10/30   How hard would it be to fake something like the recent Bin Laden tape?
        Every time something like this happens, un-named "experts" declare it
        to be authentic or not, but how hard would it be with modern computer
        video equipment to fool people?  It seems odd to me that the media
        downplay this possibility.  I'm asking this as a *technical* question,
        not as some conspiracy theory question about what really happened  in
        this case.
        \_ So you agree with Walter Cronkite that Karl Rove is somehow
           involved in the creation and/or release of the OBL tape?
        \_ It's possible to fake things to arbitrary fidelity with enough
           money.  The technology is there.  Modern CGI is very powerful.
           -- ilyas
           \_ ok, that's interesting.  Does such technology exist anywhere
              outside hollywood?  Could a bunch of people with a lot of money
              in, say, Pakistan do something like this from scratch?
              \_ It is serious tinfoil hat territory to think that an OBL tape
                 would be faked with CGI.  If Pakistan were to try to fake it,
                 they would get a look-alike.  -tom
                 \_ I agree 100%.  The question is whether it's *possible*
                    technically for someone outside of hollywood to do this
                    convincingly.
                    \_ Tom is wrong.  It's true that no one will bother to
                       spend the money in practice, but the feat is not
                       technically out of reach.  Consider ff the movie.
                       They had essentially photorealistic quality, but the
                       faces/bodies moved in ... odd ways.  That movie was
                       a while ago, and it wasn't better then because square
                       had a fixed budget.  If a government commissioned a
                       fully photorealistic clip of someone, money being no
                       object, it would be done.  The entire clip would be
                       special cased, there would be an army of 'animators'
                       involved, the tag might run in the billions, but it
                       could be done.  The bottleneck is not the technology
                       but how far people are willing to go.  Ask any
                       graphics/vision guy. -- ilyas
                       graphics/vision guy.  Tom also needs help with reading
                       comprehension, as he seems to be answering a tinfoil
                       question, which op explicitly said he was not asking.
                         -- ilyas
                       \_ FF was *not* photorealistic.  It would be obvious to
                          anyone looking at it that those faces were animated.
                          It was an impressive feat, but one which would fool
                          only an audience willing to suspend its disbelief.
                          Humans are *very* picky about what we will accept
                          in terms of facial appearance and movement.  -tom
                          \_ FF faces certainly did not _move_ in a
                             photorealistic way, but the stills were quite
                             believable faces.  Anyways, I still think what
                             I said is possible with enough money.  -- ilyas
                             \_ yeah, if you just put billions of dollars into
                                inventing new technologies, in 10 or 15 years
                                you might be able to achieve the same thing as
                                $10K in plastic surgery.  And then you can
                                spend another 20 years working on generating
                                a plausible computer-generated voice that
                                sounds like a particular person.  Christ,
                                you're an idiot.  -tom
                                \_ So, John, how many examples do you need?
                                    -- ilyas
                                   \_ Well, I wouldn't call people names, but
                                      I don't know who's right or wrong, so
                                      I'll pass :-)  -John
                                   \_ examples of what?  you setting up a
                                      strawman that's totally unrelated to
                                      the original question?  There's no
                                      shortage of those.  -tom
                          \_ FF?  The Final Fantasy movie with the weird story
                             line about ghosts from an alien world on Earth?
                             Their big claim to fame was getting the character
                             hair to look right which I think they got 99%.
                             If someone is saying FF had photo realistic faces
                             then sorry, I'm with tom on this one.  They did
                             good facial expressions but not good faces if that
                             makes any sense.
                       \_ I wonder if you took FF-quality CGI actors, and then
                          ran the video through filters to degrade it to VHS
                          quality, if it would look a lot more realistic
                          because the small errors get blurred out.
                       \_ You're an idiot.  All of the movement was
                          motion-captured.
                          \_ Uh, so?  Why is that not a valid technique?
                    \_ With CGI?  No.  Nor in Hollywood.  -tom