I have a buddy that dissects and edits videos etc for a living and can look through that stuff. I’m gonna have him check this out and see what he thinks.
For the record I think it’s silly he got DQd right away. Lots and lots and lots of factors come into play when you’re doing this stuff over the internet. Gotta look at everything and eliminate each possibility with evidence.
I think it’s pretty bad that IYYF has not yet told us why they deemed the Final to be DQ-worthy after he passed the prelim with a live test
^^
This. Innocent until proven guilty. If you want to delay processing, fine, but you gotta actually prove something is up to proceed in this way.
Like, he looks like that in all the footage I’ve seen of his play so I don’t think it’s sped up? He’s just good lol
my first reaction was that it was sped up but after watching it a couple times for some reason it slows down in my mind and seems possible lol
Update: his own words not mine. Take it with a grain of salt. “I looked over that routine probably 20-25 times throughly and I just can’t tell. Best bet is that it’s a framerate issue and not as good of lighting as it could and should be and it’s causing whatever they’re using to almost “catch up” for a fraction of a second. Problem there is speeding up a video can also cause framerate drops, so it’s very hard to tell. Plus I have nothing else to go by in the video. No other moving objects no nothing to decipher. If I had to come to a conclusion, very unlikely he cheated or altered his video, if he did he’s very good at it and should be considering that as a profession lol”
Personally I don’t think it was sped up. I’m not an expert but that seemed to have a natural flow. That seemed normal compared to watching a Godspeed video without a TV in the background.
Dude’s fast.
Even then, somebody could just clip two videos together.
I don’t think know of any good solutions exist for proving that video wasn’t edited besides expert analysis.
Perhaps in the future, there will be some sort of very quick blockchain. A person could save frames in blocks, or do their freestyle in front of a live video of an existing blockchain.
Blockchain would not be of any use here. The Blockchain registry is only as good as the approving authority allows. Making a video is not like mining hash’s. You would need to have an authority to approve the authenticity of the video BEFORE it could be put into the blockchain. That puts you right back to square one.
Clearly there needs to be a consistent frame-rate standard. Since live, online video suffers from dropped-frames and varying frame-rates by definition; these video performances are not verifiable since the video can not be properly analyzed for fraud.
Well, I’ll tell you straight up, I am certainly not an expert on video tech. No doubt I’ve watched hundreds and hundreds of videos over the years. But I’ve never studied them from the viewpoint of a person trying to look for something deceptive.
I can’t say this is my full two cents but this is my penny and a half, simply based on years of being a very observant person.
First of all, this kid is really fast that there is no doubt. Second of all, I don’t know how big the guy is, but he doesn’t appear to be a very tall person. The way it looks to me in the video he is a shorter guy like myself, most likely, which means his arms aren’t real long, if they’re fairly proportionate to his height. People with shorter arms that move really fast, have a tendency to appear a little more mechanical then say, for example, gentry stein, a taller guy with longer arms that even though he moves fast, it has more of a flow it’s just a nature of measurements and visual impression.
Let me give you an abstract example. This is based on me actually being invited and attending some thing that I’ve never been to before and something I most likely will never go to again. It was a track and field for small people. I don’t wanna insult anybody if they’re small people on this forum. But I’m talking about small people Midgets dwarfs, and every figure out which witch is which. We’re talking to small people like Oompa Loompa size. If you ever have the opportunity to watch small people running around a track like in a 440 relay. It’s amazing how much faster they look just because their arms and legs are so short. I mean they’re moving to cover some ground. But the mind is actually sort of fooled into thinking that they’re really blazing. Or they’re running fast OK. But they seem to be at nitrous oxide level because of the length of their extremities. That’s just the way it is. It’s a visual effect of the dimensions.
Before I decided to give my view from left field. I watched video 20 times. I am assuming now. I am assuming based on what I feel is this guy‘s height, and the length of his arms. As I already mentioned his shorter arms, and his amazingly fast speeds, combined with a frame rate, that might not serve in presenting his video the way he is presenting his freestyle…… could unintentionally give the perception that the video speed was altered. When in fact, it may not have been altered at all. People have seen this guy play any no, he’s good. Matter fact, after watching the video 20 times. I am very much convinced that this guy is capable of performing an excellent freestyle. Because of this, I can see no logical reason why the guy would risk his future credibility by altering a video to possibly accumulate a few more points? That just doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s not like the price is a new Corvette or a JetSki for $10,000.
Might take his this guy could not get that good if he was an idiot. He’s obviously put in some time and he’s quite a good yoer.
There are two primary possibilities. We are confronted with here. Things that are in the realm of possibilities. And things that are in the realm of probabilities.
Is it possible that he cheated? Of course it is.
Is it probable that he cheated based on the fact that he’s good enough he doesn’t need to cheat that’s pretty obvious. I would say in the realm of probability he didn’t cheat at all.
I think it’s an optical illusion. I think a bunch of factors came in to play that when you put them all in the blender and mix them up it just didn’t come out as a chocolate shake. And I think disqualifying the guy was one big jump in the wrong direction.
I’ll tell you one more thing that I found out in the greater part of my 70 years on earth. Obviously, I didn’t start thinking of these things when I was a little baby. But when I was growing up, I’ve had decades of experience with something. Watching other people get accused of various things. Only accused And circumstantial evidence at most. One thing I’ve discovered in over a half a century of being exposed to this kind of stuff. Even when these matters are resolved, and it turns out that the guy didn’t do a damn thing wrong, he still going to have that shadow hanging over his head. He’s still gonna remember how hard he tried to compete in a contest and was accused of doing something sneaky. He will never forget that some of his own peers just couldn’t see that the guys good enough, so they try to put a pitchfork in his heart.
If it turns out that the guy is sneaky, he won’t care because sneaky people usually don’t have a conscience anyway
But if it turns out he gets vindicated and he didn’t do a darn thing wrong. It’s going to be good but sad at the same time.
If nothing else, what we learn from this is, if you’re gonna have Internet yo-yo Contests, we are going to need to fine-tune how the contest is run. And if somebody does get accused of cheating, it’ll be based on refined parameters and recording techniques that are extremely difficult to alter to one’s advantage.
Learn by doing…
Looks fine to me.
Yoyos can move fast, I’ve first hand watched yoyo videos that look sped up but aren’t.
For example, at multiple points in this video, it looks very much like it’s sped up. (Notably during the zontals) But you can tell it’s not because of the movement of individuals in the background. (Though there is debate in the comments about this)
Secondly, and a lot of this is just what Mo is saying, he appears relatively short, seems as if he’s using a short string, and the frame rate doesn’t help. He has an established reputation as a fast and well-playing individual, he’s competed before at this level, not only do I think it’s out of character for him to cheat just for some extra points, but I also think it’s unfair to his skill. Some moments in his 2021 Final look similar.
Hi, IYYF BOD here.
We were in communication with the competitor in question a lot in regards to his routine, and working with our judges and other event staff to work with him. We requested raw video files, which he never provided. We requested a new video with a clock in the background, which he never provided. We even corresponded directly with his sponsor, who encouraged him to work with us, but he repeatedly declined to provide the additional video we requested.
First off, thanks for addressing this!
I think you have a pretty valid point, and I do think that future contests should implement some sort of time verification system. Just one thing I wanted to ask, to consider the player’s perspective. Was this verification system (like raw video files or filming with a clock) requested from all players?
If not, then from the perspective of the player, if they’ve already verified that they were not cheating in round 1, and there is no reason based off the video to suggest that they were cheating in round 2, then requesting a verification could be considered questioning their integrity and requiring extra work above other competitors to show their innocence, when they’ve already gone to extra lengths to show that they are playing fairly.
If this verification was required from all players, then I think this justification makes total sense.
Thanks
From what I read based on the player’s Insta that he propose to perform the final live in front of the judges once more but IYYF declined this because he lost the raw video to prove that he did not speed up ( I am wondering if you can confirm this detail?)
I would say that not everyone is tech savy to store/keep a big video file so I reccomend to discuss this again because you already validate him for prelim with live performance even with all the doubt.
I agree that if he proved his prelim to be legit live in front of judges, then the final shouldn’t be questioned. He is doing a lot of tricks at the same speed in both performances. There does not seem to be actual evidence that he is cheating. No one has pointed out any evidence of foul play in the video itself. Cheating should be taken seriously, and should probably result in worse punishment than just a DQ from this contest. I just don’t think his freestyle not looking quite right is enough proof for that. The fact that it can’t be determined whether or not he cheated is a ruleset issue. This situation does show improvements that could be made to future online yoyo contests such as performing in front of a clock. Hopefully he can perform in front of judges or post another video that can clear things up.
Totally agree with you that IYYF should add rule that for every OWYYC player must have clock or whatever object that has time display in the video.
For now, let’s wait for some update from either IYYF or player response.
I have an idea on how it could be proved if he cheated.
We don’t have any references in the video like a clock or moving things in the background but there is one thing that will always have the same speed which is the speed of falling objects (if we dismiss air resistance which I think is fair for a yoyo that doesn’t even fall one meter).
We can look at an aerial, an aerial is a trick when the yoyo, string and counterweight are tossed in the air, and after the apex of the aerial the yoyo will fall. It should fall at 9,81ms/s^2. If we know the diameter of the yoyo it should be possible to predict how fast the yoyo should fall. If the yoyo in the video always falls faster than 9,81m/s^2 then it would be proof that he cheated.
Yes, any time a player submits a video that interferes with our ability to judge it, we request that they resubmit and we make clear what criteria need to be followed in order for us to consider the video “fairly judgable”. Whether it’s video, audio, lighting, speed whatever if the video submitted seems off or unable to be judged fairly we will request a new one. This is not uncommon.
To my recollection this is the only time a player has been requested to do this and refused.
That’s like saying someone passed a drug test today, so there’s no way they’d do drugs next week. Either way, though, burden of proof is on the contestant, which is perfectly reasonable, and it’s not the organizer’s fault he apparently lost the original footage (mentioned but not confirmed a few posts above), which undoubtably adds to the suspicion.
A good idea. If the frame-rate is not constant, and/or there are dropped frames, this approach would not work. Also; if they filmed it on a different planet than Earth; the acceleration due to gravity would be different. 
