This is not as easy of a problem as you decide. Unless metadata was recorded with things like the focal length of the lens, there is no way to determine distance information from a 2D image. Even with the metadata, it is still a painstaking process that involves manually isolating every object in the frame, tracking those objects through the shot, and assigning a depth map to them. You then need to determine your interaxial distance - a wider interaxial increases the depth of the 3D effect, and then finally you need to determine your convergence - which is the plane on which the screen rests. When converting, these values may need to be keyframed.
There is a reason this costs $100,000 per minute of film to do professionally.
Currently, 3D is being used as a gimmick. However, like depth of field or lens focal length, it's an aspect of photography that can certainly be sued to enhance your storytelling. There is an intimacy about seeing characters in 3D, which can make dialogue scenes more real. Also imagine a creepy character like Hannibal Lechter stepping off the screen and into the theatre with you to invade your personal space. That would make him even more creepy. If 3D sticks around, and people shoot exclusively for it (no 2D version later), then I do believe film makers will begin to use it in better ways. I simply don't know if that will ever happen economically though.
I find it interesting that you would be more interested in the process than the narrative itself. I remember a time when people went to films to be lost and engrossed. A noticeable special effect was a bad thing which took you out of the film. Now, it seems people WANT to see outrageous effects which call attention to themselves. I'm guessing it's because the narrative of many films simply does not grab an audience any more, so there's really nothing to take you out of.
Maybe you didn't hear about the Vietnam war. We lost that, and we outgunned the enemy. What about the insurgents in Iraq? Saying ordinary citizens can't fight the military has been proven false empirically.
I'm sorry that's wrong. Every religion is bad. They are all bad because they teach you to not to think critically, and accept unwavering beliefs as facts that can never change. It teaches people not to live in reality or react to changing evidence.
I bought this for Super Meat Boy, and it turns out I can't configure any controls or set and settings at all, since this is all done through the steam client, and what you get in the bundle is a standalone application. I'm not too happy with only being able to play in windowed 640 x 480 with the keyboard.
You don't have to be bad at math to play the lottery. A buck for a ticket is a small price to pay for the entertainment you get when the numbers come up. Especially if your friends play, it can be a social event when the numbers are announced.
First of all, professional A/V folk don't use HDMI anyway. Cameras and decks all have SDI outputs, which is pretty much the standard, and there's no copy protection on it. Second of all, in the chance you do use an HDMI source, not a single camera or deck is ever going to set HDCP on, since well, you're the one shooting and editing the material. Copy protection is only an issue if you are trying to record off a PS3, TV broadcast, or copy a blu ray disc - i.e. something that's not yours. If you're running into copy protection issues, you need to get proper gear.
There are several games available legally for ScummVM, which he suggested. Beneath a Steel Sky and Flight of the Amazon Queen for example, were both released as freeware by their authors and can be downloaded right from the ScummVM homepage.
That's a clear violation of freedom of speech. If I want to, with my own money, create an ad endorsing a candidate and express my views, then denying that by law would certainly be censorship.
"Not everybody chooses to contribute to the banks by using credit for trivial purchases."
They should. Most offer either cash back or airline miles or something similar. You'd be foolish not to use it for everything you buy normally, since these bonuses don't apply to cash. Pay your bill completely at the end of the month, and you actually come out ahead over someone who just writes checks and uses cash.
"Being able to play back what you just captured is invaluable"
It's called video tap, and it works on 35mm cameras.
"Reloading by slapping in a new hard drive saves downtime"
Changing magazines on a film camera is just as easy and quick. Pop one off, pop the other on.
"Cutting the size and weight of the camera down by 70-90% gives you flexibility"
There are tons of small motion picture cameras. The A minima is way smaller than any comparable HD camera for example.
"Filming at high frame rates like it's nothing is damned cool"
With film you can shoot hundreds, or even thousands of frames per second easily since it's all mechanical. I'd like to see you do that with something like the varicam or RED's stuff, which tops out at 120fps.
Just about the only advantage to Digital over film right now is if you're going for a certain look, and cost.
Not all Color film is inherently stable. The dyes Kodak used in the 60s and 70s fade very quickly. Star Wars was preserved correctly; the film stock was simply very prone to degradation. A good way to archive film is to create separation masters, which are three strips of black and white film; one for each color. You can then later combine them to form a new negative. Black and white film will last damn near forever.
Archiving Digital data is not in fact easier than archiving film. To archive film, you put the negative in a climate controlled environment. That's it. To archive digital, you need to put the disks or tapes in a climate controlled environment, then constantly recopy and verify the data. It is actually more expensive to preserve a film digitally than to preserve the negative.
Interestingly I did a little thought experiment: Are there any genres now, for which the average game quality is greater or equal to what it was in 2006? The only one I could think of was Point and Click adventure, since there basically weren't any in 2006. In my mind, I'm not sure gaming really is fine.
This has to do with the attitudes of modern developers now. I was working on the guide for a particular game, and some of the team was watching me play. I ended up using a trick I'd found to skip a large portion of a level, and one of the artists asked me afterward if I was going to put it in the guide. I said of course. He then asked me if I could not, because he spent 2 weeks modeling that area, and he wanted people to see it rather than just skipping it.
Because game developers now are trying to give the player an 'experience', and because costs are so high, the idea of having content be unavailable to players, whether that be because of lack of skill, or because of alternate ways to play, is frighteneing to them, so you end up getting a first playthrough where you really do all you're supposed to do, and see most of what you're supposed to see.
The reason it never caught on was that it's simply not spectator friendly. With a sport, you can see all the player on the field at once and you can tell what they are doing. With an FPS, you can;t really see all players at once, and if you can, it's not clear what they are doing. Sometimes you can only appreciate player skill when you watch in first person, whereas you can easily see physical feats of sports athletes. Starcraft has this in common with sports; a lot of the battlefield is visible, and you can easily see and appreciate the skill involved in controlling the units.
"I know consumers that can keep a PC going strong for 4 - 6 years without issue, and they cost about 10% -20% more, but are consumers willing to pay for that?"
Judging by the number of people who buy Apple computers, probably quite a few. My first mac lasted from 1984 to 1992, the next from 1992 to 1999, the next from 1999 to 2008. In fact, the 1984 mac still works!
I am all for shorter games. Typically games today pad tinges and run out of ideas long before the 10 hour mark. Many people seem to assume that once you beat a game it's over, and so do developers. I play a lot of shmups, and these can easily be beaten in 30 minutes, yet I've played them for hundreds of hours because there's so much to do once you've finished it: practice for a 1cc, or go for a higher score, etc. The idea that games are throwaway experiences only to be played once is killing games more than shorter campaigns.
You're forgetting that often times by being able to make a living with your art you can focus on just your art, and really hone and develop your skills to the point of excellence. There's a reason why professional athletes are at the top of their game, and that's because they are paid to practice every day. It's not something they have to balance out with their 'real' job. This is true with an artist as well. If your art can support you, you can focus exclusively on improving your art. Would you rather work on your art for 8 hours everyday, or have to squeeze it in after your office job?
Slashdot Mirror
Because you can always decide to leave a union and then take a non union job.
This is not as easy of a problem as you decide. Unless metadata was recorded with things like the focal length of the lens, there is no way to determine distance information from a 2D image. Even with the metadata, it is still a painstaking process that involves manually isolating every object in the frame, tracking those objects through the shot, and assigning a depth map to them. You then need to determine your interaxial distance - a wider interaxial increases the depth of the 3D effect, and then finally you need to determine your convergence - which is the plane on which the screen rests. When converting, these values may need to be keyframed.
There is a reason this costs $100,000 per minute of film to do professionally.
Currently, 3D is being used as a gimmick. However, like depth of field or lens focal length, it's an aspect of photography that can certainly be sued to enhance your storytelling. There is an intimacy about seeing characters in 3D, which can make dialogue scenes more real. Also imagine a creepy character like Hannibal Lechter stepping off the screen and into the theatre with you to invade your personal space. That would make him even more creepy. If 3D sticks around, and people shoot exclusively for it (no 2D version later), then I do believe film makers will begin to use it in better ways. I simply don't know if that will ever happen economically though.
I find it interesting that you would be more interested in the process than the narrative itself. I remember a time when people went to films to be lost and engrossed. A noticeable special effect was a bad thing which took you out of the film. Now, it seems people WANT to see outrageous effects which call attention to themselves. I'm guessing it's because the narrative of many films simply does not grab an audience any more, so there's really nothing to take you out of.
Maybe you didn't hear about the Vietnam war. We lost that, and we outgunned the enemy. What about the insurgents in Iraq? Saying ordinary citizens can't fight the military has been proven false empirically.
I'm sorry that's wrong. Every religion is bad. They are all bad because they teach you to not to think critically, and accept unwavering beliefs as facts that can never change. It teaches people not to live in reality or react to changing evidence.
I bought this for Super Meat Boy, and it turns out I can't configure any controls or set and settings at all, since this is all done through the steam client, and what you get in the bundle is a standalone application. I'm not too happy with only being able to play in windowed 640 x 480 with the keyboard.
You don't have to be bad at math to play the lottery. A buck for a ticket is a small price to pay for the entertainment you get when the numbers come up. Especially if your friends play, it can be a social event when the numbers are announced.
First of all, professional A/V folk don't use HDMI anyway. Cameras and decks all have SDI outputs, which is pretty much the standard, and there's no copy protection on it. Second of all, in the chance you do use an HDMI source, not a single camera or deck is ever going to set HDCP on, since well, you're the one shooting and editing the material. Copy protection is only an issue if you are trying to record off a PS3, TV broadcast, or copy a blu ray disc - i.e. something that's not yours. If you're running into copy protection issues, you need to get proper gear.
There are several games available legally for ScummVM, which he suggested. Beneath a Steel Sky and Flight of the Amazon Queen for example, were both released as freeware by their authors and can be downloaded right from the ScummVM homepage.
I think it's time to seriously consider Phage therapy, which has been proven reliable and used for years already. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy
Looks like someone's been breaking the first two rules of Usenet!
"and BAN private political advertising"
That's a clear violation of freedom of speech. If I want to, with my own money, create an ad endorsing a candidate and express my views, then denying that by law would certainly be censorship.
"Not everybody chooses to contribute to the banks by using credit for trivial purchases."
They should. Most offer either cash back or airline miles or something similar. You'd be foolish not to use it for everything you buy normally, since these bonuses don't apply to cash. Pay your bill completely at the end of the month, and you actually come out ahead over someone who just writes checks and uses cash.
"Being able to play back what you just captured is invaluable"
It's called video tap, and it works on 35mm cameras.
"Reloading by slapping in a new hard drive saves downtime"
Changing magazines on a film camera is just as easy and quick. Pop one off, pop the other on.
"Cutting the size and weight of the camera down by 70-90% gives you flexibility"
There are tons of small motion picture cameras. The A minima is way smaller than any comparable HD camera for example.
"Filming at high frame rates like it's nothing is damned cool"
With film you can shoot hundreds, or even thousands of frames per second easily since it's all mechanical. I'd like to see you do that with something like the varicam or RED's stuff, which tops out at 120fps.
Just about the only advantage to Digital over film right now is if you're going for a certain look, and cost.
Not all Color film is inherently stable. The dyes Kodak used in the 60s and 70s fade very quickly. Star Wars was preserved correctly; the film stock was simply very prone to degradation. A good way to archive film is to create separation masters, which are three strips of black and white film; one for each color. You can then later combine them to form a new negative. Black and white film will last damn near forever.
Archiving Digital data is not in fact easier than archiving film. To archive film, you put the negative in a climate controlled environment. That's it. To archive digital, you need to put the disks or tapes in a climate controlled environment, then constantly recopy and verify the data. It is actually more expensive to preserve a film digitally than to preserve the negative.
Well if you watch the demo, the presenter makes unreadable text on a poster readable after the filter is applied.
Most state athletic programs make the institution money. Football in particular is such a moneymaker, it can subsidize other less prominent sports.
Interestingly I did a little thought experiment: Are there any genres now, for which the average game quality is greater or equal to what it was in 2006? The only one I could think of was Point and Click adventure, since there basically weren't any in 2006. In my mind, I'm not sure gaming really is fine.
This has to do with the attitudes of modern developers now. I was working on the guide for a particular game, and some of the team was watching me play. I ended up using a trick I'd found to skip a large portion of a level, and one of the artists asked me afterward if I was going to put it in the guide. I said of course. He then asked me if I could not, because he spent 2 weeks modeling that area, and he wanted people to see it rather than just skipping it.
Because game developers now are trying to give the player an 'experience', and because costs are so high, the idea of having content be unavailable to players, whether that be because of lack of skill, or because of alternate ways to play, is frighteneing to them, so you end up getting a first playthrough where you really do all you're supposed to do, and see most of what you're supposed to see.
The reason it never caught on was that it's simply not spectator friendly. With a sport, you can see all the player on the field at once and you can tell what they are doing. With an FPS, you can;t really see all players at once, and if you can, it's not clear what they are doing. Sometimes you can only appreciate player skill when you watch in first person, whereas you can easily see physical feats of sports athletes. Starcraft has this in common with sports; a lot of the battlefield is visible, and you can easily see and appreciate the skill involved in controlling the units.
"I know consumers that can keep a PC going strong for 4 - 6 years without issue, and they cost about 10% -20% more, but are consumers willing to pay for that?"
Judging by the number of people who buy Apple computers, probably quite a few. My first mac lasted from 1984 to 1992, the next from 1992 to 1999, the next from 1999 to 2008. In fact, the 1984 mac still works!
I am all for shorter games. Typically games today pad tinges and run out of ideas long before the 10 hour mark. Many people seem to assume that once you beat a game it's over, and so do developers. I play a lot of shmups, and these can easily be beaten in 30 minutes, yet I've played them for hundreds of hours because there's so much to do once you've finished it: practice for a 1cc, or go for a higher score, etc. The idea that games are throwaway experiences only to be played once is killing games more than shorter campaigns.
You're forgetting that often times by being able to make a living with your art you can focus on just your art, and really hone and develop your skills to the point of excellence. There's a reason why professional athletes are at the top of their game, and that's because they are paid to practice every day. It's not something they have to balance out with their 'real' job. This is true with an artist as well. If your art can support you, you can focus exclusively on improving your art. Would you rather work on your art for 8 hours everyday, or have to squeeze it in after your office job?