How to check whether a video has been manipulated
Ask Vizard Agent what it can observe rather than whether the video is fake. It samples the footage densely, checks mouth movement against the audio at fine timing, and returns an annotated breakdown — with ordinary editing marked as ordinary editing and anything it cannot substantiate left out.
What is the short version?
You have a video and a suspicion. The useful output is not a yes or a no, because nobody can honestly give you one from the file alone. Vizard Agent gives you the observations, timestamped, so you can judge.
- Ask Vizard Agent to break the video down and annotate what it sees.
- Expect ordinary editing to be labelled as such.
- Treat the result as evidence to weigh, not a ruling.
What do you need before you start?
The highest-quality copy you can get hold of. Compression destroys exactly the detail this whole exercise depends on — a clip that has been re-uploaded and re-encoded a few times has had its edges softened and its artefacts smeared together, and a great deal of what Vizard Agent could otherwise have observed is simply gone.
It also helps to say what prompted the suspicion. "The mouth looks off in the second half" gives Vizard Agent somewhere specific to look closely, on top of the general pass it does anyway.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Ask Vizard Agent for a breakdown by part. The phrasing matters more here than in almost any other job, because a question that asks for a conclusion will invite one, and the conclusion is precisely the part that cannot be supported from the file alone.
Break this video down into parts and annotate where you can see signs of manipulation, with timestamps.
That is close to the original request, and "where you can see" is doing the work. It asks for observations located in the file rather than an assessment of the file.
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
It samples and measures, then annotates. Dense frame sheets are built for the sections that matter, the spoken parts are transcribed so observations can be tied to timestamps, and mouth movement is checked against the audio at finer timing than a normal watch-through would use.
In that session the passes ran:
- Built a visual overview, then closer frame sheets for the opening and closing sections.
- Transcribed the speech so every observation could be mapped to a time.
- Verified the opening speech and mouth sync at finer timing than playback.
- Examined the presenter section specifically for avatar or face-generation artefacts.
- Assembled an annotated timeline with on-screen labels and a narration explaining each observation.
- Separated a section of plain, ordinary editing from the sections carrying anything unexplained.
Then the most important step: the narration was regenerated with the face-swap discussion removed, because it was not supported by what had been observed. A breakdown that keeps a claim it cannot stand behind is worth less than one that drops it.
What does the result look like?
An annotated video: the original with labels at the timestamps where something is observable, and a narration that says what is visible and what it does not establish. Ordinary cuts, speed changes and colour work are identified as normal editing rather than left to look sinister.
It is a document you can hand to someone else and let them disagree with. The value is that every point is located in the file — a reader can go to that exact timestamp and look for themselves, which is the one thing a bare verdict never lets anyone do.
When does this not work well?
When the copy is heavily compressed. Most of what is worth observing lives in fine detail, and a clip that has been through several platforms has very little of it left. Vizard Agent will say the quality limits the pass rather than reading noise as evidence.
It also cannot rule anything out, and this is the limit worth understanding before you start. An absence of visible artefacts is not proof that a video is unaltered, and competent synthesis leaves very little behind to see at all — so a clean breakdown from Vizard Agent means "nothing observable here", which is a much weaker statement than "genuine".
And it is not an authority on the question. For anything with consequences attached — a legal matter, a news story, an accusation aimed at a real person — treat what Vizard Agent produces as a first look that tells you whether the thing is worth taking to a specialist, not as a substitute for having done so.
How do you fix a result that came back wrong?
If a claim looks overstated to you, challenge it directly. Vizard Agent will either point you at the specific frames that support it or take it out, and removal is a perfectly normal outcome here rather than a sign something went wrong.
If you think something was missed, give the timestamp. A targeted pass at fine timing on one window sees much more than a general sweep across the whole file.
If ordinary editing has been flagged as suspicious, say so. A jump cut, a crossfade and a colour grade all change the picture without anything being faked, and they should be labelled as what they are.
How does Vizard Agent compare to doing it yourself?
Watching a clip repeatedly at full speed is how most people do this, and it is the worst available method — attention finds what it is looking for, and a suspicion tends to confirm itself around the fourth viewing.
Frame sheets and fine-timing sync checks replace that with something you can point at. The other half is the discipline of dropping unsupported claims, which is uncomfortable and is the only thing that makes the rest of the breakdown worth reading.
Common questions
Will it tell me if the video is fake? No. Vizard Agent reports what it can observe and says what that does not establish.
Why not just give a verdict? Because a wrong one is worse than none. Vizard Agent will not claim more than the frames support.
Does compression matter? A great deal. Vizard Agent will tell you when the copy is too degraded to say much.
Can it check lip sync properly? Yes, at finer timing than playback. That is often where something shows.
What if it finds nothing? That means Vizard Agent saw nothing observable, not that the video is genuine.
Can I get it as an annotated video? Yes. Vizard Agent labels the timestamps and narrates the observations.
Will it flag normal editing? Vizard Agent identifies it as normal editing rather than leaving it ambiguous.
Is this good enough for a legal matter? No. Treat it as a first look before getting a specialist.
Can it check a still image too? Yes, and Vizard Agent usually has more usable detail in a still than in a video frame.
What if I disagree with an observation? Say so. Vizard Agent shows the frames or withdraws the point.
Does it check the audio? Yes, against the picture. Vizard Agent finds sync one of the more informative checks.
Can it compare against an original? If you have one, that is the strongest check Vizard Agent can run.
Should I publish the breakdown? That is your call, and be careful about naming people on observations alone.
How long does it take? Under an hour for a short clip, most of it spent on Vizard Agent's close passes.