You're missing two details: First of all, VHS isn't 240 lines of vertical resolution, it's 240 lines of horizontal resolution. Still frames (ie frames without motion) easily have more than 240 lines of vertical resolution, even on crappy VHS tape.
But the most important thing you're missing is that VHS is interlaced -- you have 60 different images per second in an interlaced format. If you dump to DivX at 30 frames per second you are effectively throwing away half the motion (you are halving the "framerate", to use computer terms). This is far worse than throwing away resolution if your source was live video, like a sitcom, sporting event, newscast, documentary produced for television, etc.
Do NOT DivX the video! VHS is 240 lines, per field. That's 60 different images per second. The people converting to MPEG-1 and DivX are forgetting this and butchering the footage (storing only one field halves motion quality).
MPEG-2 is not overkill for VHS... high bitrates are, but MPEG-2 is the only field-aware format that people actually use properly.
Besides, your average MPEG2, even at a medium bitrate, is overkill for old VHS material. We're not talking about anything more than 240 lines of resolution (on a good day), after all.
You are forgetting about fields. VHS is 240 lines, per field. That's 60 different images per second. The people converting to MPEG-1 and DivX are forgetting this and butchering the footage (storing only one field halves motion quality).
MPEG-2 is not overkill for VHS... high bitrates are, but MPEG-2 is the only field-aware format that people actually use properly.
why don't we discuss why people should use Procomm instead of Telemate for visiting BBS's.
Well, that would be silly... because everyone knows the best comm program is Qmodem!
Re:Double density floppy anyone?
on
High Density CDs
·
· Score: 1
I no longer limit myself to 800 MB divx files now that I have a DVD burner.
Yes -- please tell me that you've moved on to actual MPEG-2 files so that the DVDs you burn can actually be read in set-top players. Cross-compatibility... imagine that...
Actually Yamaha did it earlier with their "GDROM" format for Dreamcast. It stores more pits on the outer tracks, so you get about 1GB per disc. This is what all commercial Dreamcast games use, which makes it a pain (but not impossible) to rip and copy them.
"That having been said, it ground a GeForce 4 Ti to a halt."
Why wait for Doom III? Head on over to www.futuremark.com and download 3dmark 2003. You too can witness your video card being beaten to a bloody stump by pixel shaders.
You may be that old, but neither you nor anyone was ever that fast at typing. 300 baud = 300 bits per second = about 30 bytes per second (not forgetting overheard and stop bit) = 1800 characters a second. Words Per Minute is calculated by dividing the total number of characters by 5, so that comes out to 360 WPM, which is at least 120 WPM past the world record IIRC.
Just because your modem was slow doesn't mean it made you faster:)
You have to understand that these demos used timing tricks to do things like, say, displaying more than 256 colors in a 256-color mode. There are no emulators that work at the raster level in their VGA emulation, so demos don't look right on them.
As for a TV, these oldskool demos were mostly 320x200 or 320x240, so yes, your TV is fine for seeing them perfectly.
Actually, you have touched on the Great Demo Debate, which is what people have been arguing about for about a decade: What is the art of the demoscene? The code, or the design?
I am still astonished that people don't realize it is the *combination* of the two that is the artform.
Merely plugging an Amiga into a capture card is not the solution because they only have composite out, which is EVIL. Only the CD32 had native S-video output, but the CD32 can only be modded to an A1200. I am currently discussing with people to make mods to a converter for proper S-video output of any Amiga, so if we go in that direction you can be sure it will be of the highest quality.
I wanted to use WinUAE, and a while back I rendered some sample.AVIs which looked heavenly converted to MPEG-2. Unfortunately, there have been many many people writing me telling me that no emulator runs the majority of demos properly. I find that hard to believe, but they're the hardcore Amigans, not me... So yes, we will be capturing from a live A500 (and A1200, and A4000, and PPC... ugh)
I intentionally chose RealMedia because it has the widest playback platform support across OSes and CPUs. That, and I quite deliberately boycott DivX because it has done more to harm desktop video than help it.
I would not have a problem with a true, pure, MPEG-4 Simple Profile or Advanced Simple Profile video, but I refuse to wrap it in or encode it with DivX. I'll get to work on one and hopefully it will be available in a few hours.
"correctly get the output signal for the X14 demo"
Thank god someone noticed:-) This was very hard work as almost every method we tried (VGA TV output, scan converters, etc.) "interpreted" the 320x400 mode and the output was unusable. I eventually found a super-cheap scan converter that allowed me to turn off all filtering, and then I did some post-processing of my own to make it presentable.
There is currently no emulator, including MESS or bochs, or VMWare, that 100% emulates VGA at the scanline level. Try to get a demo running under an emulator and you will rarely have success.
Actually, you'll be happy to know that not only did Charles (it was daredevil, not tran, who rewrote the tracker) re-record the Amnesia music for me, it was using even more updated code and it was also done at 48KHz. The Amnesia music on the DVD, encoded as Dolby AC3 2.0, is easily the very best version of the Amnesia music you will ever hear.
If you watch the DJC tribute on the oldskool side, there is another 670 tune in there, previously unreleased, that was composed and played back using the same FM+Digi process.
We wanted to do this for a couple of reasons, but the two main ones were archival and convenience. PC demos ran at different rates on different hardware, and some demos didn't run 100% properly on ANY hardware except the coder's machine (and maybe the compo machine). So we went through the trouble of "getting them all right" once and for all. In fact, some demos were captured up to 9 different ways/combinations and the results were edited together, so the demo could be seen probably as the author intended and not how it actually ran on any one box. A few demos were even interpolated across the time domain using motion vectors (I computed motion vectors for each logical grouping of pixels and synthesized frames based on their motion), so some scenes actually run at the full 60Hz when they never did on the PC. The best example of this is Second Reality's end spaceship vector flyby scene -- the original runs at 35 FPS no matter how fast a machine you run it on, but on the DVD it "runs" at 60Hz. Run the two side-by-side and you can tell the difference.
Also, I disagree with seeing them on DVD -- they were impressive running on your Amiga, why wouldn't a video of them running on your Amiga be less impressive? It's still the same Amiga that's generating the video...
We had to get permission from everyone who had their content on the DVD, so we gave them some DVDs. Past that, we're trying to break even. If we make any profit, it will get folded into the next volume. For example, most people want Volume 2 to be Amiga demos. If Volume 1 makes a profit, it will be the production and mastering capital for volume 2.
Actually, we had to buy a DVD burner (a year ago they were $500), a dedicated computer with 240 Gigs of space for capture and editing (two-years-ago prices), a dedicated capture card that supported both PAL and NTSC 4:2:2 (Matrox RT2000, again two years ago)... THAT is what cost us the bucks. The hardware I had in my crawlspace:) and some of the other hardware was donated.
100MHz? Hell, I got by with a 12MHz 80286 with 2MB RAM running a copy of Coherent Unix 3.x in 1992. Linux wasn't really useable at that point, although it wouldn't have run on my 286 anyway. I had email working via UUCP and ftp working via an ftp-to-email gateway. Those were the days...
Slashdot Mirror
You're missing two details: First of all, VHS isn't 240 lines of vertical resolution, it's 240 lines of horizontal resolution. Still frames (ie frames without motion) easily have more than 240 lines of vertical resolution, even on crappy VHS tape.
But the most important thing you're missing is that VHS is interlaced -- you have 60 different images per second in an interlaced format. If you dump to DivX at 30 frames per second you are effectively throwing away half the motion (you are halving the "framerate", to use computer terms). This is far worse than throwing away resolution if your source was live video, like a sitcom, sporting event, newscast, documentary produced for television, etc.
Do NOT DivX the video! VHS is 240 lines, per field. That's 60 different images per second. The people converting to MPEG-1 and DivX are forgetting this and butchering the footage (storing only one field halves motion quality).
MPEG-2 is not overkill for VHS... high bitrates are, but MPEG-2 is the only field-aware format that people actually use properly.
Besides, your average MPEG2, even at a medium bitrate, is overkill for old VHS material. We're not talking about anything more than 240 lines of resolution (on a good day), after all.
You are forgetting about fields. VHS is 240 lines, per field. That's 60 different images per second. The people converting to MPEG-1 and DivX are forgetting this and butchering the footage (storing only one field halves motion quality).
MPEG-2 is not overkill for VHS... high bitrates are, but MPEG-2 is the only field-aware format that people actually use properly.
why don't we discuss why people should use Procomm instead of Telemate for visiting BBS's.
Well, that would be silly... because everyone knows the best comm program is Qmodem!
I no longer limit myself to 800 MB divx files now that I have a DVD burner.
Yes -- please tell me that you've moved on to actual MPEG-2 files so that the DVDs you burn can actually be read in set-top players. Cross-compatibility... imagine that...
Actually Yamaha did it earlier with their "GDROM" format for Dreamcast. It stores more pits on the outer tracks, so you get about 1GB per disc. This is what all commercial Dreamcast games use, which makes it a pain (but not impossible) to rip and copy them.
"BTW, every vi hacker should know that using :x saves keystrokes over :wq"
;-D
Yes, and using ZZ saves even more (no need to hit enter). Some VI hacker you are
"That having been said, it ground a GeForce 4 Ti to a halt."
Why wait for Doom III? Head on over to www.futuremark.com and download 3dmark 2003. You too can witness your video card being beaten to a bloody stump by pixel shaders.
You may be that old, but neither you nor anyone was ever that fast at typing. 300 baud = 300 bits per second = about 30 bytes per second (not forgetting overheard and stop bit) = 1800 characters a second. Words Per Minute is calculated by dividing the total number of characters by 5, so that comes out to 360 WPM, which is at least 120 WPM past the world record IIRC.
:)
Just because your modem was slow doesn't mean it made you faster
Ferraris, LOL! We're still trying to break even ;-)
You have to understand that these demos used timing tricks to do things like, say, displaying more than 256 colors in a 256-color mode. There are no emulators that work at the raster level in their VGA emulation, so demos don't look right on them.
As for a TV, these oldskool demos were mostly 320x200 or 320x240, so yes, your TV is fine for seeing them perfectly.
Actually, you have touched on the Great Demo Debate, which is what people have been arguing about for about a decade: What is the art of the demoscene? The code, or the design?
I am still astonished that people don't realize it is the *combination* of the two that is the artform.
Merely plugging an Amiga into a capture card is not the solution because they only have composite out, which is EVIL. Only the CD32 had native S-video output, but the CD32 can only be modded to an A1200. I am currently discussing with people to make mods to a converter for proper S-video output of any Amiga, so if we go in that direction you can be sure it will be of the highest quality.
.AVIs which looked heavenly converted to MPEG-2. Unfortunately, there have been many many people writing me telling me that no emulator runs the majority of demos properly. I find that hard to believe, but they're the hardcore Amigans, not me... So yes, we will be capturing from a live A500 (and A1200, and A4000, and PPC... ugh)
I wanted to use WinUAE, and a while back I rendered some sample
Actually, Atom / Sorcerers was on the list for a while, as that is my favorite Sorcerers production. Maybe a future volume...
I intentionally chose RealMedia because it has the widest playback platform support across OSes and CPUs. That, and I quite deliberately boycott DivX because it has done more to harm desktop video than help it.
I would not have a problem with a true, pure, MPEG-4 Simple Profile or Advanced Simple Profile video, but I refuse to wrap it in or encode it with DivX. I'll get to work on one and hopefully it will be available in a few hours.
"correctly get the output signal for the X14 demo"
:-) This was very hard work as almost every method we tried (VGA TV output, scan converters, etc.) "interpreted" the 320x400 mode and the output was unusable. I eventually found a super-cheap scan converter that allowed me to turn off all filtering, and then I did some post-processing of my own to make it presentable.
Thank god someone noticed
There is currently no emulator, including MESS or bochs, or VMWare, that 100% emulates VGA at the scanline level. Try to get a demo running under an emulator and you will rarely have success.
Actually, you'll be happy to know that not only did Charles (it was daredevil, not tran, who rewrote the tracker) re-record the Amnesia music for me, it was using even more updated code and it was also done at 48KHz. The Amnesia music on the DVD, encoded as Dolby AC3 2.0, is easily the very best version of the Amnesia music you will ever hear.
If you watch the DJC tribute on the oldskool side, there is another 670 tune in there, previously unreleased, that was composed and played back using the same FM+Digi process.
BTW, right now it is looking very good that Volume 2 will be Amiga.
We wanted to do this for a couple of reasons, but the two main ones were archival and convenience. PC demos ran at different rates on different hardware, and some demos didn't run 100% properly on ANY hardware except the coder's machine (and maybe the compo machine). So we went through the trouble of "getting them all right" once and for all. In fact, some demos were captured up to 9 different ways/combinations and the results were edited together, so the demo could be seen probably as the author intended and not how it actually ran on any one box. A few demos were even interpolated across the time domain using motion vectors (I computed motion vectors for each logical grouping of pixels and synthesized frames based on their motion), so some scenes actually run at the full 60Hz when they never did on the PC. The best example of this is Second Reality's end spaceship vector flyby scene -- the original runs at 35 FPS no matter how fast a machine you run it on, but on the DVD it "runs" at 60Hz. Run the two side-by-side and you can tell the difference.
Also, I disagree with seeing them on DVD -- they were impressive running on your Amiga, why wouldn't a video of them running on your Amiga be less impressive? It's still the same Amiga that's generating the video...
We had to get permission from everyone who had their content on the DVD, so we gave them some DVDs. Past that, we're trying to break even. If we make any profit, it will get folded into the next volume. For example, most people want Volume 2 to be Amiga demos. If Volume 1 makes a profit, it will be the production and mastering capital for volume 2.
Actually, we had to buy a DVD burner (a year ago they were $500), a dedicated computer with 240 Gigs of space for capture and editing (two-years-ago prices), a dedicated capture card that supported both PAL and NTSC 4:2:2 (Matrox RT2000, again two years ago)... THAT is what cost us the bucks. The hardware I had in my crawlspace :) and some of the other hardware was donated.
Guess what? Our next DVD will most likely be Amiga. So please pocket your Amiga advocacy, because the *entire* scene is worth viewing, thank you :-)
100MHz? Hell, I got by with a 12MHz 80286 with 2MB RAM running a copy of Coherent Unix 3.x in 1992. Linux wasn't really useable at that point, although it wouldn't have run on my 286 anyway. I had email working via UUCP and ftp working via an ftp-to-email gateway. Those were the days...
Considering that PDFs are perfectly text-searchable, this was wasted effort on your part. All you needed was the PDF.