cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19704884
A Purdue University student thought he kicked his way to a two-year car lease for making three field goals in a contest held during the Boilermakers’ season opener in West Lafayette. However, the dealership sponsoring the giveaway later reneged on the deal because of a technical. The final kick – a 40-yarder – left his foot just a split second too late on August 31. Car dealerships really cannot help but be bastards, can they?
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Just so you know how this stuff works… Dealers don’t pay for this out of pocket. They pay for “prize insurance” in case someone wins and the insurance pays out.
In this case, what looks like happened is the insurance company reviewed the footage and went “Nope, not paying.” Which then fell back on the dealership to make good.
Source: Was a judge on a “hit a hole in one, win a Cadillac!” at a golf tournament. Someone did, in fact, hit a hole in one on my hole and won the car.
It wasn’t even he won a car, either. It was a two-year lease. Also
Dealerships, insurance companies, they ask really are dirty.
If the video was 30 fps, sounds like two frames
It was from several different angles, from four? Cams with discrepancies between them.
Jeez, I wonder if they accounted for the rolling shutter to get higher time resolution
I know zip about photography, could you explain, please?
Oh, this’ll blow your mind. Digital cameras don’t capture the entire image all at once. They typically capture one row of pixels at a time, so each row comes from a different moment in time.
So the point I was alluding to is that two adjacent frames in a video carry slightly more timing information than they might appear to based on timestamps.
Specifically, if you have two frames where a dot appears at the bottom and then a second dot appears at the top, you can’t be 100% certain that the first dot to appear actually showed up first, or whether it’s an artifact of the rolling shutter effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_shutter
I’ll check out the wiki, but your explanation is pretty simple to understand and concise! Well done and thanks so much!
ETA: just read it. Those distortions in the propeller and helicopter blades are wild. While not being a fan of car dealerships, I’m also not a fan of insurance companies. It would be fascinating to know the answer to this mystery.