Slashdot Mirror
Solutions to the Frustrations of Video?
Re-Torque asks: "In our organizations, interviews with perpetrators of crime (child abuse, rape, etc), and with victims, are conducted by expert interviewers and are recorded on videotape or DVD (with back ups). These recordings are legal records. They are archival records, but they are also used in the courts and in other aspects of the legal process.
We have encountered problems with newer VCRs and DVD recorders. As long as the tape or DVD is played back on the same machine, there is no degradation of audio and video quality. However, when played back on any other machine, the quality of the recording is substantially degraded. We have been told that this is to frustrate illegal copying, but in our case, it frustrates the legal process. In your experience, is the problem in fact one of design of the machines or are we doing something wrong (i.e., some settings we should change before recording)? Are there any machines available that are not crippled in this way? Or are there other strategies we might employ to resolve this problem?"
I've had this problem with VCRs in the past, recording a show on one player, and then playing it on another would usually yield poor results. Or sometimes one movie I had bought would play fine in one player, but would be very bad quality in another. I assumed it was due to differences in read head alignment or something. On the other hand, I don't know how this could happen with DVDs. Because everything is digital, the output should be the same no matter which player/recorder you use. I've never experienced this problem with DVDs, even with home movies that were recorded onto DVD, they play fine in all the players I've tried them in.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
as far as videotape recorders go, have you had the read and write heads properly aligned? Are you using real, professional recorder models, or crappy consumer models?
With proper alignment, professional and even decent quality consumer video recorders should make tapes that are interchangeable without real degradation.
If you're serious about archiving, a professional or at least digital format is probably what you want, also, not VHS.
Visit your local Salvation Army, or some other thrift store. You can often find old VCRs there, from before all of the DRM/copy protection nonsense. You may want to check them with a test tape first, to ensure they don't have some mechanical issue that damages tapes.
Oh, and make a fuss about it. Make sure you speak to politicians about this, especially if it's hindering the legal process. It would be even better if you could get judges and other court officials to complain.
Let me be the first (or somewhere close) to say that it's high time the legal system finally saw some of the ill effects of 'protecting' hollywood.
-Tim Louden
In progressive JPEG, first the low frequencies are stored, and then the high frequencies are stored. This way, you get a blurred preview image before the rest of the data fills in the detail. The consumer electronics-Hollywood complex could make DVD recorders work the same way: encrypt the high frequencies so that any other player model won't be able to play the copy at full quality, discouraging people from using DVD video recorders to record TV and make counterfeit season box sets.
Get a recorder that burns right onto a DVD. /Bad VHS quality MPeG's... a.b.m.e flashback!
Why not display the video using a PC with a video card that has composite or S-video output? You should be able to hook up to any modern TV or projector. You could encode the video in whatever format you want: lossless DV, Ogg Theora, XviD, even WMV if you are really sadistic. You could store it on whatever medium you want: DVD, a hard disk, a NAS, CD, usb flash drives, whatever. Backups should be easy.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
yes, there are uncrippled machines that can do what you want (and then some). you probably have one sitting on your desk
.wmv files if you intend the video to be played back on windows machines). if you've installed something like VLC on the playback machines, you can use more interesting codecs like h264 and still achieve quite impressive playback quality at much lower bitrates.
3 5618216/sr=8-1/qid=1156903037/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-273 5593-2181510?ie=UTF8)
if you're running under linux, you've got a couple options. kino (http://www.kinodv.org/ will allow you to capture live raw video (plus sound) from a standard dv camera with an ilink (aka 1394a) connection. it takes a little effort to get setup, but it's worth it. you'll then want to use ffmpeg to re-encode the files so that they're less huge and then save the encoded version.
if you have analog cameras, a $50 capture card (we use ati's all-in-wonder) can act as a frame grabber --- it may take a little finagling to get the sound working, but once it's all hooked up you should be good to go. use xawtv to preview and make sure that everything is behaving as expected, then use ffmpeg to capture the video. make sure you encode at fairly high bit rate and be careful about what combinations of codec and containers you choose (in particular, you probably want to stick to msmpeg4v2 encoded
there are ways to do similar things in windows, although i have much less experience doing so and tend to use developers tools (like graphedit) to put together the directshow filters that will capture video and sound from some source, encode, mux, and then output the file. i'm sure that there are pieces of software out there that can do this. if you have access to some it people, writing your own should be fairly easy (there's a handy book on the subject here: http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Microsoft/dp/07
if you're not inclined to build your own solution, virtualdub http://www.virtualdub.org/ may be able to help you. i haven't used it myself, but it's a pretty widely used app.
the one thing to bear in mind with all these proposed solutions is that you're going to want to make sure you've got fairly big and fast disks and quite a lot of space free. you're also going to want to make sure you've got a reliable backup strategy in place since you no longer have the luxury of the original tapes. if you have any other questions, feel free to email me: (my slashdot user name) 'at' yahoo(dot com).
Copying tape to tape, or DVD to DVD can be an issue if a player introduces macrovision, but you shouldn't have that problem if the video is as you described.
Unless there is something special about the VCR or DVD players in question that you haven't specified the fact is you should not have a problem playing the videos on other equipment. VCR's, particularly older ones can be temperamental if the tracking is off.
You should have absolutely no difficulties with the DVDs.
Step #1 eliminate ALL of the analogue equipment, there are hundreds of experts that can claim the same footage is real & fake. (UFO recordings anyone?)
Step #2 Use digital equipment connected to a PC recording the feed in real-time. A Md5sum/hash will be your (CoverYourAss) proof that the video has not been faked.
Backups then become simple.
Burn it to a DVD and it becomes portable.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Maybe you could try using a PC with a video capture device - you know, hook the camera to a TV tuner or something and record it that way. Then you could burn the video files to DVD, upload them to a server, put them on a backup drive, etc. It's also possible to record from the computer to the tape if you want a tape backup.
www.linuxpenguin.net
Hunh?
... meaning somewhere, there is a decrypted stream, or analog output, just waiting for some person with too much free time and a fast enough oscilloscope* to poke around inside and break out, feed into a generic DAC, and record. You can't let people watch it at full quality without exposing that signal somewhere in the chain; even if it's not something obvious like just being able to record the feed to the monitor. So it doesn't magically 'solve' piracy in the way that the studios would like to think that it does.
How would this be in any way superior, from the "consumer electronics-Hollywood complex" perspective, than simply encrypting all of the content on the disc?
If you encrypt the high frequencies, they still have to be decrypted by 'approved' playback devices
And if you're not going to allow copying, why even make the lower frequencies copyable via un-encryption? It seems simpler just to go all-or nothing. I think it's flawed and doomed to failure in the long run either way, but the studios just have no reason, when you use their own apparent logic, to allow any sort of digital copying at all if it's preventable.
* Okay, probably wouldn't actually be an oscilloscope these days, probably some form of very high-speed logic analyzer, but whatever.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I'd done some recent work with a friends department store to verify video hasn't been tampered with and all that jazz -- and it turned out the job had already been done for me.
They have a Honeywell DVR -- theirs is a 16 Camera unit, but I'm sure there are others -- that records multiple cameras, and ensures that this isn't altered. The video is encrypted and you can ask for chunks of it to be recorded out to CD or DVD, but it records to its own little Windows application that can detect if anything has been altered and shows all the encryption up front and verifies that it is intact.
Don't get me wrong, its annoying that its a Windows Only application (especially as from all accounts, this machine looks to be running on some sort of *NIX) -- but then again, what DA is running OS X or Ubantu (I had to pull up Parallels to see if it worked on my Mac).
From what I understand, the unit has been certified by the gov't for this sort of work...look into it if you need to archive stuff that needs to stay in the digital domain AND be uneditable / verifyable. I don't have much more info than that, but it was a pretty slick machine.
Any DVD recorder that can't write stuff that can be played back well with normal working players is faulty.
Whatever they tell you, it is faulty. Send it back and get a refund or working replacement.
Given you are likely to know many friendly lawyers, maybe you could hint that various sorts of unpleasant legal action might be taken if they don't do the right thing...
Professional recording devices generally don't have that sort of copy protection. They are generally more reliable than consumer decks anyway.
That said, I've never seen anything like that. Have you contacted the manufacturer?
a $350 dv camera will do what you need. the tape can easily be captured onto a hard drive, and from there you can produce as many copies as you need.
Why on earth are you still using vhs tapes? if these are legal documents i would think you'd want them to last, and vhs tapes... don't. DV isn't exactly know for long life either but its easy to operate in real time, then the tech folks can make a dvd archive, tape backup, or whatever (ie digital dv file on a dvd, not a dvd player dvd).
Unauthorized footage is prohibited. Think of the goddam starving grips, script writers, and boom operators who you are putting out into the street because you are undercutting their livelihood with your "recordings" for "legal purposes." What a crock. If you really are "law enforcement" you should do things the right way and hire a Hollywood studio to record these things for you. Anything else is the same as shoplifting.
Seriously, you are SOL. There are definitely ways to beat this kind of thing, but you will be breaking the law and/or causing others to break the law simply by inquiring. The operators of Slashdot may even get a nice visit from the FBI if anyone posts methods for how to defeat these copy protection measures.
Welcome to the future, where due process is no obstacle to protecting media companies' profits.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Or, use a PVR card, which does compression on-the-fly. I've used the Hauppauge(sp??) PVR-250 (with Linux) for a long time, without issue.
You really shouldn't be seeing issues like this with user-created DVDs.
So far as VCR's go, there's a lot of moving parts in there even for "simple" consumer-level devices. Regular maintenance is essential, especially on high-use equipment. The most common cause of recording/playback/portability problems is due to the back-tension rollers. These are rubber-coated wheels which help to hold the video tape against the head drum to ensure proper reading/writing from/to the oxide layer. These eventually get a smooth sheen on them due to wear and oxide stripping from the tape and thus cause slippage and irregular transport of the tape and glitches in the signal. They can usually be fixed-up on the cheap by removing them, putting them on a machined screw on a dril and using fine-grade sandpaper just enough to remove the sheen. Clean them with alcohol to remove debris and reinsert in VCR. There may also need to be adjustment to the back tension spring on the arm which holds the back tension wheel, but this is usually better left alone. Other maintenance activites also involve cleaning the audio/tracking head and head drums (the heads themselves, actually) to remove oxide and other gunk buildups to ensure proper contact with the tape, and also occasionaly replacing the rubber drive and loading belts - particularly if the unit has been sitting idle for a while. Dai-ichi make a large range of belts for many models, which we get from WES Electronics - far cheaper than "brand" name belts.
If your budgets are anything like police budgets in Aus then you're probably limited to consumer-level devices. You can't go past Samsung VCR's, especially get ones with the "Dub" or "Edit mode" switches as these tend to avoid the Macrovision-style copy corruption (err, protection) techniques employed in a lot of other VCRs. The seems to be getting even more prevalent, even with everyone allegedly using DVDs now or pirating movies from the net.
Not all DVD players are perfectly compliant. I've seen one producing regular audio gaps when the disc contains AC3 stereo at 224 kbps or less. I can't blame them, no commercial DVDs use these settings so the defect slipped through QA.
I have sympathy for you because you create your own content, and are having trouble recording it in a permanent way. This is refreshing to hear. As a software engineer, I have only recently started cutting my own DVDs. And that is because Microsoft publishes some of its content in the form of ISO files that must be placed on DVDs to access. For many years, the capacity of the CDRom has exceeded my needs for software publishing because I write compact code. My code barely fills up a floppy (What's that?). The need to place a huge amount of data on a little piece of PVC is a cute way of publishing a large amount of data for very little money. It lasts longer than a record, which creates a little pile of PVC where the needle actually scratches the recording media. I no longer feel the need to hoard a collection of media of any kind. Just being a software engineer and having to keep up with Microsofts SDKs/DDKs and endless kits of all kind, keeps me busy finding ways to store all the little disks. I used to have a collection of VHS tapes recorded from television of my favorite shows. In the end I never watched them. I only made them for my own use. I did this with records, reel to reel, cassetes, and VHS tapes. I don't want to do it with DVDs. There is always new content to watch and enjoy without trying to archive it. Someone should be archiving it, but now end-users who have to use consumer grade equipment. The person who suggested you hire professional people to record your content had it right. Its worth the money.
With DVD the quality degrdation isn't so huge given if you can't read the data you just can't read it (however DVDs do not age as well as they were once thought to). However VHS which I'm SURE almost anything pre circa 2000 and still allot of what comes in (from say convinience stores) are on that craptastic format. The best solution personaly is to buy professional gear. Anything that plays VHS that can be bought by the consumer is prety pathetic given the parts keep getting made cheaper and cheaper. However just for the sake of future-proofing you should move to an all digital format. Free soltuions like Linux however are not quite free given you have to pay someone or learn it yourself sufficiently ad Windows just isn't flexible enough to me. Something like one of the Mac Pros (I own one Mac to four PCs, but the mac hanldes everything video) would do better given you can get just about any video over firewire and digital stays digital. New machine? Oh well just make sure you have the right codec which costs nothing. Affraid of loseing the file somehow? Put a disk in the casefile and lable the casefile where the backup copy is. To wrap it all up do a SAH-5 checksum of the file so no one can contest that it's been "doctored."
The problem is the media being recorded to.
Use Taiyo Yuden discs and compatibility problems will disappear.
Stick to one brand of tape. Different brands have different formulations. In heavy-use players the chemicals mix and cause playback problems down the line. Get your decks serviced and cleaned.
There is no copy protection, Macrovision, CSS, region coding, or any other kind of playback restriction on recordable discs.
Invest in inexpensive DVD players, not top of the line name brands, for maximum disc compatibility.
Slashdotters don't seem to know much about video and aren't afraid to prove it.
Errrm, I don't get it.
All of my friends are buying DVD Burners. I know exactly 1 (one!) case where DVDRs/RWs/+/-/whatever make sense: If you do lot's of video production and have to send the data around alot with the mail to various clients. I can't even think why anyone who records on a regular basis would even use VCRs.
In you case it appears that you're moving evidence around that could be important to your clients and that other people shouldn't be able to see without you sanctioning that.
DVDs are a waste of time and VCs even more so. Record the video in the quality and data format you want to use and consider appropriate and hand out the videos along with the playback device itself. Which would be some kind of Mini ITX Media Computer with an encrypted harddrive and a big yellow sticker saying "PROPERTY OF XYZ VIDEO SERVICES - THIS DEVICE CONTAINS EVIDENCE AND MAY NOT BE REMOVED FROM [COURTBUILDING] OTHER THAN BY IDd XYZ EMPLOYEES." If you're paranoid your guys can carry the key around on a thumbdrive.
That's the way to enshure cheap and consistent video quality today.
Again: DVDRs are pointless and only make sense in extremely rare cases. I keep all my movies on HDDs. It's cheaper, smaller, safer, faster, easyer to backup, zero DVDRW-Bluray+whatever hassle, DRM-free by nature and, according to what you just said - apperently even better in quality. If anything you'd want to use DVDs for data archiving (HDDs might still be better there) but then you'd chose your own data format. Of course.
Bottom line: Everyone I know shelling out big bucks and wasting time to put his stuff on DVDs is basically suffering from some mass psychosis that gets people to think what they do makes sense. It doesn't. Most certainly not with new DVD recording technology standards coming up every odd month and battling for supremacy.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
)Are there any machines available that are not crippled in this way?
The PRV-LX1 is a profesional level DVD recorder that should not suffer these problems you speak of. There is also the associated DVD players they offer as well.
The short of it is, the companies are doing something extra to bork over the customers with the stuff. A proper DVD recorder/player and VCR should have no problems playing back something from another machine so long as they both are following the standard.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
You're probably encountering Macrovision copy protection. Do a lot of reading, or call a professional A/V consultant.
Have you considered using Mini DV?
Tapes are small (for archiving). A simple camera can be had for ~$300 (with microphone input if you need it). The video can be easily digitized (Windows Movie Maker is more then sufficient and easy to use if you're using Microsoft) and transfered to whatever media you need (or you can just play it over your network if that's possible.
What difference does analog or digital make in regards to the content?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
"network video recorders" are becoming pretty standard fair these days. if you pick up a copy of "security technology and design" you'll find it brimming with companies selling various nvr solutions. the plus is that the captured data is all digital and easy for you to use as you see fit. there are several companies which sell solutions built on top of windows (which i'm guessing is what you use). you can make arbitrarily many bitwise copies with zero degradation.
Why not display the video using a PC with a video card that has composite or S-video output? You should be able to hook up to any modern TV or projector. You could encode the video in whatever format you want: lossless DV, Ogg Theora, XviD, even WMV if you are really sadistic.
Yes, there are many benefits to digital media, but only if it's free. DVDs should have all of the benefits but don't, because the media companies are afraid and they have crippled the hardware. The same companies will provide the same crippling on your PC as well. Unless you find a 100% free software solution, you will be at the mercy of those who are currently making your life difficult. Given the magnitude of the problem and the willfulness of infliction, it's hard to justify a hardware purchase from those companies involved. The more money you give DRM, the worse it gets.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Well, I downloaded the files from sourceforge, but they seem to be assuming a lot of programming knowledge that I just don't have. There's a bunch of files there, but I have no idea what to do with them.
Likewise several solution suggestions from the Internet. I even installed Vis Basic Express on the off chance there was some simple way to add a video control to a form and manipulate it from there. I'm stumped. You would think this was a common enough task that there would be a million applications out there for it. It's like it's too simple for the 'programmers' but too difficult for the MBAs (that's me.)
I wonder how much it would cost to get someone to write the damn thing for me on E-Lance. Any ideas? Or any ideas about how to quality check the completed work? I wouldn't know how to check it for embedded malware.
Anyway, thanks for your input. I appreciate your time.
As a law enforcement officer working in a forensic audio/video lab, I have to give my "why analog is greatly preferred over digital recordings" speech five times a day. In a nutshell, almost all digital recording schemes use lossy compression. I know this discussion is about recordings like interviews where identification is not an issue, but we still prefer the trusty VHS format anyway. Have you ever tried importing digital video (especially DVDs) into an Avid system http://www.avid.com/forensic? On analog recordings, we can use tools like frame averaging to bring out detail, whereas digital video simply is what it is. Granted, it is just a matter of time before surveillance video is captured full-frame 1280x720 uncompressed, but in the mean time we are dealing with at least a thousand different DVR systems from mom-and-pop establishments that use different (often proprietary) codecs and compression schemes. We used to complain about the Stop-n-Robs that used the same VHS continuously for two years and expected the video to be perfect evidence. But now, based on my real-world experience, we wish the DVR stuff was half as good as the old tape/time lapsed/multiplexed analog video.
I do recommend you use pro gear regardless of which route you take. And always use a backup/redundant recorder (maybe even one analog and one digital). And ALWAYS test your equipment prior to use. About once a week I receive a request for audio enhancement on a video made at a Children's Assessment Center because the child cannot be heard. Did the system installer not realize that an abused kid might just whisper/mumble with their head down when having to talk about what happened to them?!?! Of course the adult can be heard just fine, but come on!