GoddamnitClown
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We're so used to seeing things like this in slow motion but look at the cars in the bottom of the frame for a sense of scale.
Stabilized GIF of the Tianjin explosion
First explosion.
Second explosion. Not sure about leaving frames in the background but that stabilisation was *painstaking* and it wasn't showing up enough. Anyone with ideas or techniques, hit me up.
Official death toll is now at 112. A more believable figure than early on. PizzaThrowingWalterWhite beat me to the big informative album: http://imgur.com/gallery/NzXrb but later I thought I might as well finish these stabilised versions and upload them anyway.
edit: a lot of people are wondering what it was that exploded.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-33900306 has a bunch of info.
Tl;dr: It's not known for sure at the moment, but calcium carbide was known to be on site and the working hypothesis is - firefighters add water which makes acetylene. Uncontained acetylene in a huge fire surrounded by potassium nitrate and ammonium nitrate is a recipe for disaster. If there's ever a definitive answer, I'll try to remember update this.
Final Promised Edit: The investigation concluded, in February 2016, that an overheated container of dry nitrocellulose was the cause of the initial explosion. The second explosion, about 30 seconds later, was far larger. In addition to vast quantities of sodium cyanide and calcium carbide, paperwork was discovered showing that 800 tonnes of ammonium nitrate and 500 tonnes of potassium nitrate were being stored on site.
The casualty report was 173 deaths, 8 missing, and 797 non-fatal injuries.
finnxshakh
Good job @OP.
tunes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgurTdK0PTA Here you can see a bunch of the videos synced up. You get to hear how long the shock wave takes.
joestant
Great work OP. Must've been tough.
Mcknizzle
Damn. That's nuts
theleafssuck
Did a bit of math -- the explosion that levelled Halifax in 1917 was over 138 times more powerful than the second blast.
HibiscuitsTea
So sad. I cry everytime I see a post about it. All those people :(
Blu278
So what happened?
MokrieDela
At first I saw the frame bouncing around and thought 'he's made it worse' then I saw the footage itself wasn't moving - nice
ShadyBuddha
Fantastic job, OP!! Nice work!
Puutep
20 ton mein arse.
Drogothedestroyerkitty
Excellent work OP. News networks should be doing this, premium stuff
Thule
Oh fuck me.
LtBubba
That's incredible
BrendanFrasuresManager
Thank you for taking the time to stabilize this. Wish I could upvote you more than once
plusoneforyou
you can tag me and i'll always deliver a second upvote, i'm being honest, look at my comments, also you can read my bio for info on it.
BrendanFrasuresManager
Nice! I'll definitely keep you in mind
GoddamnitClown
That's a curiously imgur service you provide :D
plusoneforyou
it's a fun side job, imgur has good posts but not enough upvotes!
Pilkingtonsson
Did anyone else see the car being knocked off the road by the shock wave in the first gif?
ReadySetBake
I was more focused on the one that spun around completely from the shock wave. Powerful stuff.
raincoatlou
Wow, thank you for making this. It really helps but this disaster in perspective.
MariaNLang
With all the building next door to me, the fact that that crane keeps standing through that is quite comforting, actually!
ImTheReasonYourSocksAreAlwaysMissing
heres a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgurTdK0PTA the audio is truly terrifying
ifuckinglovedinosaurs
holy fuck
IsDisassembled
Upvoting because that last one is a fantastic way to stabilize a very shaky video.
ChloroformCosbySweater
Rightfully so. People seem to forget the shockwave during explosions. I'd likely be in the bathtub once I saw the flash.
snuffcarcass
It's actually brilliant.
Node1112
So since you're top comment I'll ask this so people will see it; why were they people recording this in the first place? How did they know?
snuffcarcass
They were probably recording the fire and the responders.
Node1112
Oh didn't know there was a fire before hand. Didn't read the article. Thought they were just randomly recording this building. Thanks :)
SaberShots
Agreed! That technique gives a true sense of still vibrating/ remembering what just happened, while more stuff keeps happening! Fabulous!
Rayfasa
Yeah, that was some great work. I still jumped at the explosion, lol.
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WhereOnceThereWasAYachtNowThereIsNot
Seriously OP, I can't think of a better way, the camera goes all over, thus so does the frame. Fucking well stabilised.
EvanED
Pfft. Just hire the CSI folks. ENHANCE
EvanED
But seriously, Stef was right, that was really well-done. Not sure what else you'd do without doing some CG mockup or something
Jagadid
Honestly the ghosting does the best job possible giving a sense of the area and what was actually seen. You can tell where the action is.
whyteraven74
For the curious, the site housed potassium nitrate, sodium nitrate and calcium carbide. And possibly sodium cyanide on site too.....
whyteraven74
The nitrates are something you don't want to get near an ignition source, they go boom. Calcium carbide is not something you want to....
whyteraven74
get wet, it produces acetylene gas which burns real well. Given that, the site was doomed as soon as the initial fire kicked up.
vanella
That's just so fucked up, and to say "only 100 people died" is def a lie
DeathtyOneDeathtyTwoDeathtyThree
Considering that blast was large enough to probably completely vaporize a body, they're likely going based on bodies.
davepermen
Well, there was a huge fire and evacuation beforehand. And it was night in a workarea. But yes, numbers are still going up :(
GoddamnitClown
Yeah, the official figures have been low, but the number is still rising. Perhaps there's a lot of work before someone gets declared dead.
vanella
by the devastation there's no way to believe only 100 people have died, China is just a fucked up place!!! :)
BeMySquishiey
What the hell was in that building.....
Pr0Pain
*containers
McGreed
And why the HELL would they store anything like that anywhere NEAR a city or any other buildings???
GetOffMyLawnYa
In order to ship it. Take a look at where the New Jersey, or New York dock are. Tianjin is a city built around the docks for 1/
GetOffMyLawnYa
Beijing, the capital, so much of the products and needs of the nation flow through it.
JonathanHoag
THIS INFORMATION IS IN THE DESCRIPTION
Ralpheo
Chinese.
BeMySquishiey
touche....
Exabit
Aw. Aw no. No, man. No :(
525600minutes
Too soon, man. No, really. D:
whyteraven74
Ammonium nitrate, potassium nitrate and calcium carbide apparently. Oh and apparently sodium cyanide is still present on site. Good times.
AllIHaveHadTodayIsLikeSixGummyBearsAndSomeScotch
Well at least no bad cancerogenous and long-term toxic shit.
remainingapollo
Basically explodey items
MrMcGeeIn3D
That's a recipe for a "Just-Add-Water" bomb.
Thorbane
And Calcium carbide + water = acetylene.
SirBraxton
TrashPandaMafia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thkgrwGgALw
LordFreezer
This is also calcium carbid with water only on a smaller scale
v This small and still so powerful!
drdavessardogs
Good thing they weren't drunk and used a bowling ball.
davepermen
Of all thr places, it HAD to hit the table and the beer
Snarkoleptic
TIL that explosions in films really are realistic
gakio12
I hate that you hear a distant explosion instantly in movies. I hate it so much.
Snarkoleptic
Detonation velocity is often up to 10 times faster than the speed of sound though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detonation_velocity
gakio12
Well you can clearly tell from the videos on YouTube of explosions that the sound is not instant.
Snarkoleptic
Well no, it's never instant. But it does travel faster than the speed of sound
GoddamnitClown
It travels from one side of the C4 to the other faster than sound, sure, but not through the air.
TachyonCode
It's a film/psychology trick, the same reason you get cuts to different scenes every 3 seconds or so. Drama is somewhat based on immediacy.
zofrex
They generally use actual explosions not cg, so yeah they are!
Sooner266
To be fair, this is a chemical explosion, which makes pretty fire and embers. True explosives like C4 and TNT look nothing like this.
GetSmartBeEvil
It's crazy how atomic bombs are even more explosive than this.
RedundancyDepartmentOfRedundancy
I was in the Hiroshima Peace museum around the a-bomb anniversary. It was dark times man, really bone chilling.
TheJzoli
Little boy was about 762 times more powerful than this...
frostedbutler
Even a small nuke would have leveled all those buildings around the explosion.
AwesomeName
For reference: This is reported as equivalent of 21 tons of TNT. The Nagasaki Bomb was 21 kilo(!)tons.
zofrex
And that was pretty puny as they go, the largest test detonation was 50 mega(!)tons. 2 million times as powerful as this explosion.
newyorknyc
What's the point of comparing it with TNT? I have no fucking idea how big a TNT explosion is.
GreaterDog
It's a weight comparison and general standard. TNT was the first and long-standing industrial explosive. What else would you compare to?
Loxachi
Modern aircraft launched nukes are 1.5Mt so they are 57,692,307.7 times more powerful
HydrogenAlpha
No they aren't. 21 tonnes X 57,596,307.7 = 1,211,538,461.7 That's 1,200 Mt, which is 24 times bigger than the Tsar bomba.
Sooner266
What, you didn't hear about the 1.2 gigaton bomb they're using now?
Loxachi
I'm using the combined figure of 26t. That's the total of both blasts
Sooner266
1.5 Megaton. Mega = Million. 1,500,000 / 26 = 57,692. You compared it to a 1.5 gigaton bomb, which isn't a thing. (yet)
Loxachi
Whoops my bad! And there was project sunshine which was a 10Gt ton bomb. Thankfully it was never realized
MrCIA
A nuke is to this as this is to a firecracker.
GoddamnitClown
Almost literally, yeah, typical nukes would be 5 or 6 orders of magnitude larger. 5 or 6 smaller would be firework sized for sure.
yesiamaphysicist
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were about 1000 times larger. Most nuclear warheads are several times larger or have multiple warheads of that size.
MrBigMcLargeHuge
5-6 orders of magnitude != 5-6x larger. One magnitude is 100x stronger than the previous.
yesiamaphysicist
Magnitudes are factors of 10, not 100. 5-6 orders of magnitude larger would be the largest nukes ever tested.
hLh67mZPX95L7Dui9GM6
how did you stabilize these videos? sorry I'm a complete noob when it comes to editing
drdavessardogs
cut out the morning coffee binge for one... helps to be a neurosurgeon also.
ArcaneM37
Generally you pic a point of reference and then put it in the same location on your screen frame by frame.
gakio12
There are stabilization algorithms in software as well. Just not as good as frame by frame manual sometimes.
GoddamnitClown
With a simple job like the first gif, there are tools that will track (with some coaxing) fixed points in the world, I used two points /2
GoddamnitClown
on the skyline. Once you have those the tool will shift each frame of video so the points stay in the same place. That's the idea, it's /3
GoddamnitClown
never quite that simple though. The last gif took many points handing over between each other and a lot of manual tweaking. Oh the tweaking.
kaflurbaleen
What software do you use? For the tracking and the tweaking and all that jazz? After effects? Custom software? I must know!
GoddamnitClown
All those were in Aftereffects. Boujou's good for proper 3d tracking.