720p and 1080i are a lot closer in terms of pixel count per second than you might think. Let's lay out some facts, then use those facts to do the math:
720p = 1280x720x60fps 1080i = 1920x1080x30fps
720p = 921600 pixels per frame 1080i = 2073600 pixels per frame
720p = 55296000 pixels per second 1080i = 62208000 pixels per second
Sure, within a single frame, 1080i has shitloads more pixels, at half the frame rate it almost evens out, but not quite.
Also, with 720p, you have more vertical resolution with 60fps games (as 1080i only has 540 lines per 1/60th of a second). And you won't notice the difference in horizontal resolution. And as 720p has no interlacing, you'll get optimal quality in both high motion and still scenes, whereas with 1080i high motion instantly drops the vertical resolution by a factor of two, and you only realize the full resolution on still shots (or extremely low motion).
Also, I was under the impression that 480p ran at 60fps, which make it twice the bandwidth of 480i, which runs at 30fps interlaced.
I'm currently at 88%, getting 42KB/s down and upping 20KB/s. I will be leaving the torrent running at least until tomorrow night, possibly longer, so I will definitely be a seeder before too long.
Each frame should contain metadata that states the level of various types of content within that frame, and the region of the screen it's in (this metadata could be produced in post, or in that short buffer time). Each TV has settings for various levels of those types of content. The TVs use said metadata to censor the content based on the standards of the viewers, rather than enforcing one set of standards on everyone.
If you distribute a full, modified ISO, then you're just fucking stupid.
But if you only distribute files that require the full game to use, why should that be bad? What's next, criminalizing.IPS patches for classic game systems?
Yeah, but all NTSC formats only have 240 visible lines per field. You don't deinterlace to get 480 lines at 29.97fps, you just take the 480 line interlaced video that the capture hardware gives you. In fact, most deinterlacing algorithms used prior to encoding are pure crap, and only serve to remove either temporal or spatial resolution, depending on the algorithm.
So, 320x480 (or 352x480 preferably) would be sufficient. I just stated 720x480 because I'm used to capturing at 720x480 through an NTSC-DV converter box (since DV is always 720x480, that's what I'm limited to).
You're using 'lines of resolution' incorrectly. All (and I do mean *all*) interlaced NTSC devices have 525 scanlines, *period*, of which 486 are visible (and thus 480 scanlines is 'close enough'). The 'lines of resolution' is basically the number of vertical lines that you can fit inside of a perfect square at the height of the frame (this is done to make 'lines of resolution' comparable across different aspect ratios), which means that 'lines of resolution' actually refers to horizontal detail. VHS has 480 visible scanlines just like Digital Betacam, and every one of those scanlines will have it's own detail. Due to the way NTSC is transmitted on a line-by-line basis, it is pretty much impossible to lose vertical detail unless the format used specifically threw away a field (as some earlier home video formats did). Remember that - you ALWAYS have 525 total scanlines, on ANY NTSC-native format.
Thus, at 240 scanlines, you've immediately lost one half of the fields. So as long as the video was 480 lines high, I'd be happy, even if it was only 320 pixels wide. Stored as MPEG-2 (or any other format that retains aspect ratio metadata), most decent players should stretch a 320x480 video to the proper aspect (either 640 or 720 pixels wide, depending on the device).
One of these days, these crappy encodes will likely end up being the ONLY existing copies of these commercials. For preservation purposes, it is essential that one capture at 720x480 or 720x576 (or 704x480/704x576, depending on hardware), at the respective frame rates for NTSC or PAL.
I didn't say I wasn't happy that the video is being distributed, just that I wish there was an effort to preserve them in archival quality, and these WMVs are most certainly nowhere close to archival quality.
Oh, I agree with that. That shit causes their AGC's to drop the level on the actual show down quite a bit. I haven't measured, but I know the sound effect was way too loud.
Not to mention they squeeze the video up *partially*, but the overlay STILL covers the very bottom of the video.
And that ugly ass "G-Spot" bug that's twice as big as the regular bug.
Then if you're not an archivist, and you find some rare old video, then find a friggin' archivist. Hell, if they'd send me the tapes, I'll run the tapes through a TBC to stabilize them a bit, archive them at full resolution high-bitrate MPEG-2, and send them around BitTorrent.
I'm not ragging on these guys particularly, just lamenting that 99% of the time I find this type of old video online, it's some crappy lo-res, low-bitrate WMV (or worse, Real) video. Half the time, it's even at some shitty frame rate like 10fps or something.
Preservation is a laudable goal, regardless of the target of the preservation. Sure, perhaps these people aren't set up to preserve such media, but they should get the video to someone who is.
I would have posted the verbatim part of their license that says that, but the lameness filter ate it.
Go here to read it instead. It basically says that they are not liable for any damages, loss of data or business caused by this program. They also throw in this bit for good measure:
"OR (B) ANY AMOUNTS IN EXCESS OF THE ACTUAL, AGGREGATE AMOUNT PAID BY YOU TO ACCESS THIS WEBSITE."
And since you pay no money to access their website, if the court was to uphold this ToC, even if you did have an otherwise legitimate claim, you'd get $0 unless you could prove that you paid the MPAA to access the site - with the language "actual, aggregate amount", I doubt it would apply to Internet access fees, since the actual amount paid for that particular access is likely minimal, probably less than $0.01.
Why don't these sites archive this video at 720x480? Sure, it may be old VHS captures, but still, when you resize to half-resolution, you lose HALF of the available resolution immediately?
This type stuff should be archived in standard MPEG-2 format, and offered in lower resolutions for streaming purposes only.
Re:how about perfect NES emulation?
on
Back to the Classics
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· Score: 2, Informative
FCEUltra, on a PC with TV-out, running at 640x480, with either a Retrozone NES controller (with USB connector) or a PS2 pad with a USB adaptor, is about as close as one will get to actual hardware at this moment. To me it seems 99% accurate to hardware (the width of the emulated NES is a bit less than fullscreen, but it doesn't affect playability).
Many other emulators are quite close to hardware with a setup like this. I use it for NES, SNES, Genesis, GB/GBC, and GBA games, and also with C64 emulators to run C64 games and demos. I am currently in the process of setting up an N64 emulator in such a fashion.
Commodore made computers, not consoles, for the most part (they did make some early Pong clones, and also released a C64 without keyboard as a console, but it was still a C64). So why is this in games?
And I'm sure anyone wanting to play DVD-Rs on a standalone player is automatically infringing copyright, because DVD-Rs don't have a legitimate use for video, right?
You are full of shit, please don't speak unless you're absolutely sure you know what you're talking about.
NTSC runs at a horizontal refresh rate of 15KHz (that is, approximately 15,000 lines per second), and a vertical refresh rate of 59.94Hz. For simplicity, I will refer to "59.94Hz" as "60Hz".
Each refresh handles either odd or even fields (noninterlaced devices like the NES just output all odd or all even fields). Two consecutive fields can be combined into a 30fps signal, the set will display this at 60fps correctly.
NTSC can perfectly well do 60fps, there is just a slight loss of spatial resolution since each of those fields is half of the frame height. I should know, I was just playing some NES games and Unreal Tournament 2004 on a TV at a perfectly smooth 60fps (UT2k4 would occasionally drop to 30fps of course, but the NES emu was rock solid). I also regularly play 30fps videos through my TV-out and with ReClock and bob deinterlacing, it looks PERFECT to the original source, minor MPEG artifacting notwithstanding.
Funny, in most industries, if you pay money, and you receive an item, you can get a refund if it quits working or if you just don't like it.
Why is it we're moving in a direction where businesses have more rights and less liability than individuals? Why do businesses have rights in the first place?
I say we should get rid of the concept that corporation = person. Make management personally liable for what they direct their company to do. Business does the shit it does now precisely BECAUSE people know that it's rare for anyone to actually get in trouble.
iTunes' ripper sucks, EAC's is more accurate, especially with bad discs (the worse the disc is, the more you better use EAC). Also, iTunes' MP3 encoder sucks, and tends to make larger files than LAME --preset standard.
Rip with EAC, import into iTunes, if you primarily use MP3 as your digital audio format.
You do know that legally, a copy is a copy, and the only reason you have the right to run software is because someone was smart enough to explicitly state so in the law? I'm actually surprised noone's attacked that part of the law yet - get that overturned and you really do have total control over how media is played, as you just claim copyright infringement when someone plays it in a manner you didn't authorize.
Sad thing is, companies like Diebold will lobby against such legislation because it 'removes choice'. Wasn't that the whole argument of Microsoft et al. in attempting to counter pro-open-source legislation in other areas, was that it 'removed choice' - i.e., that it removed the choice of being able to use closed software.
And they'll throw money out to ensure that people listen to them. And end up denying choice to use open-source software in the process. In that case, I think that should it be possible to choose open or closed source software on a state-by-state basis, as determined by the will of the people in that state.
Slashdot Mirror
720p and 1080i are a lot closer in terms of pixel count per second than you might think. Let's lay out some facts, then use those facts to do the math:
720p = 1280x720x60fps
1080i = 1920x1080x30fps
720p = 921600 pixels per frame
1080i = 2073600 pixels per frame
720p = 55296000 pixels per second
1080i = 62208000 pixels per second
Sure, within a single frame, 1080i has shitloads more pixels, at half the frame rate it almost evens out, but not quite.
Also, with 720p, you have more vertical resolution with 60fps games (as 1080i only has 540 lines per 1/60th of a second). And you won't notice the difference in horizontal resolution. And as 720p has no interlacing, you'll get optimal quality in both high motion and still scenes, whereas with 1080i high motion instantly drops the vertical resolution by a factor of two, and you only realize the full resolution on still shots (or extremely low motion).
Also, I was under the impression that 480p ran at 60fps, which make it twice the bandwidth of 480i, which runs at 30fps interlaced.
Didn't work. I'm off the torrent.
I was able to burn it with cdrecord - I'm getting ready to test it on my other machine.
I'm currently at 88%, getting 42KB/s down and upping 20KB/s. I will be leaving the torrent running at least until tomorrow night, possibly longer, so I will definitely be a seeder before too long.
I have a better idea.
Each frame should contain metadata that states the level of various types of content within that frame, and the region of the screen it's in (this metadata could be produced in post, or in that short buffer time). Each TV has settings for various levels of those types of content. The TVs use said metadata to censor the content based on the standards of the viewers, rather than enforcing one set of standards on everyone.
Horseshit.
.IPS patches for classic game systems?
If you distribute a full, modified ISO, then you're just fucking stupid.
But if you only distribute files that require the full game to use, why should that be bad? What's next, criminalizing
Yeah, but all NTSC formats only have 240 visible lines per field. You don't deinterlace to get 480 lines at 29.97fps, you just take the 480 line interlaced video that the capture hardware gives you. In fact, most deinterlacing algorithms used prior to encoding are pure crap, and only serve to remove either temporal or spatial resolution, depending on the algorithm.
So, 320x480 (or 352x480 preferably) would be sufficient. I just stated 720x480 because I'm used to capturing at 720x480 through an NTSC-DV converter box (since DV is always 720x480, that's what I'm limited to).
You're using 'lines of resolution' incorrectly. All (and I do mean *all*) interlaced NTSC devices have 525 scanlines, *period*, of which 486 are visible (and thus 480 scanlines is 'close enough'). The 'lines of resolution' is basically the number of vertical lines that you can fit inside of a perfect square at the height of the frame (this is done to make 'lines of resolution' comparable across different aspect ratios), which means that 'lines of resolution' actually refers to horizontal detail. VHS has 480 visible scanlines just like Digital Betacam, and every one of those scanlines will have it's own detail. Due to the way NTSC is transmitted on a line-by-line basis, it is pretty much impossible to lose vertical detail unless the format used specifically threw away a field (as some earlier home video formats did). Remember that - you ALWAYS have 525 total scanlines, on ANY NTSC-native format.
Thus, at 240 scanlines, you've immediately lost one half of the fields. So as long as the video was 480 lines high, I'd be happy, even if it was only 320 pixels wide. Stored as MPEG-2 (or any other format that retains aspect ratio metadata), most decent players should stretch a 320x480 video to the proper aspect (either 640 or 720 pixels wide, depending on the device).
One of these days, these crappy encodes will likely end up being the ONLY existing copies of these commercials. For preservation purposes, it is essential that one capture at 720x480 or 720x576 (or 704x480/704x576, depending on hardware), at the respective frame rates for NTSC or PAL.
I didn't say I wasn't happy that the video is being distributed, just that I wish there was an effort to preserve them in archival quality, and these WMVs are most certainly nowhere close to archival quality.
Oh, I agree with that. That shit causes their AGC's to drop the level on the actual show down quite a bit. I haven't measured, but I know the sound effect was way too loud.
Not to mention they squeeze the video up *partially*, but the overlay STILL covers the very bottom of the video.
And that ugly ass "G-Spot" bug that's twice as big as the regular bug.
Then if you're not an archivist, and you find some rare old video, then find a friggin' archivist. Hell, if they'd send me the tapes, I'll run the tapes through a TBC to stabilize them a bit, archive them at full resolution high-bitrate MPEG-2, and send them around BitTorrent.
I'm not ragging on these guys particularly, just lamenting that 99% of the time I find this type of old video online, it's some crappy lo-res, low-bitrate WMV (or worse, Real) video. Half the time, it's even at some shitty frame rate like 10fps or something.
Preservation is a laudable goal, regardless of the target of the preservation. Sure, perhaps these people aren't set up to preserve such media, but they should get the video to someone who is.
I would have posted the verbatim part of their license that says that, but the lameness filter ate it.
Go here to read it instead. It basically says that they are not liable for any damages, loss of data or business caused by this program. They also throw in this bit for good measure:
"OR (B) ANY AMOUNTS IN EXCESS OF THE ACTUAL, AGGREGATE AMOUNT PAID BY YOU TO ACCESS THIS WEBSITE."
And since you pay no money to access their website, if the court was to uphold this ToC, even if you did have an otherwise legitimate claim, you'd get $0 unless you could prove that you paid the MPAA to access the site - with the language "actual, aggregate amount", I doubt it would apply to Internet access fees, since the actual amount paid for that particular access is likely minimal, probably less than $0.01.
Why don't these sites archive this video at 720x480? Sure, it may be old VHS captures, but still, when you resize to half-resolution, you lose HALF of the available resolution immediately?
This type stuff should be archived in standard MPEG-2 format, and offered in lower resolutions for streaming purposes only.
FCEUltra, on a PC with TV-out, running at 640x480, with either a Retrozone NES controller (with USB connector) or a PS2 pad with a USB adaptor, is about as close as one will get to actual hardware at this moment. To me it seems 99% accurate to hardware (the width of the emulated NES is a bit less than fullscreen, but it doesn't affect playability).
Many other emulators are quite close to hardware with a setup like this. I use it for NES, SNES, Genesis, GB/GBC, and GBA games, and also with C64 emulators to run C64 games and demos. I am currently in the process of setting up an N64 emulator in such a fashion.
Commodore made computers, not consoles, for the most part (they did make some early Pong clones, and also released a C64 without keyboard as a console, but it was still a C64). So why is this in games?
And I'm sure anyone wanting to play DVD-Rs on a standalone player is automatically infringing copyright, because DVD-Rs don't have a legitimate use for video, right?
You are full of shit, please don't speak unless you're absolutely sure you know what you're talking about.
NTSC runs at a horizontal refresh rate of 15KHz (that is, approximately 15,000 lines per second), and a vertical refresh rate of 59.94Hz. For simplicity, I will refer to "59.94Hz" as "60Hz".
Each refresh handles either odd or even fields (noninterlaced devices like the NES just output all odd or all even fields). Two consecutive fields can be combined into a 30fps signal, the set will display this at 60fps correctly.
NTSC can perfectly well do 60fps, there is just a slight loss of spatial resolution since each of those fields is half of the frame height. I should know, I was just playing some NES games and Unreal Tournament 2004 on a TV at a perfectly smooth 60fps (UT2k4 would occasionally drop to 30fps of course, but the NES emu was rock solid). I also regularly play 30fps videos through my TV-out and with ReClock and bob deinterlacing, it looks PERFECT to the original source, minor MPEG artifacting notwithstanding.
Funny, in most industries, if you pay money, and you receive an item, you can get a refund if it quits working or if you just don't like it.
Why is it we're moving in a direction where businesses have more rights and less liability than individuals? Why do businesses have rights in the first place?
I say we should get rid of the concept that corporation = person. Make management personally liable for what they direct their company to do. Business does the shit it does now precisely BECAUSE people know that it's rare for anyone to actually get in trouble.
Suck it up and take it. You don't have a right not to be offended, nor does anyone else. If you didn't want to hear that woman, tough shit.
So I imagine you've never been inconsiderate to anyone, ever, even unintentionally. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Monkeys fly out of my ass, too.
Coward? He's pure evil.
If I saw him on the street, I would have no qualms with kicking his face in.
Anyone who attacks family of people they disagree with are instantly discredited in my eyes. Even if they did have some validity before.
Wales should sue for unauthorized use of copyrighted images, and libel towards his family.
iTunes' ripper sucks, EAC's is more accurate, especially with bad discs (the worse the disc is, the more you better use EAC). Also, iTunes' MP3 encoder sucks, and tends to make larger files than LAME --preset standard.
Rip with EAC, import into iTunes, if you primarily use MP3 as your digital audio format.
Hmm, did you bring these issues up with the OOo team, or did you just shrug your shoulders and go "fuck this shit, OOo sucks".
If you're not willing to help correct problems in open-source software, then YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO BITCH ABOUT IT'S QUALITY (or lack thereof). PERIOD.
You do know that legally, a copy is a copy, and the only reason you have the right to run software is because someone was smart enough to explicitly state so in the law? I'm actually surprised noone's attacked that part of the law yet - get that overturned and you really do have total control over how media is played, as you just claim copyright infringement when someone plays it in a manner you didn't authorize.
"long after". So the difference between October 24 and November 7 is "long after", especially when it wasn't publicized for almost two months?
Sad thing is, companies like Diebold will lobby against such legislation because it 'removes choice'. Wasn't that the whole argument of Microsoft et al. in attempting to counter pro-open-source legislation in other areas, was that it 'removed choice' - i.e., that it removed the choice of being able to use closed software.
And they'll throw money out to ensure that people listen to them. And end up denying choice to use open-source software in the process. In that case, I think that should it be possible to choose open or closed source software on a state-by-state basis, as determined by the will of the people in that state.