WAR: English Words and Western Voices Heard on Nick Berg Beheading Video

Originally posted by Lythium

Originally posted by tZykaar
No, televisions don't necissarily give off a "hum". There is too much noise in the film to state that it isn't huming as it is. There is noise throughout the video. There is no question it is taped with the onboard camera microphone. There is no boom mic. If there were it would have sounded alot less distant and the reverb would not have been as perceivable. There are no "small waves between waves". I'm an audio engineer, you might be able to slick that by most people, but generally broadcast television is pretty high quality when it comes to recordings. Now it's very obvious that there is indeed a difference in the quality and intonations of the voice overheard and the mans voice. And you said "A TVs audio does not reverberate just like an actual voice." That's exactly what I'm talking about. It does *not* sound like it is coming from a man in the room. It *does* sound like it's coming from a television in the room, broadcasting who knows what. I am not going to speculate on that. But I am absolutely positive that the sound source is not a living human in the same room as the other men displayed there. You are not likely to get much data from the video that would allow you to reconstruct what was said from the television. There's far too much noise and quantization on the video to allow for that. It is far easier to pick out vowel sounds than the constinants. So reconstructing the constinants might be more guess work than anything unless you can determin exactly what everything else in the room is. The frequencies overlap.

I'm happy for you that your an audio engineer. That aside-my "waves between waves" comment was regarding a waveform annalysis. If someones voice is recorded then run through a waveform it would appear in waves. If the voice was amplified through an object like a TV then recorded there is a background humm and if you ran that through a waveform and compared it the first sample you would see "waves within waves". eg where the voice drops out and the humm is present. In the first clip you would see the waveform drop to the 0 point whereas with the second clip it would remain at the frequency of the electircal humm given off by the speakers. And while you may not be able to always pick up this humm due to other sounds it is infact always there and always produced.

No. This sound you describe is not "infact" always there and always produced. I know sound are just waves of air. As for the waveform dropping to the "0 point" (I assume you are talking about db level), that is likely due to the poor ecoding of the video, which is also why you see the video breakup. There is no way any recording in that room would *ever* reach 0 db, unless it's digital silence which means there was a cutout of the actual recording. The best sound studios in existance don't reach 0 db.

Regarding the use of a boom-while they probably didn't use a high quality boom you see in professional broadcast they most certainly did not use the on camera mics. There are several facts that prove this. First of all there were two cameras used with edited material switching between both cameras throughout the video and very frequently during the beheading phase. If they had used the on camera mics then-

Yes, they most certainly did use the on camera mics. You can hear the camera movement when it's moved around and the sound is proportionaly distorted when the camera is moved.

1. there would be a change in loudness and quality of the sound as they switched between cameras- seeing as the cameras are at different locations in respect to the sources of sound they would have individual characteristics-thats why major productions use one mice and several cameras.

That's not true at all. Most "major productions" (I assume you're talking about film productions) use just one mic on set and then they tend to overdub or retake it in a studio later. And in any other production generally when switching from one video source to another, you don't switch your audio source, you keep the audio from one camera.

2. The audio clip, when tested properly, would show the splicing and cuts between the two mics as well as the individual characteristics mentioned above-this audio clip was taken from only one mic.

Then it is entirely possible they are switch from one on camera mic to another, but I don't see any such cuts. Nor do I see the reason why anyone would ever splice up audio like that for something like this. It would be a silly waste of time. It's fairly obvious that they are just using the cameras mic and when they switch camera angles they're still using the cameras onboard mic forwhichever shot it is.

3. Anytime video is shot with an on cam mic you can hear the movements of the operator-everything from their hand sliding on the plastic or any sound made close to the mic-none of this is heard and while during the speach part the camera might have been on a tripod both cameras are moved around quite a bit during the beheading.

Of course you can hear the movements of the operator, which is why it's very obviously the onboard microphone. It's also very obvious it's on a tripod for a good portion of the video as well. There *would* have been movement otherwise. Of course, I suppose you could suggest that the terrorists have imported some steady-cams to raise the production values of their beheading video.

Now while they may not have had a boom stick they deffinitely had a seprate mic-possibly handheld.

No. They most certainly did *not* have a seperate mic. Nor would it have been handheld. Handheld mics simply do not have that kind of range.

You said "I am absolutely positive that the sound source is not a living human in the same room as the other men displayed there." yet you make no referrence of how you are so sure of that- you only state that you believe it was from a TV. A base spectral analysis tells you that they are from a human being in the same room as does a waveform. If it was a recording from a TV both waveform and a spectrogram would show that. Hence my "wave between waves" statement.

I feel safe in saying that because sound analysis is far more an art than a science because of the sheer complexity of the nature of sound convulution. Which is why the CIA can rarely say 100% for sure if it's bin ladens voice on whichever tape he releases. Now, since you bring up this whole idea that your supposedly scientific analysis is a superior process. I would like to see you back that up. Tell me exactly how a "base spectral analysis" tells you that there is a human in the same room. I would *love* to hear this.

You also state that the frequencies overlap. This is true during the beheading as their is a struggle and shouting and several sources of sound. However, during the segment in question there is only the sound of the voice in question and seein as there is no humm from a TV set then there are no frequencies to overlap with. There is no noise to interfere other than regular background noise heard on every recording ever made.

No, again. Frequencies overlap in all sound. It happens throughout the video. It happens everywhere all the time. I can talk and record it then record four other things. It is impossible for you to seperate my voice (or say, the noise you think comes from every television) from the other 4 things recorded unless you had an exact copy of the recording used for those other 4 things. And the whole point about the interference noise is that the "background noise" you hear is likely to include a television set. Now not every television set sounds the same. Not every program produced on television sounds the same. There are going to be varying degrees of levels on there, but generally speaking if a television is going to make noise it's going to be a very high frequency, around in the 15k range, which is highly distorted due to the compression.

As far as reconstructing what was said it is not a problem-again the segment in question is quiet and clear, there are no other sounds than the voice and as i said in my original post the frequency range of the segment in question falls in range with the rest of the voices on the tape again this is not the case with sounds reproduced from a TV, stereo, megaphone etc. Which I might add was a point you dutifully ignored in your reply.

No it is true with other voices that are reproduced. All voices fall in the same range. There is no special TV range for the human voice. It's all going to fall in the same way. If anything there is likely to be LESS high frequencies and low frequencies coming from a TV recorded voice due to the processing that happens at the sound stage. And if it is a news report as it sounds as tho it might be, it's most certainly highly processed.

Also, if it was a TV why didn't we hear it at any of the other "quiet" points in the video? We didn't hear them turn it on. Ever record the sound of a TV being turned on and run it through a waveform? It leaves a very distinct pattern-not from the pushing of a button but from the electrical discharge of the power as it kicks on as well as a small high frequency "squeal" as power is sent to the speakers. Nothing was present in the slience.

I don't know if you've ever heard of a volume knob or if you noticed that there seemed to be a slight time shift and position change from the point where you can't hear the TV very well to where you can. Now. To get a few things straight here. Sound *is* a waveform. You don't run sound *through* a waveform. There is not always this "hum" or "squeal". It depends on the TV and it certainly isn't loud enough to compete with the background noise which is quite high nor the reverberation of the voices, which is also quite high.

Bottom line:
1] There was no crappy "boom mic"
2] There was no handheld mic
3] These sounds were clearly taken directly from the cameras onboard mic.
4] There was no US military officer trading jokes or whatever just off camera.
5] You people are hearing what you want to hear in this video not what's really there.

It's a bit like reading your average persons take on lyrics for a song. Generally, most people can't pick out all the words perfectly. And thats when people are *trying* to make the voice understandable and at the forefront with as much in the mix as possible popping out all recorded with the highest standards of quality. Now, throw the voice in the back to the side coming out of a speaker on a TV and at several orders of magnitude quieter. Then stick it in a room with lot's of reverberation and put gun toting idiots spouting quotes out of context from their Koran shuffling around while at least a couple people are shuffling around in the background as well. All of this produces a very high noise floor. It's not something that a television is likely to break out of. Who knows what these people were watching. I personally think it's a news cast judging by the pitch of the voices, but it could just as easily be a fishing show or dr phil. Let's try a diagram.

Your average vocal note looks alot like this:
|#
|#
|##
|##-
|#
|##--------------------------------------
|##--------------------------------------
| #


The higher being the higher frequencies. As you can see at the begining with the constinant it is simply noise. Make the sound "ch" or "v" or "ssss" or whatever. It's not a tone, it's a noise. This noises hits the whole spectrum like a cymbal hit. Then it tapers off into the tone and pitch of the note and it's harmonics, which is extremely thin, but very distinct and east to pick out because it peaks up much higher amongst the other intonations of the voice. So it will be very easy for you to pick up any vowels. It will *not* be easy at all to pick out any constinants, therefore you are left *guessing* what is being said because the entire meaning becomes corrupted when you are filling in the blanks with what you want to hear with constinants.

[edit on 20-10-2004 by antipigopolist]

NO!

antipig - I have come to learn that the audio and video we have is pretty precious. So, it really needs to be in say thee distinct places - and I should have thought of that with your work. NEIN nabbed the original wmv in the 90 minutes it was up - Al-Jazeera never even got it. Why? Because that's what those folks over NEIN do - monitor Arabic websites they believe they have a possibility of gleaning information from. We nabbed the NEIN file....which was taken down within a day or two - probably because 100,000 ATS locusts were swarming their server.

IF, anybody has antipig's file, please come forward. If not, some time do a re-do and u2u me and I WILL archive your work. PROMISE!

I don't quite get the gist of this.
Who originally posted the wmv on the internet?
What group claimed responsibility for it and where is their website?
Why don't THEY have it posted anymore, if they are the ones claiming responsibility?

It was an Arabic site out of the U.K. (I'll have to go looking for their website name, I believe NEIN has it logged on their site). The entire site was taken down 90 minutes after the video was posted. It has not been brought back online since. Some speculate the British government took it down. No one knows. An interesting tidbit is that the original news stories stated the video was posted to "an Al-Qaeda website". This is not true, and later news articles reflected the correction by stating "an Arabic website with suspected ties to Al-Qaeda". This is of significance.

the al Ansar jihad website

Excellent observation! Does any one have a theory?

Al Qaeda did it! Yeah right.

Al CIAda's workin' overtime trying to get the Shrub re-elected.

The video was posted from England to the Al Qaida Forum web site Ansar (for 90 minutes). Ansar stop having the video some 2 weeks ago. That site diffuse a lot of things, and sometimes, Al Qaida letters that CIA attribute (all the time) to Ben Ladden and others friends.
Ben Ladden was a big �member-like� of Bush family and friend�s oil lobby but was ejected during 91 when they say Saddam was a Wabbit and Ben Ladden too. He was not just a client but took important decisions with Bush father, his friend of work. The petrol (high) price is controlled by some speculators (Who? I�m still wondering) but the petrol is still going out of Iraq.
I was thinking some English hoaxers would have make a falls video of Nick but the CIA (I prefer saying Pentagon) would have spoke about it if they had nothing to be shame on (!).
I don�t believe other journalists but American�s can speak about that thing that is still and only a rumour and could be very dangerous to the world safety (and USA!!).
I think a lot of people think that video is a fake done by a small group in Abu-Ghraib with very important person bless (Rumfeld? the ex CIA chef?... All). How could it be known. They did it because they were confident but had also to hurry up, if it is so�

Can you answer to the kind of montage I think I have discovered on 13:45:59 on page 19. Does it seem plausible? Do those other worlds can help us? Thanks a lot to say.


[edit on 6/6/2004 by Alchy]

[edit on 20-10-2004 by antipigopolist]

Please email it to me at [email protected] as well.

Thank you very much!

It totally makes sense, rogue CIA Ops loyal to the Bush Regime, take Amerian and U.S. allies hostage I.E. S. Korea, Turkey etc. Threaten to chop off their heads, they know full well that the administrations will not negotiate with so-called terrorists, they give 3 days and then chop chop. What follows, engenders more hatred towards Islam and continues to fuel the phoney WAR ON TERROR. And now a Marine what better way to distract people from the movie that's blowing the lid on 9-11! Get it!
They may be able to fool the sheeple but they aren't going to fool the People!

For you open minded non- linear types out there check this out. This may very well be enough proof that CIA is behind all this!
www.surfingtheapocalypse.net...

BRAVO, FIND THE TRUTH, GIVE IT TO WHO REALLY DESERVES IT, NO MATTER HOW COLD IT MAY BE, MAYBE WE CAN SEE AND END TO THE LIES.

This is my 3rd post or so on ATS and wow, I love this site. I read this ENTIRE discussion over the past 4 (!) hours and many many things make me paranoid about this whole beheading situation. Every theory and supporting detail is pretty amazing. Its now 4:30 am and Im thanking god I am not in school right now. I know I would have stayed up this late reading all of this even if I did have school in the morning.

Anyways, I do not have any information to give about the audio at the end of the video, or audio super-analysis that Ive done proving there is western accients and voices in the video. I am just here to give my opinion, and Im sure Im not the only one. Personally, all of the evidence against the probability of actual terrorists doing this sways me to think that the government is behind this. Which it does make perfect sense. Cover up the abuse photos, why not? Obviously this was not carried out by anyone with any real knowledge of editing and it was not reviewed very well before it was distributed. The best supporting evidence of that was the point that someone gave that the video was recorded in PAL format and was converted to NTSC in the video editing process. This would account for the audio not matching up with the video because PAL format is 25.00 frames per second (fps) and NTSC is 29.970 frames per second. This would add nearly 5 frames per second to each second of the video which would make the video further and further ahead of the audio with each passing second. That explains why the screams and yells arent consistant with the actions in the video. In Vegas Video (video editor) I matched up the audio with the video and it gives it a scary realism.

But this doesnt say anything about who is behind all of this.

Again, personally, I believe its the government. It just seems too perfectly timed to cover up the leakage of photos and to make the terrorists the bad guys, once again.

Im glad this message board is here. I feel 10 million times more informed on subjects that deal with the government and other things. Now Im nost just one of the "ignorent ones"

-Nick

Listen to the file carefully , it actually says

" Allah's will be done "

said as a prayer, like a christian would say "amen" , or "let gods will be done"

This is said twice the second time it is cut short by the audio track ending .

Hey guy , I listened to the tapes, and well sorry, I don't know what the hell you guys are hearing, souns like a deep voice that is garbled, nothing remotely understanbly sounds American, I have to agree, the CIA would not make so many dumb mistakes, get real guys, I am not being blind, or ignorant, but it sounds like after that guy had to come in, and frame by frame prove he was realy killed, you guys have been grasping for straws.

I'm inclined to believe that a lot of this mess has been orchestrated. It has 'come' to me (also) that there's no way the powers-that-be are going to let Bush lose this election - even to the point of creating some event in the US they can blame on the terrorists - so the current administration can 'move' into action and sway the election themselves. Regardless of supposed 'threats' by other groups.

Frankly, after seeing the early handover of Iraq this morning on the news - I am more and more convinced that all this has been in the planning stages since the last Iraqi war. Getting Georgie W 'in' at the 'right' time, etc. I mean, who the heck 'bought' the whole selection of Cheney from the start?! Not me! He NEVER looked like he 'belonged' in the picture. And with all this business with Rumsfeld getting the 'glory vote' from Bush last month in that speech outside the Pentagon... please!

Lord only knows what is 'planned' in the coming months - but you better believe there's no way Kerry is going to be allowed to either 'win' or take office. Things aren't 'finished' yet. But I bet Powell steps down and works 'behind the scenes' from here on out - rather than continue with this administration.

And couldn't Clinton make wiser use of his post-Presidency than just going around trying to hog the limelight again with his stupid book? He's planning on Hillary getting into the Whitehouse - so I'd think he'd want Bush to win, as well - so she can run in 2008. Ugh! If she ever became President, I'd flee from this land like I was on F-I-R-E!!!

The timing of this beheading phenomenon (which only started very very recently when Kerry was at about 325 electoral votes and Bush was scraping bottom) probably saved the election for this administration. The beheadings, as I keep saying, are categorically not radical middle eastern MO. The fact that the majority of the victims have been non-Americans makes no sense and the fact that you found these voices on the video is incredible. You really ought to contact the networks.

Originally posted by G_Scard
The timing of this beheading phenomenon (which only started very very recently when Kerry was at about 325 electoral votes and Bush was scraping bottom) probably saved the election for this administration. The beheadings, as I keep saying, are categorically not radical middle eastern MO. The fact that the majority of the victims have been non-Americans makes no sense and the fact that you found these voices on the video is incredible. You really ought to contact the networks.

Beheadings have been happening in places in the middle east during, and before this administration, and making the claim that beheadings only started happening when Kerry was winning, is distorting the truth, just more propaganda in favor of Kerry....

[edit on 31-10-2004 by Muaddib]

I haven't read all the responses here, but I want to ask, why/how does it imply that the CIA or any government affiliations have anything to do with the beheadings, just because there are American voices on that tape? Are there not American traders? Are there not Americans there? I'm am most definitely not saying that aren't or couldn't be involved, as I wouldn't put anything past our government...but it doesn't imply that just because there are American voices heard!