My perfect car would look a lot like a 4-wheeled motorbike. Picture one of those off-road personal 4x4's but with a peppier engine, better tires, good seats, seatbelts, roll cage, and optional winter enclosure.
Open-air cruising in summer, with only a roll cage over your head, and in winter you bolt on sides, doors, etc.
thanks to both of you -- when I began my jukebox projects, I didn't know about any lossless compressors, and admittedly disk space was a bit more of an issue a year ago (when 40 gig drives were the decent bang/buck)
Just a corrction -- I have no idea why I said I had used Xing as the encoder -- I used LAME. I don't want people to think I can't hear the difference between THOSE two encoders! (although i hear Xing has been rewritten to not suck anymore, i haven't tried it)
I would agree with the general sentiment that -- despite any quality difference -- MP3 is certainly going to be easier to use because portable players and software have been built to use it.
Remember that ultimately, the "best" any format is going to get will simply be as good as the original CD. So as long as the audio quality you're getting is indistinguishable from the original, it won't matter what format you're using.
That said, I think 160 is something you'll regret if you're doing a large number of songs. I originally used 160 on my 800 CDs, and it sounded fine -- until I hooked the digital out on my soundcard to my dolby digital 5.1 system. On good speakers with a clean connection you can definitely hear the compression artifacts. I went up to Xing VBR 192-320 and have been very pleased with the results. As you said, disk space is no longer an issue, so I'm comfortable using what i think were probably overkill settings.
These source files are good enough, BTW, to re-encode into WMA at 64k for use on my portable (a NEX II -- highly recommended). With a 256MB compactflash card, I have about 150 songs with me for running (this can use a microdrive too, but it skips when running). The WMA 64 quality is perfectly acceptable for cheap headphones, but it would be total crap on good speakers. This (and streaming) are the only places where files size really matters anymore...
I have about 800 CDs, and no it doesn't cost the thousands of dollars that people are calculating here.
Most college towns have used CD stores -- I would go in every week and get 10-20 CDs for $20-$50.
I ripped the entire collection twice! I had a hard drive failure the week after I finished the first time, which was fine because I re-ripped at a much higher quality and am glad I did.
My initial rip was at 160 CBR, and some songs didn't quite translate so well. My current collection (took about two months to rip, I had two spare boxes just doing ripping) is all encoded at 190-256 VBR and there aren't more than a handful of songs where you can tell it isn't the original CD.
Its nowhere near as impossible as some think, and a lot cheaper than buying 2 or more of the 500-disc CD jukeboxes. Plus I just the NEX II Mp3 player, which takes IBM microdrives -- 1 gig of my favorite tunes with me on plane trips in the size of a pack of cards!
No person, except the SSA and the IRS can force you to provide your SSN.
This is totally incorrect. Like the constitution, it limits only what the GOVERNMENT may do.
Businesses can require your SS# as a condition of doing business, and many do.
But government agencies must provide you with an explicit reference to what law allows them to ask for your SS#, whether or not it is voluntary, and what the info will be used for. You'll find this information on the bottom of most any federal form (like your taxes) that you fill out with a SS#...
Right now MPEG4 can't be done in real-time with any consumer-level chips (of course the MPEG4 standard was only ratified a few days ago, so nobody could have manufactured them confidently anyways).
Right now most things you see are MPEG2 -- digital cable and DVDs use MPEG2 which can be done in real-time with the right hardware, but generally requires at least 2-4 megabits/s to have full-screen quality. So if you REALLY pushed a real-time board you could do a 320x240 MPEG2 at under a Mb/s, maybe even down to a few hundred kb/s.
But we're talking about a sat connection that is generally 64kb/s (sometimes 128kb/s). You can add in overhead for some kind of IP (because we're no longer using an ISDN video connection -- we're sending data), then you have to leave room for audio, which DOES have to go both ways (though you can do audio on a separate voice phone).
Regardless, you have to make a codec that works well at ~50 kb/s. A LOT of codecs (real, Windows, MPEG4, Sorensen) can do well at that low data rate, but the h.xxx protocols have been doing it successfully for several years now, and have a huge base of compatible equipment.
Right now the only way to use MPEG4 would be to compress in near-real time and transmit after the fact. Most other codecs would require the same kind of pre-processing, or basically running a streaming server from the phone (to do something like Real or WiMP). Using a computer that isn't hard, but again its the difference between an appliance and a computer.
We've done the remote streaming server trick to get better one-way video quality over sat, but honestly it wasn't so big of an improvement that it would be worth the hassle for non-techs to worry about it. There's only so much codec trickery you can pull off with 40-45k/b of bandwidth for video (we leave 16kb/s for full duplex audio).
And H.263 encoding is effortless, whereas MPEG-4 would require the reporter on the scene to recompile the Linux kernel before he could transmit!
No, but using an appliance is simpler than using a computer. The videophone is an appliance (although a complex one). Everyone in the message threads suggesting they just hook up a PC and hack out some software to get better codec quality is suggesting a solution that won't work in the field because it requires using a more complex system.
There is no such thing as one codec which is more "technically complicated" to the user than another
I never claimed there was. What I said was that the near-real-time use of video that would require recording, compression, and then transmission (a multi-step process), would be more complex for the user than a real-time method with lower quality.
The point is that quality is not the ultimate goal here -- reliability is. Using a real-time standardized codec guarantees that if you can get a connection to the satellite that your video will get out.
yes, MPEG4 would be wonderful, but the standard was finalized literally days ago. Once we have hardware that can compress it in real-time and be sure that they'll be able to connect to other systems using the same standard, then someone will build that into the videophone, but not before.
Say what you will about the quality of the h.xxx videoconferencing codecs, but the fact that you can get a windows PC, a mac, a unix box, a videophone, a teamstation system, and a picturetel system all in a videoconference together, over WIDELY divergent bandwiths and topologies is FAR more important than getting a few more FPS...
Unconditional even when a small and reasonable gesture like letting the Talibans review the evidence could perhaps have led to a peaceful solution
Again, this has been said a million times, but we have provided evidence to the Taliban before on the extradition on bin Laden and they don't really care, regardless of what they say. they didn't hand him over for the WTC (the first time) or the USS Cole, or our embassy bombings. how many times do we have to put our intelligence sources at risk?
You will also notice how unconditionally becomes conditionally when terrorist cells are uncovered in Europe
You do realize the governments of europe are the ones finding the terrorists, right? if the Taliban was scouring the countryside for terrorists, we'd be more than happy to give them time and consideration. They are not simply being obstructionist, they are cooperating with the terrorists.
The french governemnt and german governments are not supporting the terrorists on their soil (any more than the US government supported the terrorists on our soil who actually committed the attack). If a European government were financing and protecting a terrorist group, yes we would absolutely be holding them responsible.
Another consideration is that European governments have always shown a willingness to negotiate in good faith on issues, and in such a case as extradition we would be willing to play it out because we know that is the case.
There is no double standard, no matter how much apologists would like their to be. Most governments are simply willing to live up to the standard, while the Taliban is not.
(please note that just a few short months ago, we were negotiating with China for the return of some US military crew members. We negotiated and did not attack because the Chinese were negotiating in good faith and we had no realistic fear that they would do anything to injure the crewmen or escalate the situation.)
Which brings up the fact that while the per unit cost ($7,500 for field unit) isn't too bad, especially for media outlets, it certainly seems to be largely a compression application that a properly peripheraled laptop could undertake, and be more ready to accepts better (or environment-specialized) codecs
Its a bargain -- yes a computer could do more for less money, but they don't want features, they want reliability.
You turn it on, it works. You don't want to miss the big story because windows won't boot.
Its a hardware codec, and a butt-expensive sat phone rolled in with a video system and mixing station. How cheap do you really think something like that could be built for? Heck, the Pelikan case along costs $150+...
I can tell most of the folks commenting on this thread have not used high bandwidth sat phones or done much live video (or both).
The InMarSat system is a geostationary constellation, and requires a pretty decent amount of power to transmit.
It requires a directional antenna, which is part of the reason the phones are as large as they are. The smallest are the size of a small briefcase, and these videophones are not much larger than that.
You can mux together multiple dishes to get 64k, 128k, 192k, 256k, etc, but each 64k requires another dish, another power supply, and more space.
Yes, the codecs are less than perfect, but they are standard, and allow you to connect virtually anywhere in real-time.
We've experimented with live encoding into more efficient formats and quite frankly you don't get much better quality, and the lack of built-in videoconferencing smarts on the part of the codecs costs as much as you gain in efficiency.
Yes, if you can record, encode and transmit in near-real time the quality could be better, but then you're talking about a much more technically complicated setup that a reporter with limited resources has to manage.
Operating a computer in your office is much simpler than doing it on a frozen rock with bombs falling nearby and a poor power supply. If you have a connection, you transmit because you never know when it may go down or your power will die. Getting a few extra FPS for extra time sounds nice in theory, but getting the story out ASAP is more important because 30 seconds from now things could change.
The videophones are an amazing package, and little can be done to improve them much more than the simple march of technology. They'll get smaller, we'll get better sat systems with more bandwidth, the codecs will improve, but for what resources exists now, these things do an AMAZING job of wringing out all the performance possible.
You're right, the world has been a horrible place since the Unites States invented hate and misery. We really shouldn't have done that, everyone on earth was happy and smiling before 1776...
I disagree - the Taliban was much more compromising than they usually are, but the US repeatedly and unequivocably stated that "our demands are not negotiable." It was the US that was unwilling to cooperate even in the slightest.
I tell you what -- we'll compromise with the taliban.
They can have him tried in a third country, and stay in power. But only if they give us back 3,000 of the dead people in NYC.
Well that pretty much invalidates any argument you can ever make on the topic of conflict.
if you eliminate one option right off the bat, you are clearly not thinking things through.
Personally, I hate fighting, and I hate violence. But if you come into my house and start killing my family, I'll fight you to my last breath. Feel free to consider me immoral...
I doubt any Western European state would extradite any of their citizens without first seeing at least some shreds of evidence, and receiving assurances that their would be no capitol punishment (as required by the European Convention). Why should the Talibans?
you do know that the taliban executes people for trivial offenses, right? These are hardly people who require strong proof and abhorr the death penalty.
Where are your aircraft carriers, your submarines? Are Canadian cruise missiles being fired at something? Are the canadian-designed, canadian-built fighter aircraft going to be maintaining air superiority with canadian pilots and canadian AWACS?
Don't get me wrong, its great to have moral support, and Bush DID actually mention Canada (along with france, germany, and some others) but to complain for not getting a big pat on the back is ludicrous.
By your line of argument, zoning should also be able to prohibit strippers from living in a neighborhood. After all, it takes far less work than you detailed for customers of a strip club to find out where a stripper lives and start hanging around her neighborhood.
All you've shown is a lack of security for the girls, not any violation of zoning...
We have about 50 of the drives (mixture of 75GXP 60GXP) running in RAID systems here with no problems. We've been buying them for all our video systems for around a year due to the speed and capacity...
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My perfect car would look a lot like a 4-wheeled motorbike. Picture one of those off-road personal 4x4's but with a peppier engine, better tires, good seats, seatbelts, roll cage, and optional winter enclosure.
Open-air cruising in summer, with only a roll cage over your head, and in winter you bolt on sides, doors, etc.
It's called a Jeep Wrangler.
But its not particularly gas efficient.
thanks to both of you -- when I began my jukebox projects, I didn't know about any lossless compressors, and admittedly disk space was a bit more of an issue a year ago (when 40 gig drives were the decent bang/buck)
Just a corrction -- I have no idea why I said I had used Xing as the encoder -- I used LAME. I don't want people to think I can't hear the difference between THOSE two encoders! (although i hear Xing has been rewritten to not suck anymore, i haven't tried it)
The NEX II is made in Hong Kong, totally reprogrammable, uses CF+ slot, and can act as a removable hard drive (copy to and from).
If they can get a few more features added/bugs stomped, and cleanup the UI a bit, it'll be near-perfect...
I would agree with the general sentiment that -- despite any quality difference -- MP3 is certainly going to be easier to use because portable players and software have been built to use it.
Remember that ultimately, the "best" any format is going to get will simply be as good as the original CD. So as long as the audio quality you're getting is indistinguishable from the original, it won't matter what format you're using.
That said, I think 160 is something you'll regret if you're doing a large number of songs. I originally used 160 on my 800 CDs, and it sounded fine -- until I hooked the digital out on my soundcard to my dolby digital 5.1 system. On good speakers with a clean connection you can definitely hear the compression artifacts. I went up to Xing VBR 192-320 and have been very pleased with the results. As you said, disk space is no longer an issue, so I'm comfortable using what i think were probably overkill settings.
These source files are good enough, BTW, to re-encode into WMA at 64k for use on my portable (a NEX II -- highly recommended). With a 256MB compactflash card, I have about 150 songs with me for running (this can use a microdrive too, but it skips when running). The WMA 64 quality is perfectly acceptable for cheap headphones, but it would be total crap on good speakers. This (and streaming) are the only places where files size really matters anymore...
LOL
I have about 800 CDs, and no it doesn't cost the thousands of dollars that people are calculating here.
Most college towns have used CD stores -- I would go in every week and get 10-20 CDs for $20-$50.
I ripped the entire collection twice! I had a hard drive failure the week after I finished the first time, which was fine because I re-ripped at a much higher quality and am glad I did.
My initial rip was at 160 CBR, and some songs didn't quite translate so well. My current collection (took about two months to rip, I had two spare boxes just doing ripping) is all encoded at 190-256 VBR and there aren't more than a handful of songs where you can tell it isn't the original CD.
Its nowhere near as impossible as some think, and a lot cheaper than buying 2 or more of the 500-disc CD jukeboxes. Plus I just the NEX II Mp3 player, which takes IBM microdrives -- 1 gig of my favorite tunes with me on plane trips in the size of a pack of cards!
No person, except the SSA and the IRS can force you to provide your SSN.
This is totally incorrect. Like the constitution, it limits only what the GOVERNMENT may do.
Businesses can require your SS# as a condition of doing business, and many do.
But government agencies must provide you with an explicit reference to what law allows them to ask for your SS#, whether or not it is voluntary, and what the info will be used for. You'll find this information on the bottom of most any federal form (like your taxes) that you fill out with a SS#...
and instead of having the regular recycled net material
You came to slashdot to avoid recycled net material?
That's courage.
Right now MPEG4 can't be done in real-time with any consumer-level chips (of course the MPEG4 standard was only ratified a few days ago, so nobody could have manufactured them confidently anyways).
Right now most things you see are MPEG2 -- digital cable and DVDs use MPEG2 which can be done in real-time with the right hardware, but generally requires at least 2-4 megabits/s to have full-screen quality. So if you REALLY pushed a real-time board you could do a 320x240 MPEG2 at under a Mb/s, maybe even down to a few hundred kb/s.
But we're talking about a sat connection that is generally 64kb/s (sometimes 128kb/s). You can add in overhead for some kind of IP (because we're no longer using an ISDN video connection -- we're sending data), then you have to leave room for audio, which DOES have to go both ways (though you can do audio on a separate voice phone).
Regardless, you have to make a codec that works well at ~50 kb/s. A LOT of codecs (real, Windows, MPEG4, Sorensen) can do well at that low data rate, but the h.xxx protocols have been doing it successfully for several years now, and have a huge base of compatible equipment.
Right now the only way to use MPEG4 would be to compress in near-real time and transmit after the fact. Most other codecs would require the same kind of pre-processing, or basically running a streaming server from the phone (to do something like Real or WiMP). Using a computer that isn't hard, but again its the difference between an appliance and a computer.
We've done the remote streaming server trick to get better one-way video quality over sat, but honestly it wasn't so big of an improvement that it would be worth the hassle for non-techs to worry about it. There's only so much codec trickery you can pull off with 40-45k/b of bandwidth for video (we leave 16kb/s for full duplex audio).
And H.263 encoding is effortless, whereas MPEG-4 would require the reporter on the scene to recompile the Linux kernel before he could transmit!
No, but using an appliance is simpler than using a computer. The videophone is an appliance (although a complex one). Everyone in the message threads suggesting they just hook up a PC and hack out some software to get better codec quality is suggesting a solution that won't work in the field because it requires using a more complex system.
There is no such thing as one codec which is more "technically complicated" to the user than another
I never claimed there was. What I said was that the near-real-time use of video that would require recording, compression, and then transmission (a multi-step process), would be more complex for the user than a real-time method with lower quality.
The point is that quality is not the ultimate goal here -- reliability is. Using a real-time standardized codec guarantees that if you can get a connection to the satellite that your video will get out.
yes, MPEG4 would be wonderful, but the standard was finalized literally days ago. Once we have hardware that can compress it in real-time and be sure that they'll be able to connect to other systems using the same standard, then someone will build that into the videophone, but not before.
Say what you will about the quality of the h.xxx videoconferencing codecs, but the fact that you can get a windows PC, a mac, a unix box, a videophone, a teamstation system, and a picturetel system all in a videoconference together, over WIDELY divergent bandwiths and topologies is FAR more important than getting a few more FPS...
Unconditional even when a small and reasonable gesture like letting the Talibans review the evidence could perhaps have led to a peaceful solution
Again, this has been said a million times, but we have provided evidence to the Taliban before on the extradition on bin Laden and they don't really care, regardless of what they say. they didn't hand him over for the WTC (the first time) or the USS Cole, or our embassy bombings. how many times do we have to put our intelligence sources at risk?
You will also notice how unconditionally becomes conditionally when terrorist cells are uncovered in Europe
You do realize the governments of europe are the ones finding the terrorists, right? if the Taliban was scouring the countryside for terrorists, we'd be more than happy to give them time and consideration. They are not simply being obstructionist, they are cooperating with the terrorists.
The french governemnt and german governments are not supporting the terrorists on their soil (any more than the US government supported the terrorists on our soil who actually committed the attack). If a European government were financing and protecting a terrorist group, yes we would absolutely be holding them responsible.
Another consideration is that European governments have always shown a willingness to negotiate in good faith on issues, and in such a case as extradition we would be willing to play it out because we know that is the case.
There is no double standard, no matter how much apologists would like their to be. Most governments are simply willing to live up to the standard, while the Taliban is not.
(please note that just a few short months ago, we were negotiating with China for the return of some US military crew members. We negotiated and did not attack because the Chinese were negotiating in good faith and we had no realistic fear that they would do anything to injure the crewmen or escalate the situation.)
Which brings up the fact that while the per unit cost ($7,500 for field unit) isn't too bad, especially for media outlets, it certainly seems to be largely a compression application that a properly peripheraled laptop could undertake, and be more ready to accepts better (or environment-specialized) codecs
Its a bargain -- yes a computer could do more for less money, but they don't want features, they want reliability.
You turn it on, it works. You don't want to miss the big story because windows won't boot.
Its a hardware codec, and a butt-expensive sat phone rolled in with a video system and mixing station. How cheap do you really think something like that could be built for? Heck, the Pelikan case along costs $150+...
I can tell most of the folks commenting on this thread have not used high bandwidth sat phones or done much live video (or both).
The InMarSat system is a geostationary constellation, and requires a pretty decent amount of power to transmit.
It requires a directional antenna, which is part of the reason the phones are as large as they are. The smallest are the size of a small briefcase, and these videophones are not much larger than that.
You can mux together multiple dishes to get 64k, 128k, 192k, 256k, etc, but each 64k requires another dish, another power supply, and more space.
Yes, the codecs are less than perfect, but they are standard, and allow you to connect virtually anywhere in real-time.
We've experimented with live encoding into more efficient formats and quite frankly you don't get much better quality, and the lack of built-in videoconferencing smarts on the part of the codecs costs as much as you gain in efficiency.
Yes, if you can record, encode and transmit in near-real time the quality could be better, but then you're talking about a much more technically complicated setup that a reporter with limited resources has to manage.
Operating a computer in your office is much simpler than doing it on a frozen rock with bombs falling nearby and a poor power supply. If you have a connection, you transmit because you never know when it may go down or your power will die. Getting a few extra FPS for extra time sounds nice in theory, but getting the story out ASAP is more important because 30 seconds from now things could change.
The videophones are an amazing package, and little can be done to improve them much more than the simple march of technology. They'll get smaller, we'll get better sat systems with more bandwidth, the codecs will improve, but for what resources exists now, these things do an AMAZING job of wringing out all the performance possible.
Was it unfair of us to demand japan's unconditional surrender at the end of WW2?
We have a tendancy to be unconditional when we are attacked. Funny that way...
In a case like that, only an international tribunal can judge. Else this won't be fair. The jury will be the same as the accusation.
great, now we just need to build an international court out of member countries who didn't have people die in the WTC.
That pretty much eliminates every country on earth.
You're right, the world has been a horrible place since the Unites States invented hate and misery. We really shouldn't have done that, everyone on earth was happy and smiling before 1776...
I disagree - the Taliban was much more compromising than they usually are, but the US repeatedly and unequivocably stated that "our demands are not negotiable." It was the US that was unwilling to cooperate even in the slightest.
I tell you what -- we'll compromise with the taliban.
They can have him tried in a third country, and stay in power. But only if they give us back 3,000 of the dead people in NYC.
See, we're willing to split the difference...
And bombing Afghanistan will?
:)
It will stop the ones they would have played a part in.
We're not expecting 100% here. We're willing to comprimise.
Violence is always wrong
Well that pretty much invalidates any argument you can ever make on the topic of conflict.
if you eliminate one option right off the bat, you are clearly not thinking things through.
Personally, I hate fighting, and I hate violence. But if you come into my house and start killing my family, I'll fight you to my last breath. Feel free to consider me immoral...
I doubt any Western European state would extradite any of their citizens without first seeing at least some shreds of evidence, and receiving assurances that their would be no capitol punishment (as required by the European Convention). Why should the Talibans?
you do know that the taliban executes people for trivial offenses, right? These are hardly people who require strong proof and abhorr the death penalty.
What about Canada
What ABOUT Canada?
Where are your aircraft carriers, your submarines? Are Canadian cruise missiles being fired at something? Are the canadian-designed, canadian-built fighter aircraft going to be maintaining air superiority with canadian pilots and canadian AWACS?
Don't get me wrong, its great to have moral support, and Bush DID actually mention Canada (along with france, germany, and some others) but to complain for not getting a big pat on the back is ludicrous.
Why would blood ever get in your access control lists?
He's VERY strict about training users....
By your line of argument, zoning should also be able to prohibit strippers from living in a neighborhood. After all, it takes far less work than you detailed for customers of a strip club to find out where a stripper lives and start hanging around her neighborhood.
All you've shown is a lack of security for the girls, not any violation of zoning...
We have about 50 of the drives (mixture of 75GXP 60GXP) running in RAID systems here with no problems. We've been buying them for all our video systems for around a year due to the speed and capacity...