Actually, just wanted to point out that really recent video cameras store their video on disks, so the GP might be right and might actually be recording very high quality video.
How would this be practical 10 years ago? Disk capacity, size, and price has only recently made this viable. It does not make him "right" about tapes being seen as hard drives, doesn't make him right that there aren't frequent problems with USB in video cameras, and doesn't make him right that standard DV cameras are poorly designed. They had to be designed with different technical constraints due to the technology available when DV was developed.
Additionally, very few hard drive cameras are high definition - and those standard definition ones that record to disk, do sacrifice quality, by using more compression to store on tape.
If it is a digital camera the transfer speed should be entirely irrelivent to the quality of the output. That it is possible to drop frames during a video transfer it implies that the video is being re-encoded as it transfers. With a camera design that badly screwed up, I would expect problems.
You don't seem to understand anything about current digital video cameras. The footage is stored on tape. The tape is played back at a contant speed. It is not a random-access device like a hard-drive. This does not mean it is being re-encoded. The computer is copying the digital information. However, because the tape runs at a constant speed, you can't just ask it to stop and wait for the computer to catch up.
In fact, you have it backwards. The "screwed up" camera designs are those which record to memory stick, hard drive, or optical disc. Those tend to compress the video to MPEG or MPEG-2 formats. Those formats are meant for presentation and playback of finished footage, not the raw capture of original footage. The DV format is much less lossy, and has a lower compression ratio than the MPEG formats. So, in order to tranfer from a memory stick as a USB mass-storage device, the quality is lowered, and you end up editing your original footage from a highly compressed display format. When you are using DV tape, you are getting much better quality and lower compression. But you can't use the tape like a hard drive - the computer needs to be able to control the camera, and have guaranteed bandwidth to capture the footage as it comes from the tape.
Your comments about "screwed up" design really show how much you don't know about the practicalities of using video footage, and how these cameras work. Cameras from nearly a decade ago manage to store high-quality video on cheap tapes, and capture them from Firewire. Meanwhile, more modern cameras that try to use flash memory and other forms of storage sacrifice quality for the sake of working over a USB connection. Consumers get screwed if they don't understand this.
A decade ago, the storge of flash memory, or of miniature hard-drives was not capable of storing high-quality video, but tape was. So, how do you suggest those cameras should have been designed? Are you saying that we should have gone without digital video for all these years? How would you have designed them?
It might be a good idea to learn something about what you are talking about before commenting. That you insist that capturing from a tape must mean that there is re-encoding involved, reveals just how ignorant you are.
The levels of elegant complexity in a well executed system are mind-boggling. Layer upon layer of systems simple and sleek on the outside, yet more complex than you can imagine on the inside.. all working in unison.
Oh, you mean the tubes? All you really need is a good plunger or robo-router to fix those. Preferably an alcoholic one.
Anyway having a camera's USB 2.0 interface not work correctly is the manufacturers fault, not the interfaces fault.
So what? It's still a problem in the real world, that isn't a problem with Firewire.
I also have hooked up many video cameras using the USB interface and they ALL worked just by plugging them in. To the OS's I use it just appeared as another removable hard disk, it was FAR from painful to get it working.
I suspect you might be talking about those crappy low-res videos stored on a memory stick, or otherwise you are lying. The video is stored on a digital video tape. The video tape does NOT work like a hard-drive. You have to play back the footage in real-time to get a proper copy. How exactly does that work if the camera is seen simply as a USB mass storage device?
If by "sucks" you mean takes a minimal amount of time more to copy the video off then you are correct. However if it only takes a minute or two longer to transfer the video using USB 2.0 people WON'T CARE or NOTICE
By "sucks" I mean that "USB streaming" reduces the quality of the video. If it takes any longer than real-time, then frames must dropped, which is a big no-no for video. Consumers aren't going to be happy with stuttering video, or lower quality.
Ok, I would bet 99% of users only have one device saturating the USB 2.0 interface at a time, so because it is shared is not a big hinderance. Most people hook up their iPod and transfer music to it or hook up their camera and transfer the video off of it, but rarely do they do anything else that is bandwidth intensive at the same time.
Again, you show your lack of understanding. Transferring stuff to an iPod is tranferring files - it doesn't have to be real-time, and can deal with interruptions. You don't have to saturate your connection to drop frames in DV transfer. A small interferance can screw the whole transfer process. Transferring full-quality DV footage is not the same as transferring files from a hard-drive or memory stick. You have to capture every frame at full resolution the moment it is played back over the connection.
You appear to be under the illusion that the crappy footage recorded in "memory stick mode" or one of those garbage MPEG-2 recording disc recorders is the same as real DV footage from a tape. Most people want to use the full quality that their video camera has to offer. USB compromises this.
Firewire is not bad, but it just does not have the market share that USB already has or the price advantage and that is why USB is the better choice and will win out in the end.
That does not make any sense. Why does market share make any difference to the functionality of something? Who would be so stupid as to choose something based on marketshare? It is also inaccurate. Firewire is on 100% of decent DV cameras, and on the majority of today's computers.
The price difference also does not make sense, as we are talking a few cents on some quite expensive equipment. It's not very smart to compromise quality or convenience to save a few cents. Far more money would be saved by eliminating legacy interfaces that are still common, and far more money is saved by reducing frustration and increasing productivity.
The idea of "winning out" is inane. Use the best tool for the job. It's not a competition.
What the hell are you going to connect your Digital Video camera to? You don't have to so a LOT of video stuff to appreciate Firewire, you just have to do ANY video work. Try getting a consumer video camera user to set up their camera with that "USB streaming" shit, and see how quickly they become frustrated. It often just fails to work, or at minimum, needs a bunch of stupid drivers. And even if you can get it working, the performance sucks. Most people would gladly pay more just for the convenience of being able to use Firewire and have their camera work properly with their computer. Most people's time is valuable - and the time spent fucking around with USB for video costs a lot more than a slight price difference - which is so minimal as to be laughable.
Also consider that USB is a shared interface - you don't want all your other USB gear interfering with high bandwidth tasks.
This is not hypothetical - I have helped many people with this conundrum, because stupidly, most consumer cameras today come with a Firewire port, but not a firewire cable. As soon as I tell them to buy a $5 firewire cable, or a $20 Firewire card, their frustration disappears, and is replaced with happiness and productivity.
The main difference between PAL and NTSC is that the PAL standard has more scan lines at the sacrifice of a lower frame rate
No shit. That would explain why video shot at a low frame rate but more lines than a single field of NTSC would convert better into PAL, right? Which was my point.
I also don't think one has to be a "nationalist bigot" to see how poorly NTSC performs in terms of color rendition (hence the misnomer "Never Twice the Same Color") compared to PAL. However, I am curious at the tone of your response, as I was not dissing NTSC - in fact, I was stating that NTSC was in fact a better format than the slow-scan TV, but the conversion is what fucked it up, not the NTSC format itself.
Well, I understand that scan conversion does degrade the image - but the writeup made it sound like the actual format of broadcast TV (in its native form) was worse than the low-res slow-scan stuff. If it were accurately written, the writeup would have talked about degradation during conversion - not converting into a "lower quality format" - when the actual format is actually of higher quality, even if the conversion does not use the full potential of the format.
There was also mention on the Honeysuckle site that the PAL converted video that was broadcast in Australia was higher quality than the NTSC stuff for America (no surprise there, of course.)
but some type of good, reliable system for distributing information when there is a clear and present danger would be immensely helpful to our country.
But it would just take up too much bandwidth. Every day you would get a message: "Bush remains President," "GOP fascists threaten USA with destruction," "Liberties being curtailed," "Oil Cartel takes over USA," "Dick Cheney goes hunting," etc.
The writeup makes it sound like the original tapes were of extra-high quality, kind of like an early version of high definition, that was converted to "lower" quality. However, the link states that:
The television camera taken to the lunar surface was a slow-scan black and white camera with a vertical resolution of 320 lines scanned at 10 frames per second. This camera was chosen because the available bandwidth from the Moon (700kHz) was not sufficient for a standard TV signal.
On Earth, the received slow scan signal was converted to a standard TV picture (in this case, the American standard of 525 lines and 30 frames per second) using specially built scan converters.
So, how is 10FPS with 320 lines of definition higher quality than 30FPS with 525 lines of definition? Not that having the originals isn't a good idea, but the writeup is very misleading.
Both Microsoft and Sony trying to push players playing -only- their format, will be left out in the cold and 3rd party "multisystem" player manufacturers will get most of the cake.
Why would they care? They aren't looking to make money selling players - they are looking to make money selling licenses (for their DRM and format) and content. This just means that these ridiculous formats are more likely to be adopted. So, they both win, and the consumer loses. Increasing adoption will only increase acceptance of the DRM tactics and proprietary lock-in, and make a real HD standard that much more unlikely.
A multi-format player would have to pay license fees to both HD-DVD and Blu-ray companies.
And the HD-DVD people made a nice, Open format and didn't try to shove it up anyone's ass? I don't think so. Pretty much every company involved in Bluray or HD-DVD shares some of the blame here. If it's all Sony's fault, then why are so many more companies supporting Bluray than HD-DVD?
Note: I fucking hate Sony, but it is totally unrealistic to think they are the only ones who want a locked-down format. Every movie studio and software company wants the same thing, and will co-operate with Sony or Microsoft to get it.
When I talk of mainstream I mean the average person that buys a computer for home or office use.
Many people do home video and photo editing at home. Many offices have publishing or media departments. Many people play games with intensive graphics at home. Almost every family has a digital camera or some sort of video camera.
Generally I would say that expensive graphics programs aren't maintstream.
They are if you are working with graphics, which is a pretty common thing these days. These activities are definitely in the mainstream of computer use. Look how many DVDs are being produced each year. Look at how many magazines there are on the shelves, and glossy corporate brochures and annual reports. We live in a graphic-intensive world.
I would think that games, web browsing and light "office" use is all that most people use.
This is often said, but how true is it really? I don't see many people who restrict their computing activities to just word processing and email. While other people use their machines for heavy-duty gaming and graphics, and almost never use a word processor. There is this assumption of superiority among many geeks that nobody else needs power. Perhaps that is part of the problem - many people don't do powerful tasks that they really want to do, because they have been sold systems not powerful enough, due to this assumption? We see with software like iMovie, that once average users are given the tools they need, they start doing things that were previously reserved for "power users."
There's a few programs that can take advantage of dual core, but from what I can tell they are all fairly specialist, not exactly mainstream.
I dunno about that. Most of the software I use is multiprocessor capable, and they are fairly mainstream - Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Music software, video compression software, CAD and 3D rendering software. Plus of course, the OS takes advantage of the multiple processors. It is very rare that I have less than three applications running at once.
Whether "Wii" is a good name or not is debatable. But "Revolution" is a terrible name. It's very 1990s, like a Pepsi "X-treme" advertisement. You'd have to be pretty dorky and unfashionable to find the name "Revolution" enticing.
Regardless of how popular the iPod is, I hardly think investing in any one tech company these days is "[not] taking any risk".
Absolutely. But my point was that people like this don;t want to accept ANY risk, and only reap rewards, despite being involved in an inherently risky activity. They don't want water to be wet.
Department Store A doesn't accept charge cards from other department stores. Slashdotters speculate that Department Stores B and C will sue for illegal monopolistic practices.
That is not an apt analogy. eBay are not the sellers - they are just offering the service, and taking a fee. It should be up to sellers how they complete their transaction. It's not at all like department-store credit cards. They could ban payment of eBay fees by various methods, but why should they restrict their customer's private transactions?
I very much doubt that this guy funded Apple when they needed it. He's more likely a recent joiner of the bandwagon that just wants a slice of Apple's profits without taking any risk.
Why the fixation with the iPod and costs? Because these people in the "financial industry" are extremely greedy men (and women). They want to make profits. And they want to make profits without innovating, creating anything, or providing anything of value. They just want to take a slice of other people's profits, and leech off the hard work of others.
When they see somebody being successful, they immediately want to own that success, and will bitch and cry until they get it. Even if they lacked the foresight to predict that success, or actively derided the now-successful entity. They still want in.
The point is that new technology will remove rights people are used to and enjoy.
Yes, I understand that. But if that was the point, then why say that analog copies are "crappy" and digital copies are "perfect"? When in reality, there are some great analog copies, and some shitty digital copies? It just distracts from making your point to make such incorrect generalizations.
The intrinsic right you're referring to is the right to do whatever you want without infringing upon others' rights,
And that is something most of the hardcore greedmongers don't support. They want to be able to do whatever they like to make money - and screw everybody else's rights.
Capitalism and the free market have driven most innovation.
Wouldn't it be the actual smart and creative people who do that? Capitalism is just an economic framework. It does not cause people to be smart or inventive. How about giving humans and inventors a little credit? Most innovative people I know do it out of passion and curiosity, not a desire for money.
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How would this be practical 10 years ago? Disk capacity, size, and price has only recently made this viable. It does not make him "right" about tapes being seen as hard drives, doesn't make him right that there aren't frequent problems with USB in video cameras, and doesn't make him right that standard DV cameras are poorly designed. They had to be designed with different technical constraints due to the technology available when DV was developed.
Additionally, very few hard drive cameras are high definition - and those standard definition ones that record to disk, do sacrifice quality, by using more compression to store on tape.
You don't seem to understand anything about current digital video cameras. The footage is stored on tape. The tape is played back at a contant speed. It is not a random-access device like a hard-drive. This does not mean it is being re-encoded. The computer is copying the digital information. However, because the tape runs at a constant speed, you can't just ask it to stop and wait for the computer to catch up.
In fact, you have it backwards. The "screwed up" camera designs are those which record to memory stick, hard drive, or optical disc. Those tend to compress the video to MPEG or MPEG-2 formats. Those formats are meant for presentation and playback of finished footage, not the raw capture of original footage. The DV format is much less lossy, and has a lower compression ratio than the MPEG formats. So, in order to tranfer from a memory stick as a USB mass-storage device, the quality is lowered, and you end up editing your original footage from a highly compressed display format. When you are using DV tape, you are getting much better quality and lower compression. But you can't use the tape like a hard drive - the computer needs to be able to control the camera, and have guaranteed bandwidth to capture the footage as it comes from the tape.
Your comments about "screwed up" design really show how much you don't know about the practicalities of using video footage, and how these cameras work. Cameras from nearly a decade ago manage to store high-quality video on cheap tapes, and capture them from Firewire. Meanwhile, more modern cameras that try to use flash memory and other forms of storage sacrifice quality for the sake of working over a USB connection. Consumers get screwed if they don't understand this.
A decade ago, the storge of flash memory, or of miniature hard-drives was not capable of storing high-quality video, but tape was. So, how do you suggest those cameras should have been designed? Are you saying that we should have gone without digital video for all these years? How would you have designed them?
It might be a good idea to learn something about what you are talking about before commenting. That you insist that capturing from a tape must mean that there is re-encoding involved, reveals just how ignorant you are.
Oh, you mean the tubes? All you really need is a good plunger or robo-router to fix those. Preferably an alcoholic one.
So what? It's still a problem in the real world, that isn't a problem with Firewire.
I also have hooked up many video cameras using the USB interface and they ALL worked just by plugging them in. To the OS's I use it just appeared as another removable hard disk, it was FAR from painful to get it working.
I suspect you might be talking about those crappy low-res videos stored on a memory stick, or otherwise you are lying. The video is stored on a digital video tape. The video tape does NOT work like a hard-drive. You have to play back the footage in real-time to get a proper copy. How exactly does that work if the camera is seen simply as a USB mass storage device?
If by "sucks" you mean takes a minimal amount of time more to copy the video off then you are correct. However if it only takes a minute or two longer to transfer the video using USB 2.0 people WON'T CARE or NOTICE
By "sucks" I mean that "USB streaming" reduces the quality of the video. If it takes any longer than real-time, then frames must dropped, which is a big no-no for video. Consumers aren't going to be happy with stuttering video, or lower quality.
Ok, I would bet 99% of users only have one device saturating the USB 2.0 interface at a time, so because it is shared is not a big hinderance. Most people hook up their iPod and transfer music to it or hook up their camera and transfer the video off of it, but rarely do they do anything else that is bandwidth intensive at the same time.
Again, you show your lack of understanding. Transferring stuff to an iPod is tranferring files - it doesn't have to be real-time, and can deal with interruptions. You don't have to saturate your connection to drop frames in DV transfer. A small interferance can screw the whole transfer process. Transferring full-quality DV footage is not the same as transferring files from a hard-drive or memory stick. You have to capture every frame at full resolution the moment it is played back over the connection.
You appear to be under the illusion that the crappy footage recorded in "memory stick mode" or one of those garbage MPEG-2 recording disc recorders is the same as real DV footage from a tape. Most people want to use the full quality that their video camera has to offer. USB compromises this.
Firewire is not bad, but it just does not have the market share that USB already has or the price advantage and that is why USB is the better choice and will win out in the end.
That does not make any sense. Why does market share make any difference to the functionality of something? Who would be so stupid as to choose something based on marketshare? It is also inaccurate. Firewire is on 100% of decent DV cameras, and on the majority of today's computers.
The price difference also does not make sense, as we are talking a few cents on some quite expensive equipment. It's not very smart to compromise quality or convenience to save a few cents. Far more money would be saved by eliminating legacy interfaces that are still common, and far more money is saved by reducing frustration and increasing productivity.
The idea of "winning out" is inane. Use the best tool for the job. It's not a competition.
Well then, good news! It's a suppository.
Also consider that USB is a shared interface - you don't want all your other USB gear interfering with high bandwidth tasks.
This is not hypothetical - I have helped many people with this conundrum, because stupidly, most consumer cameras today come with a Firewire port, but not a firewire cable. As soon as I tell them to buy a $5 firewire cable, or a $20 Firewire card, their frustration disappears, and is replaced with happiness and productivity.
No shit. That would explain why video shot at a low frame rate but more lines than a single field of NTSC would convert better into PAL, right? Which was my point.
I also don't think one has to be a "nationalist bigot" to see how poorly NTSC performs in terms of color rendition (hence the misnomer "Never Twice the Same Color") compared to PAL. However, I am curious at the tone of your response, as I was not dissing NTSC - in fact, I was stating that NTSC was in fact a better format than the slow-scan TV, but the conversion is what fucked it up, not the NTSC format itself.
There was also mention on the Honeysuckle site that the PAL converted video that was broadcast in Australia was higher quality than the NTSC stuff for America (no surprise there, of course.)
Of course you're not going to like it, if all you remember are the pimps and the chuds.
But it would just take up too much bandwidth. Every day you would get a message: "Bush remains President," "GOP fascists threaten USA with destruction," "Liberties being curtailed," "Oil Cartel takes over USA," "Dick Cheney goes hunting," etc.
So, how is 10FPS with 320 lines of definition higher quality than 30FPS with 525 lines of definition? Not that having the originals isn't a good idea, but the writeup is very misleading.
Yeah, and then you end up having your soul sucked out when you open the wrong box and find the Ark of the Covenant by mistake.
You got that right. I love my reel-to-reel/8-track tape/Laserdisc/Betamax/Magneto-Optical/5.25" floppy drive/gramophone. It has NuBus and everything!
Why would they care? They aren't looking to make money selling players - they are looking to make money selling licenses (for their DRM and format) and content. This just means that these ridiculous formats are more likely to be adopted. So, they both win, and the consumer loses. Increasing adoption will only increase acceptance of the DRM tactics and proprietary lock-in, and make a real HD standard that much more unlikely.
A multi-format player would have to pay license fees to both HD-DVD and Blu-ray companies.
Note: I fucking hate Sony, but it is totally unrealistic to think they are the only ones who want a locked-down format. Every movie studio and software company wants the same thing, and will co-operate with Sony or Microsoft to get it.
Many people do home video and photo editing at home. Many offices have publishing or media departments. Many people play games with intensive graphics at home. Almost every family has a digital camera or some sort of video camera.
Generally I would say that expensive graphics programs aren't maintstream.
They are if you are working with graphics, which is a pretty common thing these days. These activities are definitely in the mainstream of computer use. Look how many DVDs are being produced each year. Look at how many magazines there are on the shelves, and glossy corporate brochures and annual reports. We live in a graphic-intensive world.
I would think that games, web browsing and light "office" use is all that most people use.
This is often said, but how true is it really? I don't see many people who restrict their computing activities to just word processing and email. While other people use their machines for heavy-duty gaming and graphics, and almost never use a word processor. There is this assumption of superiority among many geeks that nobody else needs power. Perhaps that is part of the problem - many people don't do powerful tasks that they really want to do, because they have been sold systems not powerful enough, due to this assumption? We see with software like iMovie, that once average users are given the tools they need, they start doing things that were previously reserved for "power users."
I dunno about that. Most of the software I use is multiprocessor capable, and they are fairly mainstream - Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Music software, video compression software, CAD and 3D rendering software. Plus of course, the OS takes advantage of the multiple processors. It is very rare that I have less than three applications running at once.
"What is this - some kind of tube?" - Bob Dole
Whether "Wii" is a good name or not is debatable. But "Revolution" is a terrible name. It's very 1990s, like a Pepsi "X-treme" advertisement. You'd have to be pretty dorky and unfashionable to find the name "Revolution" enticing.
Absolutely. But my point was that people like this don;t want to accept ANY risk, and only reap rewards, despite being involved in an inherently risky activity. They don't want water to be wet.
That is not an apt analogy. eBay are not the sellers - they are just offering the service, and taking a fee. It should be up to sellers how they complete their transaction. It's not at all like department-store credit cards. They could ban payment of eBay fees by various methods, but why should they restrict their customer's private transactions?
I very much doubt that this guy funded Apple when they needed it. He's more likely a recent joiner of the bandwagon that just wants a slice of Apple's profits without taking any risk.
When they see somebody being successful, they immediately want to own that success, and will bitch and cry until they get it. Even if they lacked the foresight to predict that success, or actively derided the now-successful entity. They still want in.
Yes, I understand that. But if that was the point, then why say that analog copies are "crappy" and digital copies are "perfect"? When in reality, there are some great analog copies, and some shitty digital copies? It just distracts from making your point to make such incorrect generalizations.
And that is something most of the hardcore greedmongers don't support. They want to be able to do whatever they like to make money - and screw everybody else's rights.
Capitalism and the free market have driven most innovation.
Wouldn't it be the actual smart and creative people who do that? Capitalism is just an economic framework. It does not cause people to be smart or inventive. How about giving humans and inventors a little credit? Most innovative people I know do it out of passion and curiosity, not a desire for money.