Reason I don’t like most Digital Evidence

Hey, I agree with you in small pieces ..
First .. If the paranormal exists, only the''digital have little mistakes''that make it look as you say so, but do not confuse it with digital flash flash electromagnetic .. The error is: Flash low quality. But after the flash you see that if there is something strange in the room among others .. Well, thanks to that little flash failure, you can see supernatural material .. Because some people can not see these small objects supernatural
Second: The orbs, paranormal or other personnel .. If you go in the day, but not be seen because there is light, be light, the flash is not efficient to not be efficient no such errors come to light .. Well I hope I've entente .. I have other theories rather complicated .. When you want to talk ... regards

-Gabriel

tyrstag wrote: First off, let me explain that I am not a skeptic. I have seen too much unexplainable stuff in my life to not be a believer. I just have a big problem with some things that are claimed to be evidence, but have perfectly reasonable scientific explanations.

I would agree, one must be very careful what one calls proof. Evidence is just a collection of data, does not really mean its valid or invalid. It just means its empirical data which has been collected. The collection of that data as a whole then must lead towards proof. I personally don't think any one piece of data by itself can constitute proof. But rather an overwhelming preponderance of positive data which can then collectively increase the probability of having found something valid.

You should be skeptical of ANY digital evidence. The reason is that we live in an analog world.

On this I would have to disagree. Evidence can be invalid or valid independent of whether its digital or analog. Actually in its raw form many digital evidence can far surpass any analog evidence. I do understand the concept of artifacts and loss due to compression and other digital factors. But as long as you keep those factors in mind when you select your means of collecting the data, and factor in the level of error caused by those the data can be every bit as valid.

For a moment consider this. A regular chemical photograph taken of something evidential. The same effects (motion blur, ghosting, lack of definition, etc) can effect the analog image just as they can the digital images. The same distortion you get by zooming in on a digital, you get by zooming in on an analog. This is true for video as well. And with audio evidence, recording on an old style tape recorder can actually lead to more distortion and background noise than their digital counterparts.

Also as far as purposeful manipulation of data goes (faking images), anyone who's ever had a real dark room will tell you that its just as easy (sometimes easier) to fake an analog image as it is with a digital one. I would not discount digital forms in any way. Actually digital images give you some internal information which can in some cases lend credibility to the photograph.

Digital images have embedded data which can tell the source of the image, time of day, and even the camera settings used when taking the image. Yes, this can be faked or duplicated but now you're greatly reducing the number of people who have the knowledge to do that.

As long as no compression is used on the original, a digital image, video, sound can be as good if not better than its counterpart analog. The true key is to know the capabilities and limitations of the equipment you are using. Not all equipment is created equal. Also if you do any processing on data, keep the original and know how the processing works. You MUST know how any image or sound processing will effect the validity of the data. Data integrity is #1 when it comes to wanting to use it as scientific proof.

Hardware malfunction: In computer graphics, visual artifacts may be generated whenever a hardware component (eg. processor, memory chip, cabling) malfunctions, causing data corruption. Malfunction may be caused by physical damage, overheating (sometimes due to GPU overclocking), etc. Common types of hardware artifacts are texture corruption and T-vertices in 3D graphics, and pixelization in MPEG compressed video.

True, but you also have to keep in mind that hardware level corruption generally appears much more dramatic than artifacts in images. Generally hardware level corruption will cause your computer to lock up. Most systems have error correction or detection. What you see mostly in images as the T-vertices is when an image is unconverted. Basically you're taking one pixel, the smallest dot which is defined within any image. And you are taking that dot and multiplying it to make it bigger. So one dot becomes 10-200 dots. So lets look at an example, 1 dot will become 20x20 dots. This in turn will make a large square in the color and brightness that the original dot was. If you look at such a picture it will look almost like a mozaic with many squares of colors. To reduce this effect some up-conversion software makes a best attempt at smoothing those edges. It does this by averaging the colors with those around them and then creating a soft transition. Somtimes even going out farther and looking for the edge of that color and creating a shape based off of it. Now you've started creating a phantom shape where before there was none. But again remember the computer is GUESSING based on the surroundings.

Although this entire process is great for finding detail in images that simply do not have the detail, the important factor is that its a best guess. And so the level of error starts to increase dramatically as you let the comptuer up-convert a smaller image into a larger one. There are other processes which induce levels of error. But to get a true idea of the level of error that any such process can induce you have to have a firm knowledge of what the computer does internally during image processing or enhancement.

Compression: Controlled amounts of unwanted information may be generated as a result of the use of lossy compression techniques. One such case is the artifacts seen in JPEG and MPEG compression algorithms.

I'm with you there, 100%! Compression is evil and although its great for making an image, sound or video into a more manageable size, it irreversibly loses data. If you then take that image and try to get the data back, you're now inducing error upon error. ALWAYS keep the original image, and save it with the least possible compression. I store all my images with no compression, my audio with minimal compression, and my video in raw form. (Makes for huge files)

okay thanks. The recorder has a built in usb connector. It seems like the program doesn't want to run but I think it's just me and lack of know how

Ummmm, sure?
I don't know what kind of recorder you have, but there should be a USB cable to connect it to the PC, it may be an option you have to buy.

The files that the recorder saves are probably already MP3 and you shouldn't have to convert them.

To convert an audio file in Audacity, you have to download the "Lame MP3" encoder. Pretty sure there's a link right in Audacity to download it. Unzip the file to some folder, then go into audacity settings and tell it where you saved the file. The option to convert files to MP3 will then just show up.

Hope that helped . . .contact me offline if you need more help. tyrstag (at) gmail.com

Seeing as how you're a techie person can you tell me how to get my digi recorder to load on my laptop and how to convert sound files from audacity to mp3's???

NP, a lot of people screw it up. You guys can call me Pete, everyone else does.

Yeah, I know you can do long exposure. But I've been in some places where there is absolutely 0 light

Hahaha, thanks! I might take you up on that air guitar, mine is getting a little dusty.

tyrstag wrote: Wow,
Thanks Guys! But it's Tyrstag . . . not Tommy.

Whoops that's my fault. I got your sn mixed up with Tryanjr (Tommy)

tyrstag wrote: Wow,
Thanks Guys! But it's Tyrstag . . . not Tommy.

As I was writing the post I was thinking that I was going to be blasted by all the "Cool Kids" who watch the TV shows and think that's real ghost hunting. I'm really glad to see so many people agree with me.

BTW, I NEVER said that I don't use the equipment, I do use it all. I'm a gadget geek, I teach IT for a living. But that's also what makes me skeptical of digital evidence. I know all the things that can be wrong with it.

When I watch the TV "Professionals", I watch with a grain of salt and turn it into a drinking game. I pick a different word each episode. "Orb", "EMF", "EVP", "Dude Run!!"
I drive my wife nuts with my giggling at their "evidence". Sometimes shouting at the TV in anger at how much they are trying to stretch the truth to make it seem like they caught something spectacular.

@ Amanda_O Yes, the original purpose of EMF and Tri-Field detectors was to find Hot Spots of high EMF for health reasons. the term Tri-Field just means it has 3 antennas, tuned to: A/C magnetic field, AC electric field, and radio (including microwaves).

@ Wes_Forsythe I agree, most of the time noisy old houses are just noisy old houses. Pixelated video with a shadow moving across the screen is one of my absolute favorite things to get mad about. that's just a DV camera being a DV camera.
The only problem with using a film camera is that regular film doesn't work with IR, you have to have some sort of visible light source.


--Tyrstag

Oops sorry, I called you Tommy because Tress did.

That's why I use digital when shooting IR. You can shoot film with long exposures in dark places however if you have decent B & W film. You could use color, but I don't think it's as good.

If the cool kids come after you, we'll take care of them. Lol.

In all honesty, I think that all the cool kids are sitting down and watching paranormal drama queens. If anyone can prove me wrong, I'll send you a free air guitar, postage paid.

Wow,
Thanks Guys! But it's Tyrstag . . . not Tommy.

As I was writing the post I was thinking that I was going to be blasted by all the "Cool Kids" who watch the TV shows and think that's real ghost hunting. I'm really glad to see so many people agree with me.

BTW, I NEVER said that I don't use the equipment, I do use it all. I'm a gadget geek, I teach IT for a living. But that's also what makes me skeptical of digital evidence. I know all the things that can be wrong with it.

When I watch the TV "Professionals", I watch with a grain of salt and turn it into a drinking game. I pick a different word each episode. "Orb", "EMF", "EVP", "Dude Run!!"
I drive my wife nuts with my giggling at their "evidence". Sometimes shouting at the TV in anger at how much they are trying to stretch the truth to make it seem like they caught something spectacular.

@ Amanda_O Yes, the original purpose of EMF and Tri-Field detectors was to find Hot Spots of high EMF for health reasons. the term Tri-Field just means it has 3 antennas, tuned to: A/C magnetic field, AC electric field, and radio (including microwaves).

@ Wes_Forsythe I agree, most of the time noisy old houses are just noisy old houses. Pixelated video with a shadow moving across the screen is one of my absolute favorite things to get mad about. that's just a DV camera being a DV camera.
The only problem with using a film camera is that regular film doesn't work with IR, you have to have some sort of visible light source.


--Tyrstag

Steven Matrix wrote:

Wes_Forsythe wrote: Good Post!

I personally believe in Ghosts, but I know that an old haunted building is going to have all of the same noises an old non-haunted building. In other words not everything that goes on at a haunted location is paranormal.

I have started requesting that people read the actual sceintific/technical research on orbs before I comment on them. I have hurt a lot of feelings in my day by saying that in my opinion someone's prize photo was dust. Now I ask them them to read the official explanation of the orb zone and then explain to me how their particular orb differs from the ones described and proven to be dust, moisture, etc.



Dark, pixelated photos are another pet-peeve. If anyone doubts that our eyes play tricks on us, let me send you my pony in the clouds photo.

But I guess what I hate to see the most is when people in the field become so convinced that something is paranormal that they tune out the real world possibilities. The recent popularity of the field has produced some advances that might not have come around othewise, but so many people are only interested in finding the unknown without doing the research on what is known.

Very well said. Do you think that a lot of the "tuning out" of people has to do with what they perceive from watching the so called professionals on TV? I do, only because I watch the popular people on TV and walk away from that experience with a feeling that they don't know as much as they would like people to think they do. And they teach their lack of understanding to the masses who try to duplicate what they do. The thrill and emotion of the "investigation" overrides reality; which is what I get you are trying to say here.

I also agree with Amanda above that a film camera is a good way of photographing the different locations. I will say however that I use a digital camera for infrared work for the effect I get. While I hope to get something/someone in the photo, it's first the content of the location that causes me to use this type of medium. When not using that method, I prefer to use a Nikon film camera with Fuji Acros B & W film; which BTW has one of the widest [if not the widest] latitudes of all B & W films. I believe one is more likely to get "something" on film than on digital. If one does want to use digital, get a decent DSLR and know how to use it; as opposed to getting a point & shoot digital and putting it on "Automatic".

See I'd have to get someone to show me how to best use one of those things. Your ears and eyes do play tricks on you..all the time. The building my apartment is in is around 100 years old. Yeah I hear weird things all the time. It doesn't make it paranormal. I just moved here and I chalk a lot of that up to being new here both in this building and in this state. Some it is of course the pop and creak of old wood (anyone who knows about old buildings will tell you the wood used then is far more stout than what is used today) and yeah it does sound like someone coming up the stair case. A friend of mine owns the whole building and I work for her so therefor there is NO ONE here after hours but me. You could say I am on a perpetual lock down..lol. I do have a digi recorder and am trying to figure out how to load recordings onto my laptop. After I figure that out I will see if I can get anything on sound. If I do..great..if not..great.
Now do I think this place is haunted.....I'm not sure but not ready to say yes it is given the reasons above. I have heard things, footsteps the murmur of voices sometimes and seen odd shadows and yeah this place has a creepy feeling to it sometimes....of course look how old it is and tell me you wouldn't get creeped out sometimes all alone.