The September 11 Attacks - Cindy Weil's footage (editor's cut)

This video contains the files « Cindy Weil 01.avi » to « Cindy Weil 23.avi » which have been released to the public by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). I added additional footage which was released through FOIA requests (DOC-NIST-2015-001861 & DOC-NIST-2020-000684), and which is not available on NIST's cloud server.Show more

Videographer : Cindy Weil
Location : Hudson Street & Duane Street, Manhattan, New York, NY
Time : approx 08h51 - 10h31:30 a.m. EDT, September 11, 2001

This is a special video containing 58 consecutive minutes of non-stop footage, including the collapse of both towers, providing viewers with an actual feeling of time as it happened. It is also a very emotional video. Viewers witness how Cindy, a young Mom with her Baby alone at home, is terrified and scared by what she's seen and heard.

00:16 »» Shot # 1 : 08:51 - 08:52 a.m. EDT (unverified);

00:22 »» Shot # 2 : 08:51 - 08:52 a.m. EDT (unverified);

00:50 »» Shot # 3 : 08:53:10 - 09:21:52 a.m. EDT (verified), camera on a tripod;

»» 10:40 »» South Tower (2 WTC) got hit @ 09h03:00 a.m. EDT;

29:38 »» Shot # 4 : 09:27:45 - 09:32:24 a.m. EDT (verified);

34:22 »» Shot # 5 : 09:33:31 - 10:31:30 a.m. EDT (verified);

»» 59:50 »» South Tower (2 WTC) begins to collapse @ 09h58:58 a.m. EDT;

»» 01:29:13 »» North Tower (1 WTC) begins to collapse @ 10h28:22 a.m. EDT;

To establish actual times in EDT, I synchronized the audio track of the footage (shots # 3 & # 5) with the audio track of CNN's live coverage of that day. I synchronized shot # 4 with the aerial (chopper) footage broadcast by WPIX (WB11), crosschecked with aerial footage provided by WNYW (FOX5).

On a personal note : viewers who are familiar with 9/11 research or who have seen similar videos elsewhere on the internet may notice that I am using a different Time reference system than the U.S. government or researchers either directly or indirectly affiliated with them. I deny the existence of any imaginary RTVA "NIST Relative Time for Visual Analysis" or anything similar, and I believe that any confusion about time on September 11 is intentional. There is only one official time in the United States, and it is provided by the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) Master Clock. Back in 2001, it was broadcast thru the Digital Time Code of NIST's WWV /WWVB radio station. Therefore, I made my own time analysis using this official time code relayed by various TV broadcasters. Time uncertainty in this video is about 1 second.

I refrain from digital image manipulation. In my opinion, any so-called 'enhancement', as observed in similar video creations elsewhere, is tampering with evidence. I consider this video document as material evidence in the disaster investigation. My objective is to use as much raw footage as ever available for a highly authentic document, and to avoid edited material if possible. I also conserved artifacts 'as is', and the FOIA patches which I may use may have encountered earlier compression losses.
However, I adapted all footage to NTSC standard (SD), doubled the frame rate to 59.94 fps (60000/1001), and restored the audio. Though working with mostly uncompressed footage, this online version is presented in the HEVC/H.265 video compression format.

This video has been created for exclusively educational, non-profit purposes.
Dedicated to the lives lost on September 11, 2001, and in the aftermath of that day. May they rest in Peace.
Thank you for taking the time to inform yourself.