How to check a strange video recording

Before you do anything to the footage, write a short note about the filming location at the time of recording. What was in the room or space? Were there windows, mirrors, or reflective surfaces? Was anyone else present? Were there fans, vents, or open doors that could move air? Were there insects, animals, or vehicles nearby?

Do this before you watch the clip again. Memory is unreliable once you have watched footage repeatedly — having a baseline note helps.

Watch the clip at normal speed first, and note the exact timestamp where the anomaly occurs.

Then step through it frame by frame. On a desktop computer, open the video in VLC (free at videolan.org), pause it, and press the E key to advance one frame at a time. On a phone, pause the video and drag the timeline scrubber very slowly. This is less precise but works without installing anything.

Frame-by-frame review is the single most effective thing you can do. Many anomalies that look dramatic at full speed turn out to be a single blurry frame caused by compression or motion.

Watch the clip again and pay close attention to camera stability at the moment the anomaly appears. Most modern phones use a rolling shutter — the image is scanned from top to bottom rather than captured all at once. If the camera moves during that scan, straight lines appear to bend, and stationary objects can look like they are wobbling, warping, or drifting.

Ask: did the camera move at the exact moment the anomaly appeared? If yes, rolling shutter or motion blur is the most likely explanation.

Was this recorded in darkness or low light? Many security cameras, dashcams, and phone cameras switch to infrared (IR) night-vision mode in low light. IR cameras illuminate the scene with a type of light that is invisible to the human eye but detected by the sensor. Dust particles, insects, and moisture droplets reflect IR light very strongly — far more than they would in ordinary daylight footage. A small insect or dust particle passing close to the lens can appear as a glowing, fast-moving orb or streak.

If the footage looks greenish, black-and-white, or unusually bright in the dark, it is likely using IR. That changes what ordinary objects look like on camera.

Step through the footage frame by frame around the anomaly. Look specifically for small, bright dots or streaks moving quickly across the frame. These are the most reliable sign of a dust particle or insect passing close to the lens.

Insects and dust typically move faster than any background detail, disappear within a few frames, and often appear brighter than anything else in the shot.

Was this recorded at a low quality setting, or compressed before you received it? Digital video is stored using compression that works by saving only the changes between frames. When there is a lot of motion in part of the frame, this compression can create blocky, pixelated areas. In low-light or heavily compressed footage, random noise can form vague shapes — including shapes that look like figures.

This is not imagination. The human brain is wired to find human shapes, and it will find them in noise, shadows, and doorways. The technical word for this is pareidolia. Check whether the shape appears consistently in the same position across multiple frames. A real solid object stays put. Compression noise appears and disappears at random.

Work through the list before drawing any conclusions.