Yes this site is going bat-shit insane with unfounded allegations of racism. An unsubstantiated diary was recommended to the top and was picked up by his highness Markos himself and pushed to the front page accusing Senator Clinton of racism. Guess what it was all a BIG LIE!!
Back when the diary was first written I had this to say:
"Another day, another stupid diary"
The holes in the diary were obvious and glaring. The diarist was indulging in some amateur gotcha politics and race-baiting without a shred of expertise or evidence to substantiate his claims. It was all based on one frame.
To my complete astonishment yesterday it was picked up by Markos and made a front-page article. Again, no expert analysis, no evidence the same old diary set up on the front page without any evidence. Race-baiting, smearing, character assassination. I wrote this long comment on the diary:
Shame on Markos (33+ / 0-)
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to spread this false propaganda. If you can't win an election it's always good to smear someone as racist. Shame on Markos. But for those who are challenged here is a professional analysis:
http://digg.com/...
I work in broadcast advertising, so two things from a professional standpoint:
1. The aspect ratio shift is exactly 0.9; which is the difference between "square pixels" and "dv pixels," DV pixels are slightly squished for technical reasons relating to the difference in the way TVs and computer screens display images. A squished face happens all the time if footage from one source is not properly imported, or converted when exported. It looks to me like the entire commercial is squished, meaning someone captured this in a DV file format without correcting the aspect ratio for accurate viewing on a computer screen.
2. As you can see in the obvious difference in saturation values; the gamma curve is completely different for the hillary commercial. This is a little more complex, but essentially, the gamma dictates the slope of how the image shifts from dark to light, and is another broadcast vs. computer issue. For example, any image that looks bright and crisp on TV will look too dark and tough to see if played on a computer, while a normal computer image, will look bright and washed out on a television unless it is properly color corrected. This suggests to me that when the spot was compressed for the internet, someone did it wrong, leaving the broadcast colorspace since even the scenes without Obama in them are too dark and contrasty.
Either whoever made the ad simply didnt know what they were doing, OR whoever digitized and captured the ad, and posted it to youtube, didn't know what they were doing; either way, it wasn't an intentional move by the Hillary campaign.
If they had intended to make Obama look "blacker" they would have gone about it in a very different fashion. You would not be able to see any difference in the image, except for his skin tone; extensive and transparent color correction is not difficult to do, happens on a daily basis and is done for every commercial you watch.
I haven't had time to look into the truth of the statements made in the ad, and I hope they're not lies because I think Obama's great, but these accusations are ridiculous. If they wanted him blacker, they would have done it in a way that no one would notice except with a side by side comparison, and the Photoshop color picker. Someone that has a KOS account, please post this in the comments there. They're going crazy over nothing.
Edit: As an aside, the idea that its "almost impossible" for "color profiles" to be responsible for that significant a difference shows an utter lack of knowledge on the part of the article's author. Not only is it easy, its almost certain that an untrained amateur will make these kinds of mistakes when manipulating footage across devices. This is one of many reasons why I still have a job even with iMovie out there.
Once again shame on Markos for pushing this insane and baseless propaganda.
But instead of picking this comment where I cited an expert analysis (and to be fair many other experts analyzed the video and came to the same conclusion here on this site) he cited a copywriter who has no expertise in the field on video editing thus:
Obama "blacker" ad no accident Hotlist
by kos
Wed Mar 05, 2008 at 02:42:02 PM PST
From a reader:
I just wanted to leave a remark about this "blacker" issue, and comments that it is somehow something that just happened in the video editing process. I work in advertising (copywriter, [Big national advertising firm]). I sit in the rooms where the post production occurs, and this includes color correction. While things look different on many TVs, they don't look this dramatically different. Nothing that you see in a final advertisement is accidental. These things are looked at (or should be looked at if they are doing their jobs) second by second. Even more unforgiving is the stretching of the footage. It is possibly the result of laziness on the part of the editor, but it would have been easier to actually not stretch it, and just crop it.
Nothing in advertising is accidental. It is over-thought and then subjected to second thoughts and second guessing then over-thought and re-looked at again. I've been doing this ten years. It is my professional opinion that the film was made darker, and it has obviously been stretched. I will not comment on their reasons, as I can't offer an informed case for that.
No evidence...NONE. No expert analysis. Just impugning the reputation of a public servant and calling her racist. Smear without basis. Desperately wanting media attention his vile diatribe got on Sean Hannity's site:
Even the right-wing websites were having a hearty laugh by now:
So what have we now? Factcheck.org got on the act and debunked this entire story for what it is. A bunch of amateurs maligning a public servant and calling her racist without a shred of evidence or professional analysis. From their analysis:
Our conclusion: Had the bloggers compared the CMAG version of the ad to the MSNBC version of the debate, they would have a far less compelling case for intentional darkening in the Clinton ad. To our eye the Clinton ad has a noticeably less reddish hue, but whether it looks darker or not depends on which version of the ad is being compared to which version of the original debate footage.
and
Some of the differences may be due to video compression required by YouTube, which encodes video to Flash format and re-sizes it, using its own required parameters before posting. The Clinton camp may have had one color scheme in its original video and ended up with a slightly different one after YouTube's processing.
In our experience posting videos to our Just the Facts feature, conversion to Flash format drives up contrast and reduces the mid-range color values that are frequently found in flesh tones and facial detail. We've noticed that Obama, and other candidates, appear drained of a bit of their color in some of our videos after they've been processed for posting.
What has all this done? Markos for whom I had the greates respect has lost credibility as an objective blogger and analyst falling in the category of Andrew Sullivan, Ann Althouse and that crowd who will spew any garbage without a shred of evidence. Dailykos which had been a site to push progressive agenda has also lost its standing. Now how about an apology to Senator Clinton for implying that she is a racist without a shred of evidence?