Finding where a video was filmed by listening for passing aircraft

[DeepVulture]

Planes overhead can reveal where a video was recorded, even when you cannot hear them. Hackaday reports on a technique by a maker known as colsto, shown in a YouTube video, which uses aircraft noise visible in an audio spectrogram

Each passing plane creates a Doppler curve. The height of the curve relates to its speed and the length to its distance

Public ADS-B logs record each plane's time, position, altitude, speed and heading. The method finds locations where the expected curves would line up with the ones in the recording

It also rules out spots where more planes would have been audible than were heard, because without that filter the results cluster near airports. In one test, a single curve was enough to locate a video, though no accuracy figures were given

It is a clever combination of signal processing and public flight data, and a reminder of how much hidden information recordings can contain. Techniques like this are useful for verifying footage and spotting fakes. It also shows why people sharing videos may want to think about what background sounds reveal

Did you know aircraft noise could give away a location? And what other hidden clues do you think recordings contain?

Determining Location By Listening For Airplaneshackaday.com