Maybe a stupid question... by Tiger

Quote:
Originally posted by Tiger:
...but where are FireFly reviewers getting the pilot to review? Is EVERYBODY an insider at the show but me?

I was just thinking the same thing myself.

Shug

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Thursday, August 22, 2002 1:19 PM

Likes to mess with stuffs.

Quote:
Originally posted by Shuggie:
I was just thinking the same thing myself.

If you look hard enough, it's available on the net.

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Thursday, August 22, 2002 11:43 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Haken:
Quote:
Originally posted by Shuggie:
I was just thinking the same thing myself.

If you look hard enough, it's available on the net.

I looked. I looked very hard but didn't find it. I did find out that it's based on a workprint and the image/sound quality is poor. I think I'll wait for the broadcast.

Shug

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Friday, August 23, 2002 12:14 PM

Likes to mess with stuffs.

Yeah, the quality isn't the best, but I'm sure by the time Firefly hits the airwave, someone is going to have a good copy.

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Monday, September 9, 2002 8:02 AM

JAYNESGIRLFRIEND

Quote:
Originally posted by Shuggie:

I looked. I looked very hard but didn't find it. I did find out that it's based on a workprint and the image/sound quality is poor. I think I'll wait for the broadcast.

Shug

I looked very hard too. My shameless file sharing has thus far yielded only four minutes of actual footage, but I'm heartened by the fact that it is out there. Its just really well hidden. And that first four minutes rocked!

"L'il Lex is on his side, whimpering, shaking. I like him already." - Omar G, TWoP(Smallville)

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Monday, September 9, 2002 8:06 AM

TYMEN

Look on E-Donkey.

Mal: How come you didn't turn on me, Jayne?
Jayne: The money wasn't good enough.

Tymen

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Monday, September 9, 2002 8:52 AM

I've since been offered it on VCD but turned it down - because I'd rather wait for one with broadcast quality. Not long now...

Shug

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Monday, September 9, 2002 9:21 AM

JAYNESGIRLFRIEND

Pshaw! Waiting is for... patient people, of which I am not. I'm gonna jam with e-donkey and see what I can find. Thanks for the tip. Oh and speaking of stupid questions, whats VCD?

"L'il Lex is on his side, whimpering, shaking. I like him already." - Omar G, TWoP(Smallville)

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Monday, September 9, 2002 9:39 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Shuggie:
I've since been offered it on VCD but turned it down - because I'd rather wait for one with broadcast quality. Not long now...

Shug

I basically agree. Except I think I'd rather see "Serenity" before the other eps. I'd take it if I could find it.

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Monday, September 9, 2002 9:40 AM

TYMEN

Not a stupid question at all.

Video CD.

It can be played in certain DVD players.

Tymen

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Monday, September 9, 2002 9:40 AM

Likes to mess with stuffs.

VCD is Video CD, basically MPEG video on CD-ROM. The format is uniquely very popular in Asia and is probably the number one choice right now for exchanging video on CD until prices of DVD burners come down. Adding to its popularlity is that VCDs are playable on many DVD players.

One could download a video from the internet, re-encode it, and burn it to VCD to be viewed with your DVD/VCD player. And if you have a video capture card handy, you can pretty much make VCDs of your favorite TV show. It's actually a much better way to record shows than a VCR.

BTW, VCDs are about standard VHS quality. SVCD is SVHS quality.

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Monday, September 9, 2002 10:54 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:
I basically agree. Except I think I'd rather see "Serenity" before the other eps. I'd take it if I could find it.

I'd help if I could but when I say I was offered it on VCD, it was the physical discs. I hear it's available for download but I've never found it.

I know what you mean about seeing it first though. Now I'm all torn again.

Shug

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Monday, September 9, 2002 11:10 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Haken:
VCD is Video CD, basically MPEG video on CD-ROM. The format is uniquely very popular in Asia ...

Specifically, a lot of Asians own VCD players like this one:

http://www.globalsources.com/MAGAZINE/AV/0209/AVNP22.HTM

I think most of them use special codecs like DivX. I think you have to follow certain rules when burning a CD for it to be a "standard" VCD.

I suspect there are actually more VCD players in use then there are DVD players, even if you count western countries like the U.S. where VCDs are almost unknown. The nice thing is that anybody with a CD burner can make them, so in places like Hong Kong, you can get almost anything on a VCD. Of course, most of them are pirated...

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Monday, September 9, 2002 11:39 AM

Likes to mess with stuffs.

Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:
I think you have to follow certain rules when burning a CD for it to be a "standard" VCD.

Nowadays, most software will do the entire re-encoding and burn process for you if software like TMPGEnc and VirtualDub is beyond one's technical abilities.

Ahead Software's Nero Burn is one such software,

http://www.nero.com/en/index.html

and making a VCD is just as simple as making a Music CD. Simply drag and drop and the software does the rest.

As an alternative, I believe Roxio Easy CD Creator Delux/Professional will also do the same, though I haven't tried it out myself.

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Monday, September 9, 2002 12:02 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:
I think most of them use special codecs like DivX.

Technically then it wouldn't be a VCD, it'd be a DivX on CD. There are players that can play that though. Plus I think the X-Box can play wma format.

Quote:
I think you have to follow certain rules when burning a CD for it to be a "standard" VCD.

A standard VCD is an MPEG-1 at 1150kbps. It's either 352x288 at 25fps for PAL or 352x240 at 29.97fps for NTSC. Some players will let you vary from the standard and still play (say if you wanted a higher bitrate for better quality). Then it gets called XVCD - AFAIK there's no standard as such for XVCD.

Standard SVCD has a higher resolution (480x576 for PAL and 480x480 for NTSC) and uses MPEG-2. MPEG-2 is variable bitrate but you have to keep it under 2520kbps to be SVCD. Again there's XSVCD where you vary the resolution or bitrate outside the standard. My DVD player won't play XSVCDs for e.g.

Quote:
I suspect there are actually more VCD players in use then there are DVD players, even if you count western countries like the U.S. where VCDs are almost unknown. The nice thing is that anybody with a CD burner can make them, so in places like Hong Kong, you can get almost anything on a VCD. Of course, most of them are pirated...

Plus there are a lot of downloads in VCD and SVCD format MPEGs - although I think DivX is more common. Personally, if I were to download (which would be very naughty), I'd rather have something I can play on my TV than my PC monitor. Of course you can always re-encode.

Shug

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Monday, September 9, 2002 1:00 PM

Likes to mess with stuffs.

Quote:
Originally posted by Shuggie:
Of course you can always re-encode.

Except that when you decompress DivX and re-encode, chances are good that the re-encoded video will be highly pixelated or blocky. I've tried a few times to solve this problem with no luck.

By design, the data simply degrades as a result of the initial compression. Can't really rebuild something without all the pieces I guess.

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Tuesday, September 10, 2002 2:28 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Haken:
Except that when you decompress DivX and re-encode, chances are good that the re-encoded video will be highly pixelated or blocky. I've tried a few times to solve this problem with no luck.

Hmmm. Well going from one lossy compression format to another is never ideal. You should in theory be able to get similar results though. Do you re-encode directly or do you create an uncompressed AVI as an intermediary? It's going to take up an awful lot of discspace though.

Anyway - I would only re-encode if I had to.

Shug

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Tuesday, September 10, 2002 5:41 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Shuggie:

Hmmm. Well going from one lossy compression format to another is never ideal. You should in theory be able to get similar results though.

Incorrect. Converting from lossy to lossless formats doesn't restore the missing information. When you convert from one lossy format to another, you lose all the information discarded by both formats. Use a non-lossy intermediate won't change that.

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Tuesday, September 10, 2002 7:23 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:
Quote:
Originally posted by Shuggie:

Hmmm. Well going from one lossy compression format to another is never ideal. You should in theory be able to get similar results though.
Incorrect.

Weren't you the one who had a go a me for being this blunt?

Quote:
Converting from lossy to lossless formats doesn't restore the missing information.

I never said that it did. I said similar results not identical.

Quote:
When you convert from one lossy format to another, you lose all the information discarded by both formats.

Agreed.

Quote:
Use a non-lossy intermediate won't change that.

Here's where theory and practice seem to diverge. It shouldn't make any difference - but in the case of DivX, in my experience, it can.

Maybe there's a bug the DivX codec, or a bug in TMPGenc, or it's something to do with the fact that DivX is very CPU intensive[1] but when I've worked with DivX in the past I've had a lot of problems - sometimes with image quality, mostly with the encode failing for some reason.

Also - and to be fair I never mentioned this explicitly - there's usually some filters applied during re-encoding, even if only to resize. So there already can be an intermediary stage in the process. If so it's better to not re-apply lossy compression along the way.

The best thing is to try for yourself. As one of my colleagues is fond of saying -

Quote:
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they are not.

[1]yes I know that should only make it slower but TMPGenc does stuff with process priorities which may have an effect. I'm just speculating.

Shug
Who doesn't claim to be an expert but has done quite a bit of capturing, encoding and generally messing around with video formats.

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Tuesday, September 10, 2002 11:29 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Shuggie:
Weren't you the one who had a go a me for being this blunt?

Touche. I meant to say, "I think you're misinformed."

Quote:

Here's where theory and practice seem to diverge. It shouldn't make any difference - but in the case of DivX, in my experience, it can.

Well, either you're missing something, or you've achieved a fundamental breakthrough of some kind. I mean really fundamental -- this is like basic scientific law. In which case I will dine on crow -- at your Nobel Prize celebration!

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Wednesday, September 11, 2002 3:21 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:
Well, either you're missing something, or you've achieved a fundamental breakthrough of some kind. I mean really fundamental -- this is like basic scientific law. In which case I will dine on crow -- at your Nobel Prize celebration!

What I find insulting about this is that I've already explained that I know that decompression doesn't magically re-generate missing information. I know there's something else going on, I even speculated on 2 or 3 possibilities as to what it might be. But for some reason that I really can't fathom (I upset you in the past?) you chose to ignore that and make jokes at my expense.

Shug

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Wednesday, September 11, 2002 4:35 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Shuggie:

What I find insulting about this is that I've already explained that I know that decompression doesn't magically re-generate missing information. I know there's something else going on, I even speculated on 2 or 3 possibilities as to what it might be. But for some reason that I really can't fathom (I upset you in the past?) you chose to ignore that and make jokes at my expense.

I'm sorry if you thought I was making fun of you. But you keep insisting on something having happened that's scientifically impossible. Now, science can be wrong, but I'm not going to believe it's wrong just because you say it is. That's the only point I was trying to make.

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Wednesday, September 11, 2002 7:03 AM