I agree.. the speech synthesis used in many applications could use quite a bit of work. A lot of it still sounds like Stephen Hawking's synthesizer.
You might be interested to know, though, that Stephen Hawking has said that he continues to use the same clunky-sounding computer voice by _choice_. In a collection of his essays entitled "Black Holes & Baby Universes," Hawking states that he has come to associate with the antique computer voice, just as others have come to associate him with it. It's a part of his identity.
True, A straight 3:2 pulldown creates 30fps video, not 29.97 fps video. The difference between the two frame rates works out to about 2fps. This discrepancy is usually accounted for through NTSC drop-frame timecode. No actual frames are dropped, but the numbering system of the timecode always goes from 00;00;59;28 to 00;01;00;00, 00;00;01;28 to 00;02;00;00, and so on.
For more info on drop-frame timecode:
http://www.adobe.com/support/techguides/digitalv id eo/timecode/timecode.pdf
At any rate, I wholeheartedly support the spirit of your "minor nit"-picking. Timecode is one of those bizarre creatures that makes my head hurt.
When you see that "This film has been formatted to fit this screen and edited both for content and to run in the time allotted," the editing to run in the time alotted is not done through some mystical automatic process; it is done by humans deciding which pieces of a film will be cut. Although frames can be trimmed, the removal of words, sentences, and even whole scenes is much more common.
The only "inter-frame interpolation" that occurs in the broadcast of a movie takes place in the conversion of a movie from 24fps to 29.75fps (or 25fps) for playback in NTSC or PAL. This process (called 3:2 or 24:1 pulldown) does not affect the running time of the content.
Slashdot Mirror
But those who are fortunate enough to posess a G5 can already run Mac OS X as a 64-bit os.
http://www.apple.com/powermac/
-Tom
I agree.. the speech synthesis used in many applications could use quite a bit of work. A lot of it still sounds like Stephen Hawking's synthesizer.
You might be interested to know, though, that Stephen Hawking has said that he continues to use the same clunky-sounding computer voice by _choice_. In a collection of his essays entitled "Black Holes & Baby Universes," Hawking states that he has come to associate with the antique computer voice, just as others have come to associate him with it. It's a part of his identity.
Dirty -
v id eo/timecode/timecode.pdf
True, A straight 3:2 pulldown creates 30fps video, not 29.97 fps video. The difference between the two frame rates works out to about 2fps. This discrepancy is usually accounted for through NTSC drop-frame timecode. No actual frames are dropped, but the numbering system of the timecode always goes from 00;00;59;28 to 00;01;00;00, 00;00;01;28 to 00;02;00;00, and so on.
For more info on drop-frame timecode:
http://www.adobe.com/support/techguides/digital
At any rate, I wholeheartedly support the spirit of your "minor nit"-picking. Timecode is one of those bizarre creatures that makes my head hurt.
Tom
Not true.
When you see that "This film has been formatted to fit this screen and edited both for content and to run in the time allotted," the editing to run in the time alotted is not done through some mystical automatic process; it is done by humans deciding which pieces of a film will be cut. Although frames can be trimmed, the removal of words, sentences, and even whole scenes is much more common.
The only "inter-frame interpolation" that occurs in the broadcast of a movie takes place in the conversion of a movie from 24fps to 29.75fps (or 25fps) for playback in NTSC or PAL. This process (called 3:2 or 24:1 pulldown) does not affect the running time of the content.
For what it's worth, I'm a broadcast editor.
-Tom
If it were implemented, how useful would the tools provided be? This raises the same questions as a Google or an IMDB:
1) Will the database be open to _all_ content providers, or just big-media?
2) Will search results be fairly reported, or will they be skewed by paid placement?
I dug around Dremedia.com looking for answers, but couldn't find anything. Has anyone read anything relevant to this?
-Tom
Anyone happen to know if the G4 Cube satellite guy mentioned a while ago has taken any notice?