Do you know anything about digital movies other than the fact that they have the magic buzzword "digital" associated with them? Do you know what the resolution is? What it should be? What the resolution of film is? What about the color range? How about the contrast range? You just heard the word "digital" and assumed it must be better, didn't you?
This is not about digital vs. analog. We all know about that, we all understand the advantages of digital over analog, and I am not arguing about that. This is about quality.
Hypothetically speaking, would you replace a high quality analog audio system with 1-bit/1-KHz digital sound? No? Well, the standards being proposed for digital cinema are almost that far out of whack. There needs to be more pixels, a bigger color range, a bigger contrast range, and no compression. I am not slamming digital movies becuase of some misguided notion of clinging to the past, or because I'm a technophobe, or because I'm a Luddite. I am slamming them because as they stand now, they do not have the same quality as film.
You know, ten years ago, I used to be able to go see movies projected in 70mm with six-channel analog sound.
Now we have 35mm-only, with 5-channel compressed digital sound.
Soon, we'll be moving to HDTV. Yes, that's right, HDTV. That's what Lucas is using for SW Ep. II. He's using a Sony HDTV camera that captures images at 1920x1080, cropped to about 1920x800 to form a widescreen 2.39:1 "scope" image. (Compare that with the resolution of 35mm film, which is equivalent to about 4000x3000 for an anamorphically squeezed "scope" image.) Add to that the fact that the color and contrast ranges of HDTV are smaller than that of film, and you've got a nice step down (yes, down) in picture quality.
Also note that the DLP projectors built by TI are only 1280x1024, so you won't even get to see the full HDTV image if you go see this movie in a theater with digital projection.
All told, this is yet another reduction in quality for theatrical presentations. What's there to be excited about?
Every time this discussion comes up, somebody brings up the fact that film invented in the 19th century, as though that were supposed to be a valid reason for getting rid of it. To that I say: so what?!
May I remined everybody that a computer is also a 19th century invention, but we haven't stopped using those. Charles Babbage designed the first programmable computer on paper in the 1800s. It was never built, but a modern computer is fundamentally the same machine.
And what about the wheel? That's a pre-historic invention, but I'm not going to take the wheels off my car anytime soon.
You know, if somebody came up to me and said "Hey, there's this great piece of technology that solves such-and-such problem, you should check it out", the first question out of my mouth is not going to be "What year was it invented?"
That's the lousiest reason I ever heard of for getting rid of a particular piece of technology.
No, we have a president, and his name is Bill Clinton. We just don't have a president-elect. There is a lag time of 75 days between the election and the inaguration, and we're only a couple of weeks into that. There is still plenty of time to settle the election before the winner has to take office.
And as a side note, all these jokes about the "Banana Republic of America" are missing something. There haven't been any riots. If this situation had existed in just about any other country in the world, there would have been riots by now. That is what separates America from a banana republic.
"No legal recourse"? If someone posted the numbers but nobody used them, maybe. But if someone started spending your money without your permission, that would be fraud, and you certainly would have legal recourse. The person who posted the numbers could be busted for facilitating a crime, or consipracy, or acting as an accomplice, etc.
My point, in case you missed it the first time, was that even rabid info-anarchists like Clarke get nervous about their own information "wanting to be free".
The disposable credit card numbers do not "effectively" solve the problem. You still have a permanent account number that, if made public, can allow someone to have a field day with your money.
You really think all information "wants to be free"? Fine. Gimme all your passwords. While you're at, it give me whatever information is necessary to drain your bank account.
Remember that Time Magazine article from last year that talked about Ian Clarke? They went through all the usual "information wants to be free" stuff, then the last paragraph of the article descibes him coming across a file called "Ian Clarke's credit card numbers". He checked to make sure that it was just a joke and didn't really contain his credit card numbers. Guess not all information wants to be free -- eh, Ian?
Note: For those of you too lazy to read the whole thing, the part I am talking about is on the second page of the aforementioned article.
Very good point. It does seem arbitrary. Sure, they could have used this method, but it could have been any pair of stars at any point in time. Why this particular pair? (Probably because that date fits with Egyptology's orthodoxical view of the historical timeline.)
The CBC model of parital public/private funding sounds pretty cool. Of course, in a sense, the American PBS is a bit like that already, since almost every program is preceeded by a "this is made possible by ". How does the CBC look when you're watching it? Do they have pledge drives? Are there commercials? Does it seem just like a regular TV channel?
Since when is Unix "friendly" in any sense of the word?
Far more important than Unix vs. Windows is commercial vs. non-commercial. Are these kids going to be stuck on MS developer mailing lists for life? Are they going to be constantly told how much better the tools they are using than those of MS's competitors, (or those of the FSF)? What's going to be the long-term effect on these kids? Is this education or advertising?
"Different from the usual Slashdot fare"? Yep.
on
Future Of Journalism
·
· Score: 2
Wow, this article is intelligent, well-written (or spoken, since it was originally a lecture), and balanced.
Yep, it certainly is different from the usual/. fare.
Okay, I was a little testy in my last message. Sorry about that.
First off, even if the filter is reversible, unless you know the exact parameters that were used when it was applied, you can't cleanly remove it. You might get something that's "good enough" using trial-and-error, but that would be a lot of trouble.
Secondly, for DVD production, edge enhancement is applied before compression. After the image is compressed, a lot of the data (the parts that an average viewer supposedly "wouldn't notice") is gone. Reconstructing the non-edge enhanced image would be further hindered by this fact, although I'm not sure how much of an effect it would have.
Lastly, the way edge enhancement is done for DVDs tends to destroy data in high-contrast parts of the image, making it irreversable, even if you know exactly what the algorithm and its parameters were. Any place where there is an "edge", defined as a sudden change from light to dark values, the algorithm exaggerates this change by making the light values lighter and the dark values darker. Unfortunately, this can lead to "clipping", where some of the variation in brightness is destroyed becase all the values in a part of the image were pegged against the maximum or minimum values.
Doing a guassian blur might help to smooth out the enhanced edges, but it would not eliminate them. It would, however, destroy a lot of information in the rest of the picture. Once the picture has been run through an edge enhancer, there's almost no way to make it look the way it did before.
Take a look at the recently released "Braveheart" disc. In some of the battle scenes, you can see shots where people's spears or swords are held up against the sky. Look closely and you'll notice a slight ringing around them. This is due to edge enhancement. The pixels containing sky that are right up against the edge of the spears have been lightened, which produces a bizzare-looking outline around the spear. It just looks awful, if you ask me. When are the DVD production houses going to learn that movies look better without performing edge enhancement?
"Awful photographing"? I thought he went to a lot of effort to frame things so that they looked like they did in the movie. He also has some nice lighting effects.
Is your idea of "good" photography for there to be no shadows and no planar focus?
I said: In some cases people did ask for new ballots, but were denied new ones.
An AC asked: proof? hearsay?
Well, I am mostly going by other posters who said they saw it on Larry King Live. Here is one such comment. I've been looking around for a more "official" reference, but so far have not found it. It may just be an unfounded rumor.
Edge enhancement cannot be cleanly undone. It leaves behind all sorts of artifacts that a gaussian smooth would not remove. Don't worry, I won't lambast you for "suggesting to run real-time image processing on vanilla hardware", but I will labast you for not knowing what the hell you are talking about.
Actually what you're probably seeing is "edge enhancement" -- a lame ass image processing technique that supposedly makes the image look sharper, but to my eyes looks like shit. It's really unnecessary, but I guess all those jackoffs who work in DVD production houses have convinced studios that it "needs" to be done on every disc. They gotta justify their existence somehow.
If you want to see just how good a disc looks without edge enhancement, try watching the 25th anniversary edition of "Jaws". It has a nice silky-smooth appearance -- no overly enhanced edges in sight. I wish every disc looked that good.
Moderators: I stated up front that this is totally off topic, so don't even bother modding me down (not that anyone is really trying to moderate this train wreck of an article...)
Dude, nice sig! I agree totally. Film rules, especially 70mm. BTW, did you hear about recently when the SMPTE committees on digital cinema were giving a Q&A session in L.A., and someone asked who was going to pay to convert theaters to digital projectors? Their response was, and I quote, "That's not our problem." Ha, ha! Those fucking glorified HDTV projectors cost 10 times as much as film projectors, and they wonder why nobody wants to pay for it? Brilliant.
Who cares if you can get INS approval quicker? That's not the reason why H1-Bs typically can't change jobs. The reason is that most H1-B workers are also applying for a green card, which is sponsored by their employer. Once the employer begins the green card process, they have the worker by the balls. They can freeze the salary, triple the workload, and do all sorts of other crap, and the employee just has to put up with it until the green card comes through. And the way the green card process works right now, the employer can (and will) stretch it out for a long time.
What's really needed is to streamline the green card process. Put a stop to the indentured servitude, give the workers green cards, and let them actually participate in this "free market" that I keep hearing about...
...but there's something that I can't describe about this leaving a funny taste in my mouth. It's probably just paranoia.
It's not paranoia, it's a legitimate concern. Parodies are considered fair use of copyrighted material. You don't need permission to do one. Distribution of these short films is already legal. Lucas doesn't need to sanction it. It needs to be emphasized that while it's nice to have Lucas's blessing, it is most definitely not required.
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This is not about digital vs. analog. We all know about that, we all understand the advantages of digital over analog, and I am not arguing about that. This is about quality.
Hypothetically speaking, would you replace a high quality analog audio system with 1-bit/1-KHz digital sound? No? Well, the standards being proposed for digital cinema are almost that far out of whack. There needs to be more pixels, a bigger color range, a bigger contrast range, and no compression. I am not slamming digital movies becuase of some misguided notion of clinging to the past, or because I'm a technophobe, or because I'm a Luddite. I am slamming them because as they stand now, they do not have the same quality as film.
Now we have 35mm-only, with 5-channel compressed digital sound.
Soon, we'll be moving to HDTV. Yes, that's right, HDTV. That's what Lucas is using for SW Ep. II. He's using a Sony HDTV camera that captures images at 1920x1080, cropped to about 1920x800 to form a widescreen 2.39:1 "scope" image. (Compare that with the resolution of 35mm film, which is equivalent to about 4000x3000 for an anamorphically squeezed "scope" image.) Add to that the fact that the color and contrast ranges of HDTV are smaller than that of film, and you've got a nice step down (yes, down) in picture quality.
Also note that the DLP projectors built by TI are only 1280x1024, so you won't even get to see the full HDTV image if you go see this movie in a theater with digital projection.
All told, this is yet another reduction in quality for theatrical presentations. What's there to be excited about?
May I remined everybody that a computer is also a 19th century invention, but we haven't stopped using those. Charles Babbage designed the first programmable computer on paper in the 1800s. It was never built, but a modern computer is fundamentally the same machine.
And what about the wheel? That's a pre-historic invention, but I'm not going to take the wheels off my car anytime soon.
You know, if somebody came up to me and said "Hey, there's this great piece of technology that solves such-and-such problem, you should check it out", the first question out of my mouth is not going to be "What year was it invented?"
That's the lousiest reason I ever heard of for getting rid of a particular piece of technology.
No, we have a president, and his name is Bill Clinton. We just don't have a president-elect. There is a lag time of 75 days between the election and the inaguration, and we're only a couple of weeks into that. There is still plenty of time to settle the election before the winner has to take office.
And as a side note, all these jokes about the "Banana Republic of America" are missing something. There haven't been any riots. If this situation had existed in just about any other country in the world, there would have been riots by now. That is what separates America from a banana republic.
"No legal recourse"? If someone posted the numbers but nobody used them, maybe. But if someone started spending your money without your permission, that would be fraud, and you certainly would have legal recourse. The person who posted the numbers could be busted for facilitating a crime, or consipracy, or acting as an accomplice, etc.
My point, in case you missed it the first time, was that even rabid info-anarchists like Clarke get nervous about their own information "wanting to be free".
The disposable credit card numbers do not "effectively" solve the problem. You still have a permanent account number that, if made public, can allow someone to have a field day with your money.
You really think all information "wants to be free"? Fine. Gimme all your passwords. While you're at, it give me whatever information is necessary to drain your bank account.
Note: For those of you too lazy to read the whole thing, the part I am talking about is on the second page of the aforementioned article.
Fortunately, the APL symbols are included in Unicode! Starting with the I-beam at hex 0x2336. The code charts are here.
Very good point. It does seem arbitrary. Sure, they could have used this method, but it could have been any pair of stars at any point in time. Why this particular pair? (Probably because that date fits with Egyptology's orthodoxical view of the historical timeline.)
Weren't you paying attention? Their instrument package was destroyed in the crash.
The CBC model of parital public/private funding sounds pretty cool. Of course, in a sense, the American PBS is a bit like that already, since almost every program is preceeded by a "this is made possible by ". How does the CBC look when you're watching it? Do they have pledge drives? Are there commercials? Does it seem just like a regular TV channel?
Far more important than Unix vs. Windows is commercial vs. non-commercial. Are these kids going to be stuck on MS developer mailing lists for life? Are they going to be constantly told how much better the tools they are using than those of MS's competitors, (or those of the FSF)? What's going to be the long-term effect on these kids? Is this education or advertising?
Yep, it certainly is different from the usual /. fare.
(Go ahead, mod me down. See if I care.)
First off, even if the filter is reversible, unless you know the exact parameters that were used when it was applied, you can't cleanly remove it. You might get something that's "good enough" using trial-and-error, but that would be a lot of trouble.
Secondly, for DVD production, edge enhancement is applied before compression. After the image is compressed, a lot of the data (the parts that an average viewer supposedly "wouldn't notice") is gone. Reconstructing the non-edge enhanced image would be further hindered by this fact, although I'm not sure how much of an effect it would have.
Lastly, the way edge enhancement is done for DVDs tends to destroy data in high-contrast parts of the image, making it irreversable, even if you know exactly what the algorithm and its parameters were. Any place where there is an "edge", defined as a sudden change from light to dark values, the algorithm exaggerates this change by making the light values lighter and the dark values darker. Unfortunately, this can lead to "clipping", where some of the variation in brightness is destroyed becase all the values in a part of the image were pegged against the maximum or minimum values.
Doing a guassian blur might help to smooth out the enhanced edges, but it would not eliminate them. It would, however, destroy a lot of information in the rest of the picture. Once the picture has been run through an edge enhancer, there's almost no way to make it look the way it did before.
Take a look at the recently released "Braveheart" disc. In some of the battle scenes, you can see shots where people's spears or swords are held up against the sky. Look closely and you'll notice a slight ringing around them. This is due to edge enhancement. The pixels containing sky that are right up against the edge of the spears have been lightened, which produces a bizzare-looking outline around the spear. It just looks awful, if you ask me. When are the DVD production houses going to learn that movies look better without performing edge enhancement?
Is your idea of "good" photography for there to be no shadows and no planar focus?
An AC asked: proof? hearsay?
Well, I am mostly going by other posters who said they saw it on Larry King Live. Here is one such comment. I've been looking around for a more "official" reference, but so far have not found it. It may just be an unfounded rumor.
Edge enhancement cannot be cleanly undone. It leaves behind all sorts of artifacts that a gaussian smooth would not remove. Don't worry, I won't lambast you for "suggesting to run real-time image processing on vanilla hardware", but I will labast you for not knowing what the hell you are talking about.
In some cases people did ask for new ballots, but were denied new ones.
Imagine there's no intellectual property
It's easy if you try
No RIAA hovering over us
etc.
I'm too tired to write the rest.
If you want to see just how good a disc looks without edge enhancement, try watching the 25th anniversary edition of "Jaws". It has a nice silky-smooth appearance -- no overly enhanced edges in sight. I wish every disc looked that good.
Dude, nice sig! I agree totally. Film rules, especially 70mm. BTW, did you hear about recently when the SMPTE committees on digital cinema were giving a Q&A session in L.A., and someone asked who was going to pay to convert theaters to digital projectors? Their response was, and I quote, "That's not our problem." Ha, ha! Those fucking glorified HDTV projectors cost 10 times as much as film projectors, and they wonder why nobody wants to pay for it? Brilliant.
Bullshit. It's not an "urban legend", it is a documented fact.
What's really needed is to streamline the green card process. Put a stop to the indentured servitude, give the workers green cards, and let them actually participate in this "free market" that I keep hearing about...
It's not paranoia, it's a legitimate concern. Parodies are considered fair use of copyrighted material. You don't need permission to do one. Distribution of these short films is already legal. Lucas doesn't need to sanction it. It needs to be emphasized that while it's nice to have Lucas's blessing, it is most definitely not required.