DK Metcalf — Is This Catch Real or Fake?
Oh, there’s a crazy video on the internet? Everyone is trying to figure out if it’s real or fake? It involves gravity? This is right where I belong. Let’s do this. Here is the video showing receiver DK Metcalf with a seemingly impossible jump-catch.
But is it real? My initial guess is that it looks too high of a jump to be from a real person. HOWEVER, I have been wrong with my guess so many times that I no longer trust my guesses. That’s why I’m going to use physics.
The first step here is to plot the motion of DK during the jump. If we see anything weird, it could be a sign that the video has been altered. So, I’m going to load the video up into my favorite video analysis program — Tracker Video Analysis (it’s awesome and free).
In video analysis, I can mark the location of an object (like DK Metcalf) in each frame of the video. This location can give me an x and y-value for the position and the frame number (along with the frame rate) will give me the time. It’s kind of awesome if you think about it.
