Synthetic media verification checklist for suspicious footage

• Use this checklist as an evidence record, not a shortcut to a binary verdict.
• Assign one owner to the preserved files and another reviewer to the conclusion.
• Confirm identities and urgent requests through channels established before the incident.
• Record detector versions and raw outputs, including results that do not support your theory.
• Publish a bounded finding with an evidence cutoff and a correction route.

• Assign a case identifier and lead reviewer.
• Record the exact claim without paraphrasing it into stronger language.
• Note the claimed speaker, subject, action, place, date, time, and event.
• Record who supplied the media and how it arrived.
• Identify immediate risks involving money, credentials, privacy, physical safety, or reputational harm.
• Pause requested transactions or disclosures until independent confirmation.
• Restrict access to sensitive material and document who handles it.

• Save the highest-quality available file without editing it.
• Save the full web page, message, caption, URL, account identifier, and visible timestamp.
• Record the acquisition date, time, and time zone.
• Calculate and record a cryptographic hash.
• Store an untouched preservation copy and a separate working copy.
• Record whether the file is camera-native, an export, a screen recording, a download, or unknown.
• Keep later versions under different names and hashes.

• Verify the provider's identity independently.
• Determine whether the provider had direct access to the claimed event.
• Ask for the original file and an account of capture or acquisition.
• Contact the depicted or impersonated person through a previously confirmed route.
• Ask open questions before presenting disputed details.
• Record refusals, conflicts, and unavailable sources fairly.

Source and identity checks

• Verify provider identity independently
• Determine direct access to event
• Ask for original file and capture account
• Contact depicted person via confirmed route
• Ask open questions before disputed details
• Record refusals and conflicts fairly

• Locate the earliest known public appearance.
• Normalize upload times to one time zone.
• Search transcript phrases, captions, watermarks, and several video frames.
• Compare longer, clearer, or differently cropped copies.
• Record caption changes across reposts.
• Determine whether apparently separate posts share one origin.

• Check the subject's independently documented schedule or whereabouts.
• Compare location features, signs, terrain, interiors, language, and acoustics.
• Check weather, daylight, shadows, clocks, and event timing.
• Locate parallel recordings, live streams, witness material, or official records.
• Test whether an older authentic file was relabeled as current.
• Separate proof of false context from proof of synthetic production.

• Record type, size, dimensions, duration, frame rate, codecs, and audio channels.
• Extract metadata with tool name and version.
• Compare creation, modification, and export fields with the source account.
• Check for embedded previews, thumbnails, or ingredient files.
• Detect and validate any signed provenance record.
• Record signer, trust state, actions, ingredients, and validation errors.
• Avoid treating missing metadata or credentials as proof of generation.

• Inspect the native-resolution file, not only a platform preview.
• Review facial boundaries, hair, teeth, hands, text, patterns, and object geometry.
• Compare shadows, reflections, perspective, depth of field, and light direction.
• Review adjacent frames around suspicious areas.
• Check motion, occlusion, blinking, lip alignment, and abrupt cuts.
• Consider ordinary explanations such as stabilization, beauty filters, rolling shutter, and compression.

• Listen on suitable headphones and speakers.
• Compare cadence, pronunciation, breath, inflection, and room tone with verified samples.
• Check for abrupt noise-floor or reverberation changes.
• Compare sound with visible actions and room characteristics.
• Determine whether authentic phrases may have been spliced or moved.
• Preserve both channels of stereo material before downmixing.

• Review privacy, retention, and upload terms before using an external service.
• Record the exact input hash, tool, version, settings, date, and full output.
• Confirm that the tool supports this medium and file condition.
• Test an authentic control with a similar device or distribution path when available.
• Repeat any consequential result.
• Seek a qualified specialist when the finding depends on advanced signal analysis.
• Give a second reviewer the evidence package before sharing the proposed verdict.

• Identify the narrow claim each evidence item supports or conflicts with.
• Label the outcome as verified, falsely contextualized, edited, synthetic, unverified, or inconclusive.
• Name the decisive evidence and material limits.
• Avoid publishing private data or an unnecessary high-quality copy of harmful media.
• Describe detector output precisely without converting it into certainty.
• Include source responses and the status of the original file.
• State the evidence cutoff date and time.
• Add a visible update and correction route.
• Preserve the published version and later changes.