[Const-me]

High-rez satellite cameras don’t film videos.

Satellite cameras don’t have a 2D sensor you can find in a traditional camera. Instead, they feature a long narrow sensor. As the satellite flies over the earth, the sensor records a single row below the satellite. That row is oriented perpendicular to the satellite’s velocity. As the satellite flies, it scans a long strip of land underneath.

It works similar to a flatbed scanner. Can you film a video with the scanner? I don’t think so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_broom_scanner

About Bin Laden, the live satellite feed was not filmed from space. The feed was recorded by an on-body camera of an American soldier, transferred to a telecom satellite, then back to Earth, at Obama’s place.

[dasmoth]

Video from space has been done by civilian spacecraft, e.g.:

    https://terrabella.google.com/

We know that the film-return satellites were working in push broom mode (or "whisk-broom", as I've seen the KH-9 cameras described). I have little doubt that the primary observation mode of the follow-on electro-optical systems is also push-broom. But not sure I'd want to rule out the possibility that the more recent blocks might also have some kind of staring mode (which could plausibly give video of small-ish areas). They're still pretty secretive birds.

[Const-me]

The resolution is not that great, 1212 pixels / 2.5 km gives 2 meters / pixel.

The ground wind speed at the time of eruption was below 5 m/s, i.e. the video plays much faster then real-time.

If you’ll download the video, pause it, skip between frames, you’ll notice different parts were shot from different positions and with different resolutions.

They probably abused the fact clouds move in very predictable manner. They took several satellite images from whatever satellites happen to pass roughly above the volcano, and used creative video editing to make a smooth video from those several frames.

[o2l]

Sorry, my bad. They used drones for that.

https://www.wired.com/2011/05/with-drones-and-satellites-u-s...

This article explains more about how they used a combination of satellite imagery and drones.

[Const-me]

Yep, unlike satellites, modern UAVs can deliver a live video feed just fine.