Is this clip "edited"?

While scrolling through social media over the weekend – something caught my eye.

People on Twitter, Reddit, and LinkedIn were commenting on an area of the President’s video with suggestions that it had been edited (to remove what was theorized to be a coughing spout).

Here’s the clip that was posted:

Now before we look at this further – we stress in EVERY class we teach to get the ORIGINAL video. This particular clip highlights exactly why this is critical.

In this clip, you can see macroblocks update right during the time the president’s shoulders shrug upward (look in the wrinkles of the white area of the American flag and you'll see this "jump"). This is an important observation because it means that pixels were refreshed right at that time. It would be a bit of a coincidence for an I-frame to fall right at that point in time, which on face value might suggest there was an edit here.

However, if you were to then hunt down the original video on Youtube (at least “original” in the sense that it’s the most original we can get access to), you would see that there are no "full refreshes" in this area anymore.

Notice how the flag stays rather still without the macroblock updates?

What this means is that the clips that are cycling through social media have gone through “transcoding” or re-compression - likely from downloading the file off of YouTube/Twitter with a service that further compressed the data. This process added compression artifacts that make the area look like an edit.

The purpose of this post is not to answer the question of whether or not the original was edited – or even to edge into politics – but to highlight how critical it is go GET THE ORIGINAL video before analyzing it. Incorrectly obtained copies can change the appearance - whether it adds artifacts that appear like edits (as in this case), or accelerates the appearance of force like in our previous blog HERE. https://input-ace.com/accurate-video-evidence-tells-another-story-in-uof-case/

We hope this serves as a reminder to be critical – and to obtain originals before defining opinions.