Notes 2: Follow-up on effect of Zero-padding on FFT
With regards to the scaling behavior of the spectra, I performed the following tests as suggested by Eric Jacobsen. In the plots below I show the same dataset performing the FFT with varying levels of zero-padding.
Color coding of plots of the FFT with different zero-paddings:
red: no padding, green: +1 zero padding, blue: +4 zero padding, cyan: +6 zero padding
data-length: 2048 (for each the same)
Plot of the FFT of the contour of a single movie frame
Plot of the fluctuations of the spectrum calculated as the variance of the values of each mode:
<|c|^2>_t-<|c|>_t^2
where c is the FFT of the signal.
Plots of the two components of the variance of the non-zero-padded transform:
red: <|c|^2>_t, blue: <|c|>_t^2
As can be seen, the contribution due to the window-function is present in both in slightly different intensity and thus is not cancelled out, when calculating the difference.