Help to solve this TV broadcasting mystery!

[wonkey_monkey]

Hi all,

On Saturday night, over the final shot of an entertainment show on ITV in the UK, a mysterious image could be vaguely discerned over the final shot of the audience.

Someone was able to capture it, but their capture wasn't great:

mystery capture (http://up.metropol247.co.uk/davidlees/saturday_night_take_away_itv1.mpg)

For comparison, he also captured a clean version from a repeat broadcast, which didn't feature this mysterious image:

clean capture (http://up.metropol247.co.uk/davidlees/saturday_night_take_away_itv2.mpg)

I've had a go at processing the differences, and more by luck than judgement, I came up with this:

http://horman.net/whatthehellisthis.jpg

The prevailing theory is that it's some kind of communist logo, which looks, to me, to surround two embracing figures.

Would anyone else like to have a go? I realise the captures aren't great, and I'm hoping to get some better ones at some point, but it may not be possible.

Thanks,

David

[foxyshadis]

It is a seal extremely reminiscent of the old Soviet Union's and Soviet Hungary's, but it's not one that actually seems to exist. My only guess is that it's somehow related to Crimea. I'm amazed that you managed to piece that together from that source file.

[Ghitulescu]

I the broadcast has been captured (aka recorded off air via eg a DVD recorder) then it may be very well the case of an interference. The much cleaner version may be a direct direct-to-disc (using a PVR).

[wonkey_monkey]

It was visible to viewers in multiple ITV regions across the country and on multiple platforms (DVB-T and DVB-S). It wasn't present on the DVB-S HD broadcast. The clean version was taken from a repeat on another channel the next day (which either has a higher bitrate, or the live broadcast gets a better encoding overnight).

[Reel.Deel]

@davidhorman

Just out of curiosity, how did you manage to create the difference between the two clips?

[mike20021969]

a mysterious image could be vaguely discerned over the final shot of the audience.

ITV might be able to shed some light on it.

http://www.itv.com/viewerservices

[wonkey_monkey]

@davidhorman

Just out of curiosity, how did you manage to create the difference between the two clips?

If I recall correctly, I aligned them temporally with trim and spatially with a small crop, then used overlay in difference mode. Then I repeated

a=overlay(a.selecteven,a.selectodd,mode="lighten")

a few times. One of the resulting frames was the one in the first post.

I'm not entirely sure why it worked, but both clips exhibit duped/dropped frames, so I guess somewhere along the way they happened to coincide happily to produce the result. The mystery acts like a mask, within which parts of "future" frames can actually be seen, so I was attempting to have these differences add up, but what I got in the end was a darker version of the image.

ITV might be able to shed some light on it.

I emailed them a few days ago, but haven't heard back from them yet.

David

[wonkey_monkey]

The mystery has been solved! An eagle-eyed member of TV Forum (http://www.tvforum.co.uk) spotted that it was from a trailer for The Americans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Americans_%282013_TV_series%29), currently showing on ITV!

http://horman.net/solved.jpg

[mike20021969]

The mystery has been solved!

This is great news.

[Ghitulescu]

The mystery has been solved!

Only partially solved, sory.
How did the image get into, anyway, may I ask?

[wonkey_monkey]

Well, that's the remaining mystery. I guess the trailer was cued up and a mixing desk somewhere took it as a key input.

With a live broadcast like this, I think that all the mixing is done in the gallery at the studio, and any other mixing desks further up the line might be put on bypass. I guess something went a bit funny during the transition to come off bypass.

[Ghitulescu]

I still believe it occurred via RF interference, AKA during analogue reception. I don't believe such situations should ever occur in a studio.

[2Bdecided]

I still believe it occurred via RF interference, AKA during analogue reception. I don't believe such situations should ever occur in a studio.There is no analogue broadcasting in the UK.

[Ghitulescu]

Not even via cable?
We don't have analogue here either, yet most if not all cable providers still have analogue, for compatibility reasons (cable customers are anyway the most defavourised customers in Germany). Aired is DVB-T (not even T2, but there are plans for H.264 at least). Anyway, even with cable, still there is a problem if this is an interference.

Conspiracy theory: subliminal messages.
Realistic theory: mixing errors, post processing errors.

[wonkey_monkey]

Interference couldn't cause parts of a frame to be masked and delayed in this fashion (best seen as the camera comes around to show the stage again. You can see some of the large studio lights in the "star" area before they're in that position in the main view). And all the reports came from DVB-S and DVB-T viewers, in multiple regions.

Apparently, the only remaining analogue service in the UK is Virgin Cable in Milton Keynes.