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This magic trick by Will Tsai is breaking my brain.

Are the people who are saying the table is a screen trolling? He physically lifts the coins outside of the frame multiple times.
I'm not trolling, I think it was a combination of methods. I believe the bit with the cards is called matrix, there was a teenager on Fool Me that did a respectable version of that. The bit with the petals at the end was probably him palming them and dropping them over the coins. With all the reaction cutaway, I think there was time enough for him to palm the real coins off and on the screens (deftly since it still fooled the live audience and judges) and use a matte screen for the hand waving bit.
 
THIS IS JUST A TRICK! I WASN'T FOOLED FOR A SECOND

NOT REAL

Seriously. Oh, it wasn't real and the trick involved the table?

giphy.gif
 
I do not think he is using any form of display at all on the table top. Let me rephrase that. No absolute way a display is involved here. It'd be completely obvious due to the lighting of the objects... Dead giveaway instantly.

Guessing he has rigged a system to swap out the table surface while covering up the transitions and distract the viewer with slight of hand movements. That is why the silver frame exists around the edges of the table. He shows a few times he is obviously good at slight of hand to draw you in and make you focus on it. The table top and his clothing colors matching exactly is also not just by chance. Plus, you can see a slight jiggle on the table during the transitions, which wouldn't be a thing if it was simply using any sort of display.

Next time use a more stable table? Even then I don't think the jiggle distracts from the coolness of the trick as the table is clearly at play here. It's obvious with or without the jiggle. Cool trick! I like it.
 
Not a screen. Watch this to see a similar trick with a table that obviously isn't a screen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpXDN5XMH4A&feature=youtu.be&t=1991
It's similar, but not the same. For that one, the performer is physically manipulating the coins and moving them all around which means he's probably doing some sleight of hand/loading/palming there, Will Tsai is waving his hands over the coins, not touching them, while they appear/vanish in a few set locations.
 
Has someone slowed down the part where he clicks and they are return to their original positions? Seems we basically know its a mechanical table, but the switches are still lighting fast.
 
Alright here's my guess. the table and some coins resting on the table have a side that are painted with that new ultra black light absorbing paint. The coins are also neodymium magnets. The coins resting on the mat are black side up are completely invisible to the camera. There are a relay of electromagnets under the table that can flip the coins faster than the camera can pick up. the magnets are on a computer controlled routine that he has worked out his own choreographed presentation.
 
Has someone slowed down the part where he clicks and they are return to their original positions? Seems we basically know its a mechanical table, but the switches are still lighting fast.
Go to 1:34 and go back three frames and flip back and forth between those two frames. Again, no rotation or movement visible.
I know that video that tries to explain it says that the rotation happens too fast for the camera to catch it, but I couldn't see any rotation every time the coins "move" even going frame by frame at whatever frame rate YouTube uses (24 frames/sec?) The law of averages would make me think that even 24 frames a second would catch one of those times in mid-rotation.
 
Because there's no motion or rotation there. Look at the frames I mentioned above, one frame has the coin in focus, the next just black "felt." In the slo-mo version I mentioned before, again, there's no motion, the coins fade in/out in place.

The slow-mo version isn't a high-speed camera. The camera is too slow to catch the mechanism. This results in a blurring between "there's a coin there" and "there isn't".

You're putting too much stock in the slow-mo. This isn't CSI: trying to zoom or slow down a source that doesn't have enough data gives you artifacts.
 
When he changes the 2nd last coin into a petal, it seems there is a frame that catches the blackness half covering the coin.
 
THIS IS JUST A TRICK! I WASN'T FOOLED FOR A SECOND

NOT REAL

Not actually God walking the Earth, here to win a TV show contest instead of saving anyone cuz that's actually exactly what God would do were he real judging on the Earth.
 
Alright here's my guess. the table and some coins resting on the table have a side that are painted with that new ultra black light absorbing paint. The coins are also neodymium magnets. The coins resting on the mat are black side up are completely invisible to the camera. There are a relay of electromagnets under the table that can flip the coins faster than the camera can pick up. the magnets are on a computer controlled routine that he has worked out his own choreographed presentation.
This is the most likely explanation. Except for coins being black on one side, they are not.
 
The slow-mo version isn't a high-speed camera. The camera is too slow to catch the mechanism. This results in a blurring between "there's a coin there" and "there isn't".

You're putting too much stock in the slow-mo. This isn't CSI: trying to zoom or slow down a source that doesn't have enough data gives you artifacts.

Let's also keep in mind that the video used wasn't raw footage. It was transmitted video. That means a codec. Which means interpolation of video information to lower the bitrate. That means information loss and bleed.
 
The slow-mo version isn't a high-speed camera. The camera is too slow to catch the mechanism. This results in a blurring between "there's a coin there" and "there isn't".

You're putting too much stock in the slow-mo. This isn't CSI: trying to zoom or slow down a source that doesn't have enough data gives you artifacts.
I've gone away from looking at the slo-mo version since they don't really say how they got it so it's probably some Premier filter that's unreliable.

Going frame by frame in the original video, there is no "fading" like in the slo-mo version. There's also no evidence of anything flipping either. If it was just one or do flips, I could buy that the mechanism was just too fast for the camera to catch, but since there are so many coin moves during the handwaving part, I'm surprised none of the supposed flips were caught by the camera - it's always a flat coin in one frame, blank felt in the other.
 
The GIF right on the first page of this thread clearly shows it's mechanical. The coin doesn't just disappear like it would with a video edit. You can see the black surface moving over it. The table shakes slightly too as the transition happens.

On top of that, if it was a screen why would he choose a deep black background that looks clearly fishy? If it's just a video he could choose any background he wanted to make it look like a real table.
 
Good trick.

Funnily enough the only two tricks I've seen fool Penn and Teller were ones that I figured out myself. They only seem to get the complicated ones that use devices and such. They couldn't figure one that was super simple to do.
 
It's not motion
It's light I think

(SLO mo)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3tiML3htyZ0

He has the table rigged to shine lights to reveal and hide coins (more than the four he starts with) and the petals too maybe. UV and the right materials can make things appear and vanish. Whether the lights come from sides and are spots or whether the coins (and how many) have different coatings can probably explain the rest.
It's not palming things and it isn't flip panels or anything mechanical.
 
It's not motion
It's light I think

(SLO mo)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3tiML3htyZ0

He has the table rigged to shine lights to reveal and hide coins and the petals too maybe. UV and the right materials can make things appear and vanish. Whether the lights come from sides and are spots or whether the coins (and how many) have different coatings can probably explain the rest.
It's not palming things and it isn't flip panels or anything mechanical.
But the table is shaking a lot, which hints it's mechanical.
 
It's not palming things and it isn't flip panels or anything mechanical.

Wrong.

If he was using mechanical rods to flip pieces of the table top it's so fast a television camera isn't going to catch it. With the table surface and compartments being black, you might not even see it up close with your eyes. From that gif posted earlier it actually looks like trap doors are actually pulled down and then flipped, which is why you can see the coin kind of fade away into black.

When the table jiggles gives away a lot. It only happens when coins teleport around the table with no cards covering them. Probably cause he has to spin the rods super fast to beat the human eye and camera. When the cards are covering the coins he can make the changes super slow resulting in no table jiggle.

It's a cool trick.

Or that's misdirection?
How can a mechanism operate fast enough and not be caught in mid move by one of the random camera frames 24 times a second.

Again, still wrong. How fast can a mechanized rod be spinned? REAL FAST AF. Way way way way faster than it takes for that camera to record a single frame and the black surface also hides a lot. Was probably controlling it with a foot pedal. Also probably the reason music was part of the act. All of the misdirection was in his slight of hand movements.
 
If you sample the trick at 24 frames per second and don't sync with the camera, motion would be obvious in some frames, even if it was super fast. High risk of catching it in mid move.

If you look at the coins carefully you can see they are in the same positions and rotations as though they never actually moved. Because I don't think they did.

It's easier I think to setup this trick with light and coatings than it is with crazy fast stepper motors. And if you did do it with light, you would of course put something in the box to shake it just to screw with people.
 
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