Black Sphere over Porterville, CA

Mick West

Mick West

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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd-LL0i_ZV8


UFO / UAP Footage Recorded in 4k 60fps with DJI Mavic 3 Pro Cine​

Location: Porterville, California
Time: Sunday, ‎December ‎17, ‎2023, ‏‎3:56:58 PM
Content from External Source
Interesting, if real. We see a black sphere. INitially it just looks like a balloon, but then it makes some interesting movement - which seem mostly to be just up and down (i.e. changes in altitude). It's filmed from a drone that seems mostly stationary, and the video is very high quality. However the object is out of focus at some points.

There's a yellow thing on one side, seems to be raised from the surface somewhat.
2023-12-18_09-03-45.jpg

An upper limit on size is anything behind of the same angular size cannot be bigger.
2023-12-18_09-09-37.jpg
Here we see it similar apparent diameter to a car wheel, so likely 1.5 to 2 feet in diameter.

The location is around Pacific Truss and Supply in Porterville:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/P...51431!4d-119.0164344!16zL20vMHI3eWY?entry=ttu

2023-12-18_09-16-28.jpg

It an odd one. If it's not CGI, I'd suspect some kind of lighter-than-air drone. But it's not like anything I recall seeing.

Edit: I'm now 99% sure it's just a balloon, and a very impressive parallax illusion.
 
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Are lighter-than-air drones anywhere near this agile?

It hauls ass at the very end and a few times before while the DJI / camera POV recording it seems still.

If it was a conventional drone with a housing and some manner of scrim over it, that would require a lot of noise and power to stay aloft surely.
 
There's a Reddit discussion:


Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/18la77w/ufo_uap_footage_recorded_in_4k_60fps_with_dji/


It has been pointed out that's it's very similiar to this balloon:

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/18la77w/comment/kdwwcsc/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3


https://www.amazon.com/30th-Birthda...-3-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1
2023-12-18_09-54-50.jpg
2023-12-18_09-52-59.jpg
So now I'm leaning towards a very convincing parallax illusion with a balloon drifting in the wind. The drone has amazing camera stabilization, but it's moving up and down
 
Mick West said:
2023-12-18_09-03-45.jpg

It an odd one. If it's not CGI, I'd suspect some kind of lighter-than-air drone. But it's not like anything I recall seeing.
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The illumination/radiosity's very good - it looks like a thing that's there. I'd be looking for a mechanical answer to this before running off to compositing.
 
Even drones considerably smaller than the Mavic 3 Pro Cine have remarkably impressive stabilization. (I have 2 or 3).

The Hasselblad camera in this one, though, is exceptional.

Great find on the balloon...while more info would be nice, it already looks like a slam dunk, to me. :)
 
Mick West said:
There's a Reddit discussion:


Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/18la77w/ufo_uap_footage_recorded_in_4k_60fps_with_dji/


It has been pointed out that's it's very similiar to this balloon:

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/18la77w/comment/kdwwcsc/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3


https://www.amazon.com/30th-Birthda...-3-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1
2023-12-18_09-54-50.jpg
2023-12-18_09-52-59.jpg
So now I'm leaning towards a very convincing parallax illusion with a balloon drifting in the wind. The drone has amazing camera stabilization, but it's moving up and down
Click to expand...

I thought balloon with stabilisation and parallax when 1st saw it, the balloon movements seems to coincide with drone/camera movements
 
It could be parallax because the drone filming might be like going all over the place, up down, left right, in out, etc... and perhaps the balloon is actually staying pretty still.

That 30 is extremely convincing, however the shape of the balloon, and sheen on it at least is not! But - that clearly says 30 on it! Wow.

I was sure it was a drone when I saw it on reddit this morning, but am leaning towards parallax too now. The sphere drones we've seen on this site are not able to move like that outside.

When it gets to here, I was thinking it was strange after such a massive descent that it's not casting a shadow at all.. (not there there is a lot of shadows going on this day with the clouds) but still feels like it should be like 10 feet above the ground after that descent... which leads me to believe it didn't descend much, and the drone just went very far up instead, and created the illusion the (UAP) was dropping down.

1702934348008.png
 
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You'll have to play this one full-screen. It's full stabilized for the descent, and 5x speed. Showing the camera is rising up.

 
tobigtofool said:
I was thinking it was strange after such a massive descent that it's not casting a shadow at all.. (not there there is a lot of shadows going on this day with the clouds) but still feels like it should be like 10 feet above the ground after that descent... which leads me to believe it didn't descend much, and the drone just went very far up instead, and created the illusion the (UAP) was dropping down.
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Yes, that is my impression. The balloon stays more-or-less stationary, but the drone filming it is rising very rapidly.

I have to say that the person operating the camera did a very good job of remaining focused on the balloon. Perhaps they have had a lot of practice.
 
Mick West said:
There's a Reddit discussion:


Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/18la77w/ufo_uap_footage_recorded_in_4k_60fps_with_dji/


It has been pointed out that's it's very similiar to this balloon:

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/18la77w/comment/kdwwcsc/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3


https://www.amazon.com/30th-Birthda...-3-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1
2023-12-18_09-54-50.jpg
2023-12-18_09-52-59.jpg
So now I'm leaning towards a very convincing parallax illusion with a balloon drifting in the wind. The drone has amazing camera stabilization, but it's moving up and down
Click to expand...

So of course some believers are arguing that this just shows that UAPs can camouflage themselves as commonly available balloons...
 
jarlrmai said:
The drone video is oversubscribed so undownloadable at the moment. Maybe someone will rehost.
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I downloaded the screen recording of the flight data replay. Here's another link:
https://www.dropbox.com/t/OpoqXC65wYejNfIo

2023-12-19_08-52-22.jpg

In this, you see the drone's altitude go up and down , which corresponds to the balloon seeming to rise and fall. I'll try to sync it up

He also said, an hour ago:

Hi bro I will be posting the (.DAT, .LRF, .SRT) files for concrete evidence today.

At the end of the video I lost it the object from sight.
Content from External Source
Something I've been planning for a while is doing Sitrec replays of those files. I just got a DJI Drone today (Mini 2 SE), so I should be able to make my own (once it stops raining). But this looks like an interesting test case.
 
The uploader provided the files as promised :
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/18man0i/updated_links_raw_files_from_the_ufo_uap_footage/


I synchronized the drone coordinates from the .srt to the video and most of the object apparent movement seems to be explained by the movement of the drone. A really telling part is between 0:47 and 0:57 in the video, the object seems to be falling quickly, but it synchronise perfectly with the drone rapidly rising from 170 to 240 (not sure if the values are in meters or in feet in the file)
video :

Latitude in orange, Altitude in black
 
Mick West said:
An upper limit on size is anything behind of the same angular size cannot be bigger.
Click to expand...

Something is off about the size of the object at different intervals. Can't quite put my finger on it, but there's a curious part ( see between 1:30 and 2:10 where it bizarrely seems to get smaller even though it is getting closer and the zoom level has not changed ).
 
Scaramanga said:
Something is off about the size of the object at different intervals. Can't quite put my finger on it, but there's a curious part ( see between 1:30 and 2:10 where it bizarrely seems to get smaller even though it is getting closer and the zoom level has not changed ).
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what's stranger is that the lettering on the side barely rotates at all in such a long video. even if it is bottom heavy, one would think it would spin a bit more than it does at some point. (and that he never seems to attempt to move the helicopter to the object vs just tryign to zoom in.)
 
deirdre said:
what's stranger is that the lettering on the side barely rotates at all in such a long video. even if it is bottom heavy, one would think it would spin a bit more than it does at some point. (and that he never seems to attempt to move the helicopter to the object vs just tryign to zoom in.)
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The more I look at the video, the more apparent it is that almost all of the movement of the 'UFO' is parallax effect of the drone moving. The sphere does not sink down to the ground....rather the drone rises up. Most of the back and forth motion of the sphere is movement of the drone. In fact I seriously wonder if the sphere ( lets call it a balloon as it does seem to be one ) moves more than a few feet from a position above the large grey topped building in the yard below. It's the drone that's jumping about all over the place....not the 'UFO'.
 
Scaramanga said:
The more I look at the video, the more apparent it is that almost all of the movement of the 'UFO' is parallax effect of the drone moving. The sphere does not sink down to the ground....rather the drone rises up. Most of the back and forth motion of the sphere is movement of the drone. In fact I seriously wonder if the sphere ( lets call it a balloon as it does seem to be one ) moves more than a few feet from a position above the large grey topped building in the yard below. It's the drone that's jumping about all over the place....not the 'UFO'.
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while i do believe you, as the writing on the balloon barely moves..i'm gonna need one of @Mick West 's demonstration videos to visualize that. I suck at spatial 3d imaginings. :(
 
Mick West said:
Here's an improved stablized version of the "descent", where you can see the background tilt, showing that the camera drone is moving down.

https://www.metabunk.org/f/Portaville vertically stabilized.mov
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Wow! Incredible how parallax illusion can be so profound in fooling the brain the way it does. This could be what is going on in so many of the videos where these UAP's seem to be moving at great speeds and accomplishing incredible maneuvers. Great find Mick!
 
Remember that parallax mirrors the motion of the camera/observer!

• drone camera + parallax => apparent drone motion on stationary-ish object
• ATFLIR + jet turning + parallax => straight-flying target seen as flying a J-hook
• car moving forward => airliner flying backward (or being stationary as its motion and parallax cancel out)
• etc.
 
Rationalman said:
Wow! Incredible how parallax illusion can be so profound in fooling the brain the way it does. This could be what is going on in so many of the videos where these UAP's seem to be moving at great speeds and accomplishing incredible maneuvers. Great find Mick!
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yes particularly the videos where the camera is on a plane, with the Aguadilla video probably the best example of this. Also the Campeche (Mexico) video is interesting as the UAPs (oil rigs) are in the static background but the clouds are in the foreground with parallax making the oil rigs appear to move.
 
If if may add, the camera may use a telescopic (zoom?) function, which enhances this illusion, as the perspective changes drastically. This effect is sometimes useful, hence the use of special designed "telecentric" objectives for certain imaging / engineering fields (measuring).
 
One detail I like is at around 55 seconds where the drone goes too high without panning the camera down and the drone goes out of shot, but that it really gives the impression of someone tracking a falling object and the object stops falling and the person tracking it was slow to react to it stopping (like people really are).

But as we "know" that all the movement is actually being done by the drone you could call this a rookie mistake. I can imagine that professional drone controllers go to great lengths to learn how to sync everything together to get "better" footage.

I don't mean to besmirch the creator of this footage with the "rookie" comment. But the alternative is that it was done on purpose to give the impression I mention but I don't believe there's that intention behind the footage.
 
MyMatesBrainwashed said:
I don't mean to besmirch the creator of this footage with the "rookie" comment. But the alternative is that it was done on purpose to give the impression I mention but I don't believe there's that intention behind the footage.
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I think the "rookie" comment is fair, he only got the drone the day before. This is from the Reddit thread....

Hi r/UFOs this is the evidence you asked for (if you have any questions let me know.)

For the record:
I didn’t mean to cause any trouble I don’t know what I recorded, I just want to know as much as you do. Since I was little I had interest in UFOs because my dad told me his story of a sighting he had when he was little in Mexico. So I bought a drone here in the US now that I’m older. I was exploring the skies when I saw a black dot dropping from the clouds, so I started recording. The raw footage that you see was taken on the DJI Mavic 3 Pro Cine on December 17, 2023 in Poterville California.

Backstory:
I went to Best Buy to pick up my new drone from Visalia, CA on Saturday December 16, 2023. I went back to Porterville, CA and I started practicing on Sunday December 17, 2023 with my new drone when suddenly I saw a black dot dropping from the sky. So I decided to focus the drone camera towards the sphere object and I started following it as I was getting closer. I zoomed in to 7X optical zoom to conserved the quality video but then later on I zoom in to 28x digital zoom in the river. Then I was trying to rotate without losing the object but it was really hard because I’m new at flying drones and I tried my best I could do.
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Mendel said:
• car moving forward => airliner flying backward (or being stationary as its motion and parallax cancel out)
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And it can work the other way. I've watched a plane with landing lights from my car, flying along as planes do, that turned out to be Venus when I got to a place where I had to stop.

Raymond said:
The balloon follows the wind and therefore feels no forces that want to rotate it, unless there is turbulence
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And it will be particularly likely to hold a consistent vertical axis if there is a string under it, which balloons often have. (Though not visible in this video.)
 
JMartJr said:
And it will be particularly likely to hold a consistent vertical axis if there is a string under it, which balloons often have. (Though not visible in this video.)
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i meant the logo should face us more at some point or face away from us.

Raymond said:
The balloon follows the wind and therefore feels no forces that want to rotate it,
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that is one dang controlled wind then :)
 
Just to reiterate, I think the sequence starting at ~1:25 really shows it. When the balloon appears stationary to the horizon with the ground visible one can see that the picture of the ground is stable as well. Unlike against the clouds, as the balloon starts to descend/ascend one can see the prospective of the ground changing as the drone moves.

But against just the clouds, it really does seem to be moving all over the place and quite fast.
 
deirdre said:
i meant the logo should face us more at some point or face away from us.
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When the wind blows smoothly it hits both sides of the balloon, so there's no rotation. To make it spin you'd have to have turbulent air, so that sometimes the wind is blowing more strongly on one side than the other. If that were the wind conditions you'd also see a lot of side-to side movement of the balloon, but that's not visible here.
 
deirdre said:
i've seen alot of household party balloons (ie light weight) tied to tables, in my day and even with almost no noticeable wind...they spin at times.
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Sure but...

Air currents in a room are going to be turbulent, as people move about, HVAC comes on and off, doors open and close, etc.

It also is not an analogous situation as the room balloon is tethered, the balloon in the video is free-floating.
 
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