Enhancing that Rendlesham Forest footage - genuine artefact or compression error?

Right, I've been looking at the famous Rendlesham Forest video from 1980 again, and I've got some questions about the enhancement work that's been done over the years. Using modern software (I've been mucking about with Photoshop and some free analysis tools), I'm trying to work out whether the "structured shapes" people keep banging on about are actually there, or if they're just compression artefacts from repeated copying and enhancement.

The original VHS was obviously degraded before it was digitised, and I reckon every time someone's enhanced it, they've potentially introduced more noise. Has anyone here got access to the original tape, or knows someone who does? I'd love to see what the raw footage actually looks like before all the enhancement.

Before anyone jumps down my throat - I'm not saying it was definitely a helicopter or weather balloon. I'm just saying we need to be careful about seeing what we want to see. That's not skepticism, that's just good methodology, innit?

Good post. I've been saying this for years. People enhance the footage, introduce their own artifacts, then point at those artifacts as evidence. It's confirmation bias dressed up as analysis. The problem is once an "enhanced" version gets out there, it becomes the baseline for everyone else, and the original gets forgotten.

Has anyone here got access to the original tape, or knows someone who does?

The original is supposedly held by the MOD still. Good luck getting them to release it. They've been sitting on Rendlesham for 40+ years - they're not going to suddenly hand it over for YouTube analysis, are they?

You're asking the right questions but you're missing the point. Whether there's compression artefacts or not doesn't change the fact that multiple trained military personnel witnessed something they couldn't explain. The video is just one piece of evidence. The testimony is what matters.

I've got a copy of an enhancement done by this American guy - forget his name - back in 1997. It's on an old CD-ROM somewhere in my loft. If I can dig it out and get it working on a modern machine, I'll try to compare it with what's online now. Might show exactly how much has changed.

This is why the paranormal community gets laughed at, mate. We can't even agree on what the original source material looks like anymore. All we've got is a game of Chinese whispers with photoshop filters. Depressing really.