One thing that's kind of buried given the format is that this is at least a second-generation recording of video on a screen, either a capture of the video while it's playing with a screen capture tool or using a phone.. (See player controls circled below.)
I'm also wondering if this playback is in realtime. Someone would have to look at the pacing of the lights and the speed of the few vehicles you can see moving. But if this were a jet coming toward the camera that just turned to the right and flew straight you'd expect it to be vanishing into the clouds, just not this quickly.
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Indeed! This appears to be a video of a video.
In the follow up where he shares the metadata, he pulls up the clip which is clearly in landscape:
The metadata says the original clip is 1:10, same as the uploaded one:
The next thing is to work out what is movement or zooming in the original video that's playing on the screen and what is the result of the camera/phone recording this screen.
Then there is this comment supposedly from the Shay on reddit from
@Mendel above:
External Quote:
I was out filming a wedding in Toledo when I noticed this the following morning. Even the clip taken in the same exact spot moments after has no evidence of this.
It does move when I pan the drone. Coincidence? Idk.
As I mentioned, TicTok does not seem to have a frame by frame scrubbing option, the best I could do was slow it down to .75 speed and just keep pausing/playing and moving the progress bar back a bit. Bottom line, at least in the uploaded video, the pan to follow the object seems to start at the exact time the object moves screen right.
So, if that's the case where is the pan occurring? In the original video or with the camera recording the screen playing the original? Given what Shay supposedly said on reddit about noticing this the next morning, it would seem impossible for the drone operator to have followed the object with the drone. He never saw it while the event was occurring.
IF the pan is part of the original video AND the drone operator was unaware of the object at the time, YET the object tracks perfectly with the panning drone, then I would argue it's something to do with the drone. The movement of the object is connected to the movement of the drone, right? The drone is not tracking the object, it could not have as the operator never saw it.
He seems to understand this when he mentions on reddit that "it move(s) when I pan the drone."
I'm not sure because we're looking at 2 sets of movements, whatever is happening in the original and whatever is happening with the device recording the original from a screen, however I think at around the 00:19 mark the object is still a single dot of light that then makes a slight up and down movement before moving screen right with the pan:
I think the other lights in the scene make a similar, though subtle shift. Maybe. If so, it's the object moving with a slight tilt motion of the drone the same way it does with the panning motion. Just on a much smaller scale.
At the moment, if the reddit post is true, I'm thinking this was something on the drone or some sort of glitch? There was nothing in the sky.
As sophisticated as this guy's photo business seems to be, I'm still puzzled by the filming the screen trick to upload to TicTok. I would think he'd have the tools and experience necessary to create a portrait version. Or, as he does with several of his other videos on TicTok, just upload it as the original landscape (a couple of samples from his profile):
I'll also note, in his 2nd video with the meta data, he shows the thumbnail for the original, then the meta data, then plays the uploaded clip filmed off a screen. He never plays the original: