I read that Sony and Philips are trying to keep the Verance (and other) watermarks away from SACD, but they're having trouble convincing recording labels to release unwatermarked music. So far the only taker is the classical label Telarc.
Ugh. We're never going to have a no-compromise digital audio system.
Or maybe it's because I modded up a post (not here, in another thread) that said something negative about michael. He doesn't seem to take criticism very well...
"is" an amazing advancement?
on
Surround Lights
·
· Score: 1
Taco's statement, "surround sound really is an amazing advancement" (note the present tense) makes it sound like he is unaware of the fact that surround sound is not a recent thing. He probably (like a lot of people these days) thinks it started with Dolby Digital in 1990s, and before that movies were always 2-channel only.
In fact, surround sound dates back to the 1950s, with the big-screen processes like Cinerama (7-channel sound), Todd-AO (6-channel sound), 35mm mag stripe (4-channel sound). It continued in the 70s and 80s with 35mm-to-70mm optical blow-ups, so that movies could be presented in the 70mm 6-track format. This lasted for a long time, with many movies (including the Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies) receiving 70mm 6-track presentations on their initial release. Then, finally, in the early-to-mid 1990s, today's digital sound processes started taking over, and now movies are 35mm-only, with 5.1 lossy-compressed digital sound.
People who complain about patents have "one-track minds"? Okaaay...
Guess patents and copyrights are evil unless they somehow enhance Taco's movie/videogame fanboy-ism. Then they're okay.
Oh yeah, and anyone remember the Jurrasic Park 2 previews? Some theaters rigged up strobe lights to "enhance" the on-screen lightning flashes. Hello, prior art.
Exactly. "Pompus ass" were the first words to come to my mind as well.
When Goldman gleefully posted to the newsgroup that someone had accepted his challenge, he said "some people just don't understand information theory too well". Yeah, and some people just don't understand issuing challenges very well, either!
When you make a challenge like that you absolutely must be sure to word the rules carefully and try to avoid leaving any loopholes. In this case, all Goldman really needed to do was tack a sentence at the end of his original challenge saying "the data must actually be compressed according to the definition of 'compression' contained in this FAQ. Challengers who merely point out loopholes or exploits in the rules of the challenge will not be rewarded".
The moment Mr. Craig started iquiring about about the specifics of the rules and saying "wait and see" regarding his methods, that should have been a warning sign to Goldman that Craig had some trick up his sleeve. But no, Goldman was just so in love with the idea that he found some "impossible" task which suckers might try to undertake that he couldn't be bothered to think about such things.
What's even more embarassing to Goldman is his initial reaction to Craig's submission:
I have accessed your server and downloaded exactly two files, the "decompressor" (dfi) and the "compressed file" (comp). The rest of the files in the directory (comp.0 through comp.217 inclusive) I have not touched.
Even though Craig had already asked if more than one file was okay and Goldman had said yes!
And Goldman's following point:
In further point of fact, the 218 parts together must occupy more space than the original file (original.dat) that you were given. Each file requires space for a directory entry, and each such directory entry requires in excess of one byte of space. Thus you have in actuality expanded the data which you were given to compress.
is even more ridiculous given that Goldman had already said that "sure" in response to Craig's question about multiple files whose "total file size" (which does not include directory entries) are less than the size of the original data file. Goldman tried to change the rules rather than admit he was sloppy in setting them up.
Goldman also says "I think that I did not make a mistake", even though he admits in the same message that he needs to restate the rules:
Perhaps it will be necessary to restate the terms in a legalistic form which is not open to this sort of miscommunication...
"Perhaps"? How about "definitely"! And any "miscommunication" was entirely one-way. Craig was very sly and clever, and Goldman was too full of himself to realize what the fuck was going on until after the fact. A "pompus ass" indeed.
Re:Telecine was more sophisticated than that.
on
Review: The Dish
·
· Score: 3
The thing that really sucks about the Verance watermark is that it is designed to survive lossy compression and analog copying. Of course, in order to do that, it has to be so obtrusive that you can hear it, despite the company's claims to the contrary.
According to this article, recording engineer Tony Faulkner was able to spot the watermark 75% of the time on his first chance at hearing it. What does that tell you? That this stupid watermark is going to be something you will hear on every DVD-A disc you buy! Doesn't that suck?! Well, the recording companies don't care... they just want to stop those Napster punks from stealing their content -- quality be damned!
Listen to the people who were involved when they talk about it. They actually seem to believe they were the first and only free speech "movement" in history.
Well no, I didn't mean to imply that triple-bladed shutters are some new thing that's taking over. There are a few high-end projectors that can be bought that have that feature, but the de-facto standard is still to just have two pulses of light for each frame, yielding a 48Hz refresh.
Of course, with digital projection coming down the pike, cinema will be getting more computer-like, but that's not necessarily a good thing. Lossy-compressed digital video at 1280x1024 (which is what DLP is still limited to) just doesn't measure up to what film can produce. Yeah, people will say film can get dirty or scratched, but I'd still prefer it over a digital system that has lower resolution and color range. I look at the same way I look at nicely typeset text on paper (the paper can get dirty or torn) vs. trying to read text at 100 ppi on a computer screen. There's no question which one is more high-tech, but which one produces better results?
Not to say that digital won't catch up to film eventually, but the demos I've seen make me wonder just what all the people who are hyping it up are smoking. It's still got a long way to go.
The film pauses in the gate for each frame. It's not moving by continuously.
The device that pulls the film into the gate in a start/stop motion is called an "intermittent". To see a visual explanation of how one works, click here, then click on the "videos" link at the very bottom of the page, then scroll down to "How an Intermittent Works" (it's an MPEG).
The shutter and the intermittent are timed together so that the shutter is closed during the period of time in which the film is actually moving. That way, each frame appears stationary when the light is actually shining through it onto the screen. The shutter can have multiple openings so that there will be two (or sometimes three) pulses of light while the frame is sitting in the gate. The timing just has to be set up so that the shutter is blocking the light while the film is moving.
Part of the regular maintenance of a film projector is to make sure the shutter timing is adjusted properly. Sometimes, if a theater has let the timing get a little off, you can see a slight amount of jumping or flicker, especially if you look at high-contrast areas of the picture. If there is a bright light somewhere in the picture, or a white title on a black background, that's usually a good place to check for shutter timing error.
Some projectors, like the "E" series from Kinoton have electronic stepper motors instead of mechanical intermittents to do the film pulldown. That, combined with electronic control over the shutter means the timing is basically never going to be off. (I wish more theaters used Kinoton projectors instead of crappy ones from Christie. Next time you see a poor film presentation, take a peek through the window into the booth and see what kind of projector they have. Most likely, it will be a Christie.)
What I said about film projectors with a 72Hz refresh is almost never true, though. Such projectors do exist, but the de-facto standard is to have a two-bladed shutter, so that the refresh rate is 48Hz. Chances are, when you go to the movies, you're seeing two pulses of light for each frame, not three. It would be nice if more theaters used three-bladed shutters, but oh well.
Haha! You actually said CRTs have *lasers* in them, and you say I'm a moron?
(Note: I was hoping for a +1 funny with my original comment, but I guess nobody can figure out I was being facetious. Yes, even though they really are just a 3D extension of the "floating clock" concept, these displays are actually a very clever idea. "Makes me yawn" was a joke.)
I think your predictions about 3D UIs are a little over-reaching. 3D interfaces have been around in research labs for years (using OpenGL images on 2D displays), and the big problem is not displaying the images, it's giving the user an easy way to manipulate the images in 3-space. (Your example of using the scroll wheel to represent depth sounds pretty clumsy, really.) The key to 3D UIs rests not with the display, but with the input device, and that's not an easy problem to solve at all. Just look at all the spiffy new 3D-gaming input devices that constantly fail to catch on. It's hard to build a workable 3D input device, and until someone does, volumetric displays will likely remain rather passive devices instead of interactive ones.
Another reason you don't see a flicker at the movies that while the frame rate is 24Hz, the refresh rate is usually 48Hz, sometimes 72Hz. The film projector has a two-bladed shutter (three-bladed in some projectors) that spins once per frame, so that there are two pulses of light (three for some projectors) for each frame.
Occasionally, I've seen some second-run theaters or art houses that have cheap projectors with single-bladed shutters (producing a refresh rate of 24Hz), and in those cases, the flicker is very, very annoying.
Also note that it seems to have become trendy in the last couple of years to photograph action scenes with a very high-speed shutter (such as in Gladiator and Saving Private Ryan). The frames are still spaced out at every 24th of a second, but for each of those frames, the shutter is only open for a very short time (maybe 1/500 sec.?). That reduces motion blur so that you can see objects a little more clearly, but it also makes all the frames seem somewhat disconnected from each other. Just look at those clumps of dirt that fly during the explosions in Private Ryan. You can see them neatly suspended in mid-air (as opposed to just a streak across the frame), but that lack of motion blur also makes it harder to follow them from frame to frame.
I'd like to see an actual 3D image with no glass case and no rotating display screen. Now that would be something. This just makes me yawn. A neat toy... big deal.
Not to mention Casper in 1995 and Stuart Little in 1999, two more movies with computer animated lead characters. George really has been out of touch, locked up in his ranch if he thinks he's the first person to do this.
On the other hand, that statement you quoted from the article is very carefully worded with qualifiers, such as "major" release, "lead" character, and the emphasis on live-action (neatly sidestepping Toy Story 1 & 2, Antz, and A Bug's Life). He seems to know he's not the first, and is just trying to make it sound like he is. He probably considers all other movies to not be "major" releases, thus ensuring that he is the FIRST! (in a "major" release).
Kinda reminds me of those car commercials where they say "IT"S GOT THE MOST HORSEPOWER (in its class)".
Privacy issues aside for the moment, the problem with URLs like that is they are so long I can't even see the end of them and know where they are going to take me. If I could just hover over the banner ad and see something simple like "www.mycompany.com", I'd know where it was going to take me, thus I'd be a lot more likely to click it.
It's got far less to do with whether or not people are hicks (most elected officials are totally clueless about technology, even in "non-hick" states), and a lot more to do with whether or not the elected officials in question are used to kowtowing to big business interests. Texas is pretty bad about that, but then again, show me a state that isn't. (Florida maybe, but only because old people tend to vote in greater numbers; Fla. kowtows to the AARP instead of big business.)
I don't think it's a conincidence that the first few states that have had the UCITA passed have big, established tech companies (not some Johnny-come-lately dot-coms) with powerful lobbies. There are probably some people behind the scenes who have planned out a strategy of first going after a few states with big tech lobbies such as VA and TX (in addition to Compaq and Dell, Texas also has lots of commercial software shops, including "id", as well as a bunch of telecom companies). Then, after they've gained some momentum, they'll quickly go after the big states like WA and CA. After that, the rest of the states will follow suit, because they don't want to get "left behind".
It's sad, but I see little anyone can do about it. Big business rules this country with an iron fist. Whatever they want, they get.
Slashdot Mirror
Ugh. We're never going to have a no-compromise digital audio system.
Or maybe it's because I modded up a post (not here, in another thread) that said something negative about michael. He doesn't seem to take criticism very well...
In fact, surround sound dates back to the 1950s, with the big-screen processes like Cinerama (7-channel sound), Todd-AO (6-channel sound), 35mm mag stripe (4-channel sound). It continued in the 70s and 80s with 35mm-to-70mm optical blow-ups, so that movies could be presented in the 70mm 6-track format. This lasted for a long time, with many movies (including the Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies) receiving 70mm 6-track presentations on their initial release. Then, finally, in the early-to-mid 1990s, today's digital sound processes started taking over, and now movies are 35mm-only, with 5.1 lossy-compressed digital sound.
Uh, did my responding to the previous post have anything to do with me getting bitchslapped?
Yeah, I'd like to know if that's the case, too.
Guess patents and copyrights are evil unless they somehow enhance Taco's movie/videogame fanboy-ism. Then they're okay.
Oh yeah, and anyone remember the Jurrasic Park 2 previews? Some theaters rigged up strobe lights to "enhance" the on-screen lightning flashes. Hello, prior art.
Unless of course the watermarking process destroys signal information, in which case there will be no way to recover it.
The point of the story is to be careful when issuing so-called "impossible" challenges. Don't leave loopholes in the rules!
When Goldman gleefully posted to the newsgroup that someone had accepted his challenge, he said "some people just don't understand information theory too well". Yeah, and some people just don't understand issuing challenges very well, either!
When you make a challenge like that you absolutely must be sure to word the rules carefully and try to avoid leaving any loopholes. In this case, all Goldman really needed to do was tack a sentence at the end of his original challenge saying "the data must actually be compressed according to the definition of 'compression' contained in this FAQ. Challengers who merely point out loopholes or exploits in the rules of the challenge will not be rewarded".
The moment Mr. Craig started iquiring about about the specifics of the rules and saying "wait and see" regarding his methods, that should have been a warning sign to Goldman that Craig had some trick up his sleeve. But no, Goldman was just so in love with the idea that he found some "impossible" task which suckers might try to undertake that he couldn't be bothered to think about such things.
What's even more embarassing to Goldman is his initial reaction to Craig's submission:
Even though Craig had already asked if more than one file was okay and Goldman had said yes!And Goldman's following point:
is even more ridiculous given that Goldman had already said that "sure" in response to Craig's question about multiple files whose "total file size" (which does not include directory entries) are less than the size of the original data file. Goldman tried to change the rules rather than admit he was sloppy in setting them up.Goldman also says "I think that I did not make a mistake", even though he admits in the same message that he needs to restate the rules:
"Perhaps"? How about "definitely"! And any "miscommunication" was entirely one-way. Craig was very sly and clever, and Goldman was too full of himself to realize what the fuck was going on until after the fact. A "pompus ass" indeed.The telecine no doubt performed a 3:2 pulldown.
According to this article, recording engineer Tony Faulkner was able to spot the watermark 75% of the time on his first chance at hearing it. What does that tell you? That this stupid watermark is going to be something you will hear on every DVD-A disc you buy! Doesn't that suck?! Well, the recording companies don't care ... they just want to stop those Napster punks from stealing their content -- quality be damned!
The pod race scene was an almost shot-for-shot ripoff of the chariot race from 1959's "Ben-Hur". Fun to watch, but hardly original.
Seriously, if the Great Linus didn't work at Transmeta, would anyone on /. even care about Crusoe?
Listen to the people who were involved when they talk about it. They actually seem to believe they were the first and only free speech "movement" in history.
And, as for those people who pushed to have freedom of speech written into the US Constitution in the late 1700s, who's heard of 'em?
Well no, I didn't mean to imply that triple-bladed shutters are some new thing that's taking over. There are a few high-end projectors that can be bought that have that feature, but the de-facto standard is still to just have two pulses of light for each frame, yielding a 48Hz refresh.
Of course, with digital projection coming down the pike, cinema will be getting more computer-like, but that's not necessarily a good thing. Lossy-compressed digital video at 1280x1024 (which is what DLP is still limited to) just doesn't measure up to what film can produce. Yeah, people will say film can get dirty or scratched, but I'd still prefer it over a digital system that has lower resolution and color range. I look at the same way I look at nicely typeset text on paper (the paper can get dirty or torn) vs. trying to read text at 100 ppi on a computer screen. There's no question which one is more high-tech, but which one produces better results?
Not to say that digital won't catch up to film eventually, but the demos I've seen make me wonder just what all the people who are hyping it up are smoking. It's still got a long way to go.
The device that pulls the film into the gate in a start/stop motion is called an "intermittent". To see a visual explanation of how one works, click here, then click on the "videos" link at the very bottom of the page, then scroll down to "How an Intermittent Works" (it's an MPEG).
The shutter and the intermittent are timed together so that the shutter is closed during the period of time in which the film is actually moving. That way, each frame appears stationary when the light is actually shining through it onto the screen. The shutter can have multiple openings so that there will be two (or sometimes three) pulses of light while the frame is sitting in the gate. The timing just has to be set up so that the shutter is blocking the light while the film is moving.
Part of the regular maintenance of a film projector is to make sure the shutter timing is adjusted properly. Sometimes, if a theater has let the timing get a little off, you can see a slight amount of jumping or flicker, especially if you look at high-contrast areas of the picture. If there is a bright light somewhere in the picture, or a white title on a black background, that's usually a good place to check for shutter timing error.
Some projectors, like the "E" series from Kinoton have electronic stepper motors instead of mechanical intermittents to do the film pulldown. That, combined with electronic control over the shutter means the timing is basically never going to be off. (I wish more theaters used Kinoton projectors instead of crappy ones from Christie. Next time you see a poor film presentation, take a peek through the window into the booth and see what kind of projector they have. Most likely, it will be a Christie.)
What I said about film projectors with a 72Hz refresh is almost never true, though. Such projectors do exist, but the de-facto standard is to have a two-bladed shutter, so that the refresh rate is 48Hz. Chances are, when you go to the movies, you're seeing two pulses of light for each frame, not three. It would be nice if more theaters used three-bladed shutters, but oh well.
I'm fairly certain that Jon Katz and others have been spewing the "new media" and "new journalism" blather in regards to /. for quite some time now.
(Note: I was hoping for a +1 funny with my original comment, but I guess nobody can figure out I was being facetious. Yes, even though they really are just a 3D extension of the "floating clock" concept, these displays are actually a very clever idea. "Makes me yawn" was a joke.)
I think your predictions about 3D UIs are a little over-reaching. 3D interfaces have been around in research labs for years (using OpenGL images on 2D displays), and the big problem is not displaying the images, it's giving the user an easy way to manipulate the images in 3-space. (Your example of using the scroll wheel to represent depth sounds pretty clumsy, really.) The key to 3D UIs rests not with the display, but with the input device, and that's not an easy problem to solve at all. Just look at all the spiffy new 3D-gaming input devices that constantly fail to catch on. It's hard to build a workable 3D input device, and until someone does, volumetric displays will likely remain rather passive devices instead of interactive ones.
Occasionally, I've seen some second-run theaters or art houses that have cheap projectors with single-bladed shutters (producing a refresh rate of 24Hz), and in those cases, the flicker is very, very annoying.
Also note that it seems to have become trendy in the last couple of years to photograph action scenes with a very high-speed shutter (such as in Gladiator and Saving Private Ryan). The frames are still spaced out at every 24th of a second, but for each of those frames, the shutter is only open for a very short time (maybe 1/500 sec.?). That reduces motion blur so that you can see objects a little more clearly, but it also makes all the frames seem somewhat disconnected from each other. Just look at those clumps of dirt that fly during the explosions in Private Ryan. You can see them neatly suspended in mid-air (as opposed to just a streak across the frame), but that lack of motion blur also makes it harder to follow them from frame to frame.
I'd like to see an actual 3D image with no glass case and no rotating display screen. Now that would be something. This just makes me yawn. A neat toy ... big deal.
On the other hand, that statement you quoted from the article is very carefully worded with qualifiers, such as "major" release, "lead" character, and the emphasis on live-action (neatly sidestepping Toy Story 1 & 2, Antz, and A Bug's Life). He seems to know he's not the first, and is just trying to make it sound like he is. He probably considers all other movies to not be "major" releases, thus ensuring that he is the FIRST! (in a "major" release).
Kinda reminds me of those car commercials where they say "IT"S GOT THE MOST HORSEPOWER (in its class)".
Privacy issues aside for the moment, the problem with URLs like that is they are so long I can't even see the end of them and know where they are going to take me. If I could just hover over the banner ad and see something simple like "www.mycompany.com", I'd know where it was going to take me, thus I'd be a lot more likely to click it.
I don't think it's a conincidence that the first few states that have had the UCITA passed have big, established tech companies (not some Johnny-come-lately dot-coms) with powerful lobbies. There are probably some people behind the scenes who have planned out a strategy of first going after a few states with big tech lobbies such as VA and TX (in addition to Compaq and Dell, Texas also has lots of commercial software shops, including "id", as well as a bunch of telecom companies). Then, after they've gained some momentum, they'll quickly go after the big states like WA and CA. After that, the rest of the states will follow suit, because they don't want to get "left behind".
It's sad, but I see little anyone can do about it. Big business rules this country with an iron fist. Whatever they want, they get.