Media forensics experts analyze gruesome ISIS videos

Forensics experts at CU Denver are analyzing those online videos from ISIS that show the beheadings of two American journalists, Steven Sotloff and James Foley.

“As we analyze these videos, it has the same template, scenario, like they have the same director,” Catalin Grigoras, the director of the National Center for Media Forensics said.

Grigoras believes the layers of both high-quality productions combined with the choice of camera shots and angles make these messages two of the most sophisticated pieces of media he’s ever seen.

“The people that created these movies, it is obvious they have skills, both audio and video producing skills,” Grigoras said. “They have a know-how for setting the landscape, the lights and the microphones.”

Based on voice recognition techniques this expert is confident the man with the knife in his hand in the Sotloff video is the same man who beheaded Foley in a video released last month.

“Scientifically, we found the likelihood the voices belonged to the same person is huge,” he said.

Grigoras saw changes in Sotloff’s physical appearance, which leads him to believe there was at least a week between the making of the two videos.