Hi,
I tried to post this over on twingalaxies, but my ancient account can't post there for some reason.
Anyway, I wanted to say that I'm unconvinced that this frame-by-frame analysis is good evidence. Note that I'm not saying I think you guys are wrong overall. I don't have a position on that, but agree there's a bunch of other fishy stuff (board swap, anyone?). I just think this video analysis is weak.
Why do I think it's weak? I guess the summary would be that this frame-by-frame analysis of transitions is too new for people to be making such definitive statements about it. My opinion, obviously. But when I first read the initial post with the gifs, etc., I thought, "Wow, that's pretty clear." But the underlying assumption there is that there's are always clear differences that we should see. Some version of MAME always does transitions like X. Arcade always does transitions like Y.
If you go look through some video, though, it's totally not the case. Some transitions in Billy's recordings exactly match some transitions in known Arcade recordings. Reality is that even in a single recording, there are a number of different transitions seen. Triforce posted a video earlier pointing out the same thing, so I won't go into it more.
Then there's Jace Hall on TG basically saying how he's an expert in all things video, and after a bunch of analysis, they're pretty sure that the oil can should never appear without DK in the frame as well. In an amazing bit of timing, he then posts
...we believe we have now successfully identified and have nearly definitively confirmed...
and
Any type of signal conversion from RGB to NTSC (or otherwise) from an unmodified Original Donkey Kong PCB can not produce an image of the Oil Barrel without the Donkey Kong character present, since that image does not ever exist in the original signal.
Note the "or otherwise" there. This is posted roughly 20 minutes _after_ Scoundrl has shown counter-evidence. But that's okay! 20 minutes after that, he explains it away as CRT effects. Fine, I can believe that. But then, he continues:
It is important to understand that this can not happen in a direct-feed scenario. An RGB to NTSC conversion going straight to VHS tape never has this moment in the signal. There are no CRT phosphors to hold a partial image for 1/60th of a second and the framerate / field recording is exactly the incoming signal with no image recomposition being performed. The above appears to be a visual artifact and image that got created by the external camera being out of sync with an actual video display.
Ummm, what exactly are we looking at in the video of Billy's 1.047M game? Yeah, a camera recording an image from a CRT monitor. At least, that's what it looks like to me. What about the footage from the Big Bang event? Very obviously CRTs. (The 1.050M game does look more like an LCD to me, but I have no idea whether that should introduce similar artifacts or not.)
What seems (to me) to be happening is that people have already decided that Billy's tapes are bogus. And now they're "proving" what they've already decided, so fail to be properly skeptical of their methods.
You know what this really reminds me of? The completely bogus analysis of Steve Weibe's tape from KoK. Here it is, take a listen, even if you've already heard it before:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdTjaF1eEqoListen to how confident Brian and Dwayne are about the "altered board aspects" and how wild barrels on level 5 should act differently. They're completely sure something is wrong and wild barrels should be 'faster'. But a decade later, after disassembly and code analysis, along with tons of play by lots of people, we know the truth. They are dead wrong. That is exactly how wild barrels on level 5 are supposed to work. Again: They are convinced they're right, but are completely wrong.
Are you guys doing the same thing now with this board transition analysis and rendering aspects? I don't claim to know, but it smells kinda similar to me. Everyone seems to be very sure that Billy's tapes shouldn't look the way they do.
As I said above, I'm not saying you're wrong overall, or even specifically about this frame-by-frame video stuff. I just think there are very serious flaws in the argument.
Todd