Weird Video Tech Fact of the Day

Turns out Japan has their own all-in-one component cable. Uses a D connector, and seems to be referred to as a D-terminal, D-tanshi, and I've also heard D-link.

Sidenote: this is the same connector used on some Canon component breakout cables, like those for the XLH1. So if you need to plug component into D, it's just a straight cable - no active converter box needed, assuming the D input accepts the format you're sending it.

Digital Projection Gets Some Backing

Pro Video Coalition has got news that 5 major studios are willing to bankroll up to a billion dollars to help movie theater owners switch to digital project.

Beyond my immediate leap of joy is the hope that they actually do it, and do it well.

Digital projection is nothing short of amazing, and is the way every movie should be seen. In my view, the projection medium should have little or no effect on the actual content being projected - it should simply display the movie as it was meant to be seen by the director. No scratches, dust, sound pops - it should be the same every time, pristine and clear. I saw "Alien" in digital projection when it was re-released a while back; despite having seen that film multiple times, it was like watching a whole new movie.

While being much more into digital than film, I'm not one of those holding up the "FILM IS DEAD!!!" sign outside of Kodak. Film will always have its place as a tool of the trade - the rise of digital isn't about killing off film so much as providing a wider variety of tools to be used in realizing one's vision. But unless your vision is that your piece should visually deteriorate every time it's shown to an audience, film projection should be a thing of the past.

Copyright Calculator

(via Pro Video Coalition)

Not sure if you can use something in your work due to copyright? Try the Copyright Calculator!

Just keep in mind that, if asked by a judge, "the Copyright Calculator said it was OK!" probably won't fly as your only defense.

The Future of P2P

Great interview with Jon Newton of p2pnet.net, about where we are and where we're going with P2P technologies. He really hits it right on the head, quoting Bruce Scheiner: “Digital files cannot be made uncopyable any more than water can be made not wet.”

Full Interview Here

Also, I'm expecting an Eee PC 901 tomorrow, so look for some news on that soon.

My Take on the Presidential Debate of 9/26

And that take is solely to nitpick technical details of the over-the-air HD broadcasts. Notice I don't have CBS - CBS transmits on VHF, and I'm too lazy to extend the VHF antenna dealies on my antenna.

NBC:
I'm not a fan of this graphic. It's like a jumble of fonts and barely-fitting text. And the split-screen that has to protect 4:3 looks awful.

FOX:
It's louder than NBC, and also a few seconds delayed from NBC. Also sounds worse in general - I think maybe over-compressed. The graphic pisses me off less, but it kinda looks amateurish.

ABC:
Louder than NBC, not as crappy sounding as FOX, and not delayed like FOX. But lord, that graphic is so badly up-converted/cross-converted/something. Really, no HD Chyron? And it's only part of it - the animated logo in the lower right looks nice.


EDIT: Sorry, that comment about protecting 4:3 actually applies to all networks, since they all got the same camera feeds - I just threw it into NBC since I watched NBC first.

RED Scarlet Gets Overhauled

The RED people have announced that their forthcoming pocket-sized camera "Scarlet" will be entirely redone prior to actually shipping. So forget all the old renderings, like the one below - it's all going to change.


But in the words of Jim Jannard, "This will be like getting a second generation camera instead of a 1st generation. Actually, much bigger than that."

My apologies to every graduating DP who I've told "wait to buy a camera til Scarlet hits." Though actually, if this turns out to be cooler, then I apologize for nothing.

On second thought: I apologize for nothing, period. Get off my lawn.

Internet Audio and the Loudness Question

OK, again I'm posting a slightly-old link from back when I didn't have this damn blog, but this time I promise I'll extrapolate.  Anyway, last month Wired had an article about YouTube implementing an audio compression step into its processing of uploaded videos.  And I don't mean compression in terms of file-size; compression in the audio world is an effect used to reduce the dynamic range of the material, usually utilized to make it as loud as possible.  Listen to a record from 1980, then one from 1990, then one from right now.  Notice how they get progressively louder?  For the most part, we have compression to thank.  The peak volumes aren't getting higher; there's just less and less dynamic range.

Now, Wired's article is about how this compression made the audio sound terrible.  I don't care about that.  What I care about is the overall goal of this step: the standardization of audio levels for web-based media.

It's an interesting concept, and one that I've seen looming for a while (since I'm a sound guy at heart).  Film has standardized levels for mixing; so does television.  Music does, sort of - they mostly have the standard of "make it as loud as possible all the damn time."  Regardless, a basic standard.

Internet audio has none of that.  Bouncing around the web, we watch a music video (LOUD), a clip from a film (soft), and a clip somebody uploaded of their kid to YouTube (who knows).  The Internet inherently has a HUGE dynamic range, since so many content creators are throwing up media every second of ever day.  

And for the most part, this hasn't been a problem.  We're at our computers, within easy reach of a volume knob, so we just turn it up or down depending on the clip.  It's become second nature.

The first inkling of a problem comes with sites like YouTube.  On YouTube, you're not finding media every now and then; you're watching video after video after video.  Essentially, you've tuned in to a channel, in much the same way you would on TV.  So if the audio level is jumping LOUD-soft-LOUD-LOUD-silent-NOISY-LOUD, it can be somewhat disconcerting.  

So I can entirely see why YouTube would love to have a compression scheme to at least partially even out the drastic peaks and valleys.  But even then, you run into trouble.  YouTube is increasingly partnering with professional media producers (like Northwestern University), giving them incentives to post their content.  Thing is, a lot of this content is already professionally mixed.  And since some of it is professionally mixed BY ME, I get a little irksome at the concept of an additional processing step that's entirely out of my hands.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.  The Internet, in one way or another, is the media distribution mechanism of the future.  YouTube is on AppleTV, Netflix is coming to Xbox - there's more and more ways to watch web content on your livingroom TV.  But think about what that will mean, in a purely audio sense.  Can you imagine lunging for the volume control on your remote every 20, 10, 5 minutes?  That is NOT something we've been conditioned for, and it's going to be a nightmare.  

As Internet content becomes more and more available to livingrooms, the problem of non-standardized audio is going to become very noticeable, very fast.

But is there really a solution?  As much as I hate to say it, I think this will be a problem that has to be largely addressed by the content distributers, NOT the producers.  Take YouTube as an example: yes, users were all yelly about this compression thing, but can you imagine if YouTube sent all its users a standards document on audio levels?  And then refused to accept anything that didn't conform?

Yeah.  It'd never happen.

So the way I see it, it'll have to be the job of the distributers (YouTube, Hulu, etc.) to police and standardize audio levels.

That statement just scared me.  Being a professional sound designer, I'd hate to read that as part of a distribution policy.  SO - how about some sort of "conforms-to-standards" flag when you upload your media?  Say you're a trusted content producer: Hulu or whoever gives you the audio standards as well as an authentication key, which you use when uploading media.  This auth key lets you bypass the audio compression used on regular users, since you're a trusted "pro user."  Police it with spot-checks, like the FCC does with TV - suspend or revoke the "trusted" status if a breach of standards is found.

But really, I'm just throwing out ideas.  This is all speculation, as we really have yet to see how, and in what form, digital delivery of media from web to TV will happen.  But it's an environment where user-created content will have to live in harmony with media that's professionally authored, all in a way that won't piss off the average couch-dweller.

If nothing else - it'll be interesting.