.4 between top and bottom, 3 was from Gimp and I think it correspond to the shear between top and center.

 

[JuliettPapa]

Parts in 10000 are going to be noise. How big was the source video, was it 400 lines? Because the above looks suspiciously like:
[1 3/400 x]
[0 1 0]
i.e. a 3 pixel sheer of a region 400 pixels high. I seem to remember 3 pixels of sheer being mentioned upthread, this seems to confirm it.

At 960x720 stereo I can confirm the aligned text frames I have made are -3px on x.

 

[JuliettPapa]

Another incongruity in the cloud video: The cursor is correct at 960x720, but the text is squashed.
[EDIT] I must have switched the frames, because as jarlrmai pointed out, the text and cursor are correct in the squashed video.

Font used:
Courier New 11px Tracking ~27%

Other observations:

• The decimal coords and satellite name are not in the same text element.
• The text is partially off screen even in a logical format, so this is either exposition, or a basic error

Did the author really composite the coordinates onto a squashed video? Was this an afterthought? Or was this an existing video that someone tried to link to MH370 (with the suspected final vector / crash coordinates being public at the time) in some ghoulish attempt for attention by adding said coordinates?

The obvious issue with this speculation is that both the text and the cursor have the fake stereo. So it would not have been a quick job.

Third phase of the moon was making content about 'airliners being warped' in late 2013, and then tied it into MH370 in a discussion (not particularly disrespectfully I may add, they made sure to say it was an out there idea and wished the families well). Was this something made for sending to the aforementioned youtube channel, doctored haphazardly to tie it to the air disaster?

 

[jarlrmai]

Another incongruity in the cloud video: The cursor is correct at 960x720, but the text is squashed.

Font used:
Courier New 11px Tracking ~27%

Other observations:

• The decimal coords and satellite name are not in the same text element.
• The text is partially off screen even in a logical format, so this is either exposition, or a basic error

Did the author really composite the coordinates onto a squashed video? Was this an afterthought? Or was this an existing video that someone tried to link to MH370 (with the suspected final vector / crash coordinates being public at the time) in some ghoulish attempt for attention by adding said coordinates?

The obvious issue with this speculation is that both the text and the cursor have the fake stereo. So it would not have been a quick job.

Third phase of the moon was making content about 'airliners being warped' in late 2013, and then tied it into MH370 in a discussion (not particularly disrespectfully I may add, they made sure to say it was an out there idea and wished the families well). Was this something made for sending to the aforementioned youtube channel, doctored haphazardly to tie it to the air disaster?

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/alleged-flight-mh370-ufo-teleportation-videos.13104/post-299051

 

[JuliettPapa]

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/alleged-flight-mh370-ufo-teleportation-videos.13104/post-299051

Thanks I went back and checked my file. You are right, both look correct in the squashed video. Same observations apply though. I feel like the 960x720 source video could be unrelated to the MH370 tie-in. The livery looks like a generic one with a dark underbelly. Although MH370 has a grey underbelly, it looks darker to me in the video.

The real question for me is why go to the effort to add fake coordinates and mouse, but not notice the video should have been letterboxed 4:3?

 

[Mendel]

The livery looks like a generic one with a dark underbelly.

You can actually make out the livery?

 

[JuliettPapa]

You can actually make out the livery?

You can certainly see there is a livery.
There is even a hint of a 747 style forehead; weird.
Note BA 747s had the dark underbelly livery skim over the wing, very much like this. Author would have to have removed an engine though.
It is also worth noting MH370's 777 livery skims over the wing too. Red and blue.

Any aviation nerds in here? Opinions?

 

[cptreynolds]

Any aviation nerds in here? Opinions?

Yes. In my opinion it's too grainy to make out. Shape looks better post de-squish, but that's about it...

 

[Max Phalange]

Next huge suspicion: The decimal coords may just be pixel coords, or some multiple thereof. There are many places during panning that the decimal digits drop trailing zeros. I cannot see how any serious software would do so.

[CHECKED]

The decimal coordinate ratio is very close to 10.

Approximately:

• for every pixel on x the lon increases by 100
• for every pixel on y the lat increases by 10

Can anyone with more knowledge on lat lon comment?

Two minor observations:

* Near the equator a given linear distance will cover approximately as many degrees longitude as it would latitude.
* If the display is formatted to a fixed number of total digits, the latitude will have an extra decimal place. (I haven't checked this).

 

[redbluebottle]

I've noticed that in satellite video histogram looks kinda unnatural. Green and blue channels are pretty much the same as the red one, just shifted to the highest values while low values are cut off. Effect of running white auto balance below - video is pretty much grayscale, just coordinates text retains the color. I think the video layer was grayscale originally, but then hue of the whole thing was modified. It would explain blueish cursor tint also.

 

[Harold]

From what I understand TLEs need to be updated regularly, so you need a TLE from around the time of the disparition in order to be precise. Am I wrong?

Yes, I did miss that. Using the following orbital elements obtained from http://www.planet4589.org/space/elements/29200/S29249 dated to the epoch of the day of the disappearance (March 8 2014 UTC):
1 29249U 06027A 14067.77000809 0.00000557 00000-0 00000-0 0 00
2 29249 63.5721 73.8375 6997416 268.0662 17.6741 2.00638278 76
I made the attached video that encompasses the time from prior to takeoff to after when the plane would've run out of fuel I believe. The satellite still doesn't have a reasonable line of sight to the plane, especially in daylight, and the closest it would come to one would be side-on, which would likely result in clouds and atmosphere hiding it all away. Edit: There is no line-of-sight during the time frame involved, meaning the purported location of the satellite video of MH370 would be impossible to see as it would be hidden behind the Earth.

 

[Kyle McDonald]

video is pretty much grayscale

Great observation and hypothesis. One way to test this is to look at the color cube. A simple gradient map on a grayscale image should appear in a color cube as a line or curve. Optimization can be used to fit a function from grayscale colors to colors in the cube. Then check against real images of clouds and see if the residual is significantly higher (i.e. there is more color variation) or if the residual is similar.

I think natural images of clouds may actually be monotone. Here is a before/after on a natural image of clouds, then a gradient-mapped version (using a very simple two-color gradient map).

 

[redbluebottle]

Attaching my result of trying to recreate the background (no parallax and no real cloud movement make me think that still image was used). Denoised where possible using mean pixel value from multiple frames and removed blue tint.

Source: https://i.imgur.com/JL3Azvu.png


My guess is that those white streaks are cirrus clouds and it's possible that real satellite images were used:

But since a few hours after the plane and its 239 passengers disappeared, the search has been joined by some 2.3 million ordinary internet users, who are using the Tomnod website to scan more than 24,000 sq km of satellite imagery to help locate the missing aircraft.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/14/tomnod-online-search-malaysian-airlines-flight-mh370

It would be much easier for the hoaxer following the news to just use easily available real satellite imagary instead of trying to create big enough and convincing composition.

For comparison image from QuickBird-2 satellite, from https://discover.maxar.com/

 

[FatPhil]

I've noticed that in satellite video histogram looks kinda unnatural. Green and blue channels are pretty much the same as the red one, just shifted to the highest values while low values are cut off.

In order for this to be a useful datapoint you'd need to show how things that aren't this example are different. Given that it is one of the core assumptions that goes into video compression, the data will need to be very convincing in order to persuade me something's actually unusual about this video.

Did the original video this fake was composited from also have this property?

 

[JimJam]

I'm not an expert on searching these things, but since it was discovered that the IR video uses assets from the pyromania asset pack I wonder if there were any collections of Satellite or High Altitude imagery easily available circa 2014-ish or earlier that could be matched to the satellite footage. Using an image like this one off the Wikipedia page for clouds https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/ISS-40_Thunderheads_near_Borneo.jpg and then adding the plane/sphere scene over the top seem to match what is seen in the video.

 

[RobertBillyBob]

One way to test this is to look at the color cube

With the coordinate pixels removed, the color cube is this :

Compare to an image from google

 

[FatPhil]

With the coordinate pixels removed, the color cube is this :

Compare to an image from google

Good stuff! Can you disappear all the points from the image that are exactly on the linear gradient, and leave only the outliers - as if there's a pattern to them it might give a clue to a later stage on their compositing pipeline.

 

[jarlrmai]

I feel a wide angle from the ground sky shot with more resolution is always going to have more sky shade variation in it than a smaller crop from a low res video taken top down.

 

[RobertBillyBob]

I feel a wide angle from the ground sky shot with more resolution is always going to have more sky shade variation in it than a smaller crop from a low res video taken top down.

Cropped image is from a satellite view on a meteo site

I think for a real image you'd always get yellowish colors in the clouds because of the sun light color.

 

[jarlrmai]

Sunlight is pure white before the blue part of it is scattered by Rayleigh effect which makes the sun look yellow/orange/red etc when viewed from the ground though atmosphere.

 

[JuliettPapa]

A few more of my observations on the cloud background:

• Photos are taken of things, especially high quality photos
  • Could the subject be the clouds, a production asset?
  • Could the subject be the cloud types? Why, when they're common types?
  • Could the subject be a cumulonimbus, nuclear test, etc?
• The author would need to know the approximate scale of an airliner in clouds
  • Could the subject be an airliner in clouds?
  • Could the subject be an interesting aircraft being shot from above?
• The angle is fairly high, but casual high altitude photos are mostly taken from side windows of airliners
  • Could this be a small foreground slice of a fairly downwardly angled photo from 40k?

I am also fairly sure this is above a non coastal ocean, so the possibility of a weather balloon is low.
I am also aware from looking at airliner photos that the clouds layers in our background have a relative scale that fit a ~40k photo looking more downward. It complicates things because the are millions of such photos online.

 

[RobertBillyBob]

Assuming the coordinates are at the center of the video on earth.

Next huge suspicion: The decimal coords may just be pixel coords, or some multiple thereof.

According to the coords the plane travels around 3.6 km during the video.

The plane travels its own lenght in around 16 to 20 frames, this means it travels between 3.9km to 4.9km during the video. If you consider the altitude changes and the precision we have it checks out.

 

[redbluebottle]

I wonder if there were any collections of Satellite or High Altitude imagery easily available circa 2014-ish or earlier that could be matched to the satellite footage.

My last post got stuck in moderator queue and just got approved, so you've probably missed it. During the search in 2014 huge amount of satellite imagery was made public via easy to use tools for people to search for any signs of the plane: https://www.gpsworld.com/post-mortem-on-flight-mh370-crowdsource-search/ I'm not sure if that data is still available anywhere, but I guess not.
Considering how easily available they were at the time and how much simpler it would be to use the real thing vs compositing own I also think it's been created that way - render added on top of real satellite images.

 

[Mendel]

During the search in 2014 huge amount of satellite imagery was made public via easy to use tools for people to search for any signs of the plane: https://www.gpsworld.com/post-mortem-on-flight-mh370-crowdsource-search/ I'm not sure if that data is still available anywhere, but I guess not.
Considering how easily available they were at the time and how much simpler it would be to use the real thing vs compositing own I also think it's been created that way - render added on top of real satellite images.

Notably, these were daytime images of the ocean, thought to help with the search for floating debris. I can't imagine they used cloudy images for that purpose.

The area was organized by map tiles, each one-eighth of a kilometer. The images provided to the volunteers were still photos, a snapshot in time.

Content from External Source

0.125 km is not enough to cover the track of the aircraft in the video.

 

[jarlrmai]

According to the coords the plane travels around 3.6 km during the video.

The plane travels its own lenght in around 16 to 20 frames, this means it travels between 3.9km to 4.9km during the video. If you consider the altitude changes and the precision we have it checks out.

Is that calculated on the non stretched/squished version?

 

[RobertBillyBob]

Is that calculated on the non stretched/squished version?

It doesn't matter since it use the relative size of the plane in the image.

 

[redbluebottle]

Notably, these were daytime images of the ocean, thought to help with the search for floating debris. I can't imagine they used cloudy images for that purpose.
0.125 km is not enough to cover the track of the aircraft in the video.

Looks like it was possible to pan the view and screengrab consecutive tiles though. There are some pretty cloudy images too:

 

[Mendel]

Looks like it was possible to pan the view and screengrab consecutive tiles though. There are some pretty cloudy images too:

So what's the color signature for these?

 

[Kyle McDonald]

With the coordinate pixels removed, the color cube is this :

Great work on this! I'm a little surprised exactly how narrow that line is, it makes a really strong argument for this being a grayscale image.

If you have a moment, could you also run a few more images through? Castellon and spiral, plus the Maxar image posted above, from QuickBird-2. I suspect they are all close to monotone.

Looks like it was possible to pan the view and screengrab consecutive tiles though

This Tomnod video looks vaguely similar to what we see in the airliner satellite video, but without the overexposed bits.

Does anyone know where to find a large (e.g. terabyte) dump of MH370 satellite imagery, anything that the creator of this video may have used? I am familiar with large scale image retrieval (I built the algorithm for the first search-by-image for satellite imagery, Terrapattern, which inspired GeoVisual Search). I'd be happy to try finding this pic in the original imagery. Maybe the creator even used the true coordinates of the source image.

 

[V0LDY]

At cost of sounding repetitve, check my big post on page 8 regarding the "satellite" (cuz it's not) video, which unfortunately kinda got submerged because being a new account I needed mod approval.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/alleged-flight-mh370-ufo-teleportation-videos.13104/post-298554

The clouds look much more like a photo of clouds from a plane than clouds shot from a satellite, so imho that's where the focus should be if one really wants to find the background image.

 

[redbluebottle]

The clouds look much more like a photo of clouds from a plane than clouds shot from a satellite, so imho that's where the focus should be if one really wants to find the background image.

After looking at some satellite images I think you're right, angle and scale of the clouds matches aerial photos like the one you've posted much better.

 

[JimJam]

The clouds look much more like a photo of clouds from a plane than clouds shot from a satellite, so imho that's where the focus should be if one really wants to find the background image.

The perspective definitely seems to match a picture from a plane, following the thread that it was a greyscale image with colour correction is what made me wonder if it could be a high res satellite from a high incidence that was then colour corrected. This could absolutely be the case with a photo from a plane too, it just makes it likely that there is a much larger pool of photos of clouds to search from.

The tomnod idea is still interesting to me, since it is tied in with the lore of MH370 was launched in March shortly after MH370 crashed so would have been available and widely known at the time this video was being created and uploaded. It looks to be high enough resolution to match and in videos like this
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT-3yXXM8o0
you can see clouds and the shadows beneath them on the ocean. It's feasible there are some areas of this presumably larger map that are quite far from being top down

 

[MonkeeSage]

The clouds look much more like a photo of clouds from a plane than clouds shot from a satellite, so imho that's where the focus should be if one really wants to find the background image.

They do generally seem to match aerial footage more than most satellite footage I have seen, but I don't think we can say one way or the other just from that, because there are examples of satellite footage from a shallow angle with high zoom that look similar.

Source: https://eos.com/blog/cloud-mask/

 

[Kyle McDonald]

there are examples of satellite footage from a shallow angle with high zoom that look similar

The photo you linked to here is a stock photo taken from a plane, described here, and not a satellite image. One way to tell is that the clouds are foreshortened (distant clouds are small and near clouds are large) and another way to tell is that the parallel roads are not parallel to each other across the whole image.

For what it's worth, both Getty and Shutterstock support search-by-image. I dropped a frame from the satellite video in, and I reviewed all 85 Shutterstock results. I looked through the first 10 pages of 67 pages of Getty results and didn't see anything quite the same.

 

[JimJam]

The photo you linked to here is a stock photo taken from a plane, described here, and not a satellite image. One way to tell is that the clouds are foreshortened (distant clouds are small and near clouds are large) and another way to tell is that the parallel roads are not parallel to each other across the whole image.

For what it's worth, both Getty and Shutterstock support search-by-image. I dropped a frame from the satellite video in, and I reviewed all 85 Shutterstock results. I looked through the first 10 pages of 67 pages of Getty results and didn't see anything quite the same.

What are the limits of search-by-image, we are working with the assumption that if this is the method of creation at the very least a plane contrails and possibly spheres have been added to each frame. Each frame is also only showing a relatively small part of the much larger picture, which has maybe 4 or 5 largish distinct clouds over the whole video. We could maybe limit the search to really high-resolution stuff, since you could make an assumption that they only used a small portion of the whole picture (otherwise what was the photo of originally)

If it was a mosaic like the tomnod satellite it will be almost impossible to find the match since it appears to no longer be online, that was high res images of over 24000km^2 of ocean. If we did have access to it you might be able to identify regions where the angle to the cloud begins to match and go from there.

 

[MonkeeSage]

The photo you linked to here is a stock photo taken from a plane, described here, and not a satellite image. One way to tell is that the clouds are foreshortened (distant clouds are small and near clouds are large) and another way to tell is that the parallel roads are not parallel to each other across the whole image.

That's....strange. The website is from EOSDA, which is a satellite imagery and analytics provider, in an article about cloud masking in satellite imagery, and the file is named https://eos.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/satellite-view-with-clouds.jpg.webp ...I guess their webmaster could have used shutterstock and misnamed the image or something...weird.

 

[MonkeeSage]

I found a couple of places in a larger satellite image that look similar to the plane vid.

Source: https://pixels.com/featured/satellite-view-of-clouds-over-earth-panoramic-images.html (click on a grid section to see it magnified)

And a figure showing satellite images from a 2014 paper that shows some that look similar.

Source: https://www.semanticscholar.org/pap...xton/7873b1b5a10e6705fb6c82384830cb5e893b0a68

 

[RobertBillyBob]

If you have a moment, could you also run a few more images through?

Tomnod screencap

Spiral

Castellon

Maxar


Maxar is the closest but there still more dispersion than our "sat view".