From what I’ve seen (and I consider myself an expert in this area), the PDF *at minimum* underwent heavy manual reconstruction (as if someone had spilled white-out on the original). I don’t think for a second that’s the case, however. I think someone took a real document, erased certain parts, and in a very clumsy and amateurish way tried to insert the extra Obama-specific content.
I have no doubt that the person making the video is 100% correct — somewhere there is a Hawaiian birth certificate for someone else that will exactly match the non-altered portions of this PDF.
Time will tell. I will be happy to print a retraction at my websites if I am wrong.
Any graphical inconsistencies on the copy with the green background are irrelevant. That is a certified copy; a copy of a copy of a scan. When you look at the original scan, most of the graphical issues that people point to are not there and the contents of the document line up exactly.
The 'white out' effect that you're referring to is the byproduct of the scanning process breaking apart multiple layers in an optimized PDF. National Review tried it with a similar document and got the same effects.
http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/ap_obama_certificate_dm_110427.pdf