pragmatic use of DVD format with iTunes

Usually I've only converted DVDs a few at a time to work inside iTunes, so it was my recent short blitz of about 30 DVDs that made me take a little more notice of the format.

My pragmatic view is that it is still 'good enough' for many movies, even though there's increasing HD streaming and the declining Bluray as alternatives.

Traditional European PAL standard television has 625 lines of which 575 are used to make the actual picture, with the rest for controls and suchlike. The Americans use NTSC which uses 525 lines of which 483 are used to make the picture.

As a consequence, PAL DVDs are usually either 576 or 540 lines in their source definition. The normal width is 720 pixels, making a total pixel count of around 400,000 or 0.4megapixels.

In practice, the width is often stretched to make the wide-screen formats which mostly show up on television as 16:9. The original widescreen movie formats with 35mm film stock use anamorphic lenses to compress the image widthways and then have it stretched back out when projected in a cinema. See the squashed looking car below...

Otherwise, only a small part of the film frame would be used when making the movie.

Television/computer playback uses a similar trick, stretching letterbox and widescreen formats so that they look right on replay.

That's how systems like Panavision worked and the technique persists to this day, although increasingly with digital filming, the sensor ratios can be adjusted for the format.

It also means that home entertainment systems have to handle upscaling from the standard definition format, so that the picture isn't just a small rectangle in the middle of the screen.

Ever since the old cathode ray tubes gave way to flat panels, the number of available pixels (lines and columns) has been increasing. The commonest 1080p HD format has, yes, 1080 lines instead of 575. Blu-ray goes to 1920 across × 1080 lines of pixels. The newer 4k is 3840 x 2160 (8 megapixels) and 8k is 7680 × 4320 (33.2 megapixels). Naturally, as the pixels increase, so does the replay bandwidth requirement.

Confusingly, digital cinemas have either 2K cinema screens (2048×1080 or 2.2 megapixels) or 4K cinema (4096×2160 or 8.8 megapixels). And IMAX? It's often a projection of 70mm film although they are also using doubled up 2k projectors nowadays.

Whew.

So back to my conversion of DVDs. Tradeoff of content, quality and convenience.

I'll simply preserve the original quality of the DVD. That means the maximum I can squeeze out of the DVD is 720x576. With anamorphic conversion this goes up to generally a maximum of 1080 across. The rest becomes a function of the upscaling available on the playback equipment. 15 minutes to convert, auto-catalogue with MetaZ, adding the 1.3Gb image size with 5.1 sound to iTunes.

And you know what? For practical day-to-day viewing at normal distances, the DVD quality still seems fine as a tradeoff between quality and convenience. Wanna see that old favourite movie again? Yes, it's here and right now.

Of course I'll still watch movies in higher definition from streaming or occasional Bluray (weird that it auto-corrects to blurry?) and I'll sometimes notice the difference for the first few minutes. Then the story kicks in and with a few exceptions, the technical wizardry isn't as significant.

sign

I see that the woodpecker and weasel combo now have their own commemorative sign in Hornchurch Park. I hear they may be starting an airline.

A typewriter in the House of Cards

It took me a while to get into the third series of House of Cards. Somewhat at odds with the first series, which I watched almost over a weekend.

I think it was the 'Doug Stamper' story which slowed me down. Compared with many events in the show, it was a rather slow burn story dominating the start of the series.

By about the third episode, things had picked up and there's a great pre-roll sequence when the Russian President 'Viktor Petrov' visits Washington. And if V.P. isn't Putin, then at least the two Pussy Riot members play as themselves later in the episode.

We still get the asides from Kevin Spacey, doing a great job as an increasingly unlikeable President. And we're into the 2016 election run-up, so there's a kind of faux-topicality to the various shenanigans.

I'm missing some of the more Shakespearian moves in this series though. Underwood can still push people under the bus (so to speak), but some of the better plotting seems to be occurring offshore.

And President Frank has still managed a scene with his Underwood typewriter whilst retaining a Chief of Staff called Remy (Remington). [CR] [LF]

cross referencing the 'top 250' movies

A bit of fun with movies.

After I added my recent DVD acquisitions to iTunes, I thought it would be interesting to see if there were any obvious gaps in 'popular' coverage, based on films I've seen rather than ones that I own.

The IMDb database is a good starting point which, whilst it may have a populist and perhaps slightly American bias, still gives a useful list of a top 250 movies 'of all time'.

They've used a Bayesian weighted voting formula of their regular voters to create this top 250, as follows:

weighted rating (WR) = (v ÷ (v+m)) × R + (m ÷ (v+m)) × C

Where:

R = average for the movie (mean) = (Rating)
v = number of votes for the movie = (votes)
m = minimum votes required to be listed in the Top 250 (currently 25000)
C = the mean vote across the whole report (currently 7.0)

I guess it is based upon access to movies rather than a fully critical viewing and The Shawshank Redemption in the number 1 spot might have been aided by it being given away free as a DVD in various publications.

It's not close to my personal ranking (e.g. it has The Good, The Bad and the Ugly in the top few), but it's still a useful starting point to check for obvious gaps in what I've seen.

As well as the ranking uncertainties, there's only a few foreign language movies in the list, which might skew the European variations. To get a flavour, the top few movies are as follows:


Weirdly, when I recently snapped some DVDs to illustrate a post, three of the randomly included movies were The Godfather trilogy, Pulp Fiction and The Black Knight. Another one visible is the Swedish version of 'Let the Right One In', so I can honestly say it was pure co-incidence that I hit 4 of the top 5.

I regard this ever-evolving Top 250 list as a light guide more than anything.

There's a few films with colons in their titles (franchises) and the recent Whiplash, Boyhood and Kingsman are already tripping their way into the chart. There's also some classics like Casablanca, 12 Angry Men, City Lights and Vertigo, a few British crime movies like Snatch but, for example, no Ealing comedies.

I copied the Top 250 into a spreadsheet, to look for any obvious gaps in my own viewing. But I don't think I'll be attempting my own alternative selection...

springing out of the pub

"Do you mind if we stand outside?"

We'd been in a pub after the last meeting of the day. It was still early and I'd had a couple of small drinks with colleagues, before we split up for the rest of the afternoon.

A month or so ago everyone would still be huddled inside unless in need of a cigarette. Now we're in the early stages of people preferring to be outside.

"Is that your coat?" I was asked as we sauntered into the sunlight.

"No coat today."

I'd packed an umbrella but my suit was sufficient for the meetings around town. Worst case would be the need for a taxi, although walking and the tube worked just fine.

bottom gear

I've been watching the situation around that alleged fracas caused by the television presenter who reportedly used extensive vitriolic language and blows with his producer over no steaks in the hotel restaurant at 9.30pm.

Hundreds of thousands seem to be rallying around the presenter, although I disagree.

Like others who get a certain leverage from their position, he is now living on the power he has been gifted on behalf of the rest of us. He enjoys a privileged role as clown entertainer and has used it to make comments that in most organisational settings would be considered inappropriate.

There's plenty of lower level cheap shots too about slowing down to 70 mph on a motorway to pick up a bus wifi signal, of aiming vehicles at cyclists as well as the oft-quoted examples about lorry drivers, Mexicans and other nationalities.

I don't see it as clever, more as bullying. An apparently untouchable and disagreeable dinosaur who happens to be able to drive fast cars around a track and make their tyres smoke.

Apparently he doesn't work directly on the BBC payroll, having his own sage special arrangement which also includes profit sharing of the syndication rights. Nice work if you can get it although I assume he's found an advantage to moving elsewhere in any case.

There's a couple of other presenters in the show who emulate the behaviour in a toned-down sort of manner, so long as they kowtow to their leader. It's all very smug and elitist in a blokey sort of way. "Shall we race the Ferrari against the McLaren and the Porsche?"/"Let's do something stupid with normal cars to show how pathetic they are compared to a Bugatti Veyron". Even the one who makes other television programmes about toys has owned a plane with a cockily personalised registration, so they are all doing okay, thank you very much.

The whole programme is shot in lovely supersaturated colours with cracking soundtracks. The production values make all of it look like a scene from Hollywood, rather than a rainy airstrip. Maybe the bullied producer has something to do with making it look good as well as fetching the sandwiches?

Some people are saying that the lead presenter has made the show what it is. That's a great reason to ask him and perhaps the rest of the presentation team to step aside. Let some different folk take over and reboot what has become a tired and repetitive format.

inventing Southminster to become a new site for Parliament?

Commons Speaker John Bercow said that it will cost around £3bn to renovate The Houses of Parliament.

Cameron recently commented in a TV show about his liking for the current format and not wanting to change it. Of course. It plays to his strengths having an adversarial boys' playground layout for the Commons.

There's much that can be improved. Here's a few easy starter thoughts:

- enough space for everyone to be seated;
- a more circular format, focused towards the speaker/chair;
- enough rooms for all MPs to have a similarly configured private office space;
- sensible modern meeting facilities including flexible configurations;
- modern electronic communications including social and video systems;
- electronic voting instead of the time wasting Aye and No lobbies;
- a more well-structured layout than the current rabbit warren of 1,100 rooms;

I'm sure there's more, but that will do for now.

So then what?

How about moving it to something more suitable?

Keep the current building with its towers and clock and have it progressively turned into something else. They did it with County Hall on the South Bank, which is now a fancy hotel.

Whoever takes it over could keep the shell and be required to keep some sections for State occasions. The rest could be reconfigured into a mix of museum, hotel, apartments or similar.

Why do this?

Value for money. Keep the heritage. Move the function to something more appropriate.

Ten minutes away on the tube, The Shard on the South Bank is 74 stories high, with a huge hotel part way up. It was built in about 4 years (2010-2014) and is completely modern including even the latest American aircraft proofing measures. All in, The Shard cost £1.2bn to build - which is less than half the cost of the renovation of The Palace of Westminster.

A site close to Westminster could be found. There's still plenty of brownfield along the South Bank, which could become known as Southminster and is only a few minutes from the current location. The Americans are already building their new embassy there.

It seems odd to me that we'd spend all that money on reconstructing a building which recreates a Parliamentary system stuck with practices from 1847.

Of course, my suggestion has already been quietly ruled out.

ducking and diving before heading to the dark blue squares

A couple of days of meetings around town, ducking through short cut alleyways between venues.

I'd arranged to meet one small group ahead of a session with a financial institution.

"That'll be around the City somewhere?" I asked.

"Er no. It's a fund manager. Forget the City, think Mayfair."

So next I'll be heading further west, to the most expensive Monopoly board squares.

okay, i've finally posted a cat...

charging past the daily limit but not on my watch

That new watch is about to hit the shelves although I can't help wondering how long this version will be around?

I assume it will be on a quick refresh cycle to be faster, slimmer and with lower power use?

Maybe in a year there will be a 24 hour version after the consumer feedback from the first one?

The apparent need for an 18 hour recharge may just be a wind-up?. A watch that lasts less than a day? It goes to sleep instead of monitoring it? Or maybe the answer is to have two watches so that one can be on the charger whilst the other is in use?

I'm wondering what battery technology is being used?

If lithium polymer, we might expect that effect where the battery starts to lose capacity after 200 to 300 charge cycles. The battery university test of eleven such batteries from smartphones shows a 15%-25% battery capacity reduction after 250 charges - that's about nine months and would show a duration reduction to about 15 hours. Now if the watch (my suggested next version) started at, say, 30 hours then it's less of a problem. I suppose, as they say, time will tell.

The next thing I'll want to see is inductive charging, where the various devices like iPhones, watches similar products can be dropped onto a pad, rather than plugged in to be recharged. Presumably all the iOS products will be getting this soon, although I suppose it might require some plastic/ceramics/glass for the case?

i see that even movies get the dress treatment

Some movie video trivia today - sparked by that colourful dress meme that flickered around the internet.

Whilst uploading a bunch of DVDs to iTunes, I accidentally re-encoded an original DVD of The Matrix, from 1999. I noticed that the colour on it was quite different from the one I'd previously loaded - which has a green wash across it.

The newer studio encode kind of misses the point that the original green hue was supposed to be visible only on the bits inside the Matrix as if it was being viewed through a Cathode Ray Tube. And blue for Zion and red for inside the machine. RGB, eh?

Time for a quick Google. It turns out that the studio recut the master to make it look more like the second and third Matrix movies by adding a green hue across the whole movie. To make the box set consistent.

It raises a wider point about the re-mastering that occurs nowadays. It's already obvious that some so-called HD shows on Sky look like upscaled SD and that seems to apply to some of the Blu-rays too, which don't seem to have been cut from particularly high quality source. Equally, some SD DVDs have that extra layering of detail suggesting a very high quality source. I even saw an arabic subtitled Casablanca in colour once, when I was staying in a hotel in Egypt. All that noir lighting gets squandered in the remix. I suppose it illustrates the tinkering that is now possible and the ways that an old movie can be dramatically re-purposed. No wonder there's so many Special Editions/ Extra Footage/ Director's Cuts around.

I usually encode DVDs at their original resolution and keep my limited number of BluRays as discs. The DVDs work out around 1.5Gb, whereas a BluRay might be about 10+Gb, for sometimes a marginal improvement in viewing at normal television distances.

The video extracts of the Matrix above was uploaded by sdude1871 who'd already spotted the weird discrepancies, and decided to do an interesting comparison.

Like that dress thing, I suppose it's in the eye of the beholder.

OM-D EM1 and EM5 MkII - two smokin' barrels?

I've a cupboard full of big Nikon camera equipment, but have progressively become a fan of the smaller mirrorless micro 4/3 system. Although it uses a smaller sensor and less pixels, it still takes attractive pictures with the added advantage of not needing its own rucksack to cart around a decent amount of equipment.

I'm also keen to use a viewfinder rather than just a back screen, so the Olympus cameras have been my favourite ever since the original OM-D EM-5, which was styled to look like an old film Olympus OM System camera.

My diminutive OM-D EM-5 is still great fun to use some years after its original release, and although I have all the gubbins to add handgrips and battery grips (they were a 'free gift' when I bought the camera), I still prefer to use it in its most basic form, which actually feels quite like the 35mm film camera experience.

Since then, there's been various additions to the range, like the EM-1, which is slightly more bulky and has a more grippy body, an economically priced EM-10 similar to the EM-5 but which which annoyingly uses a different type of battery. Now the revised EM-5 Mk II, which is more than a simple swap of parts, it is effectively a complete replacement with a modified form factor and different control layout.

I've been using the Mk II for a while now and aside from the current lack of RAW support in Adobe and Photo (temporary problem), it provides improvements to handling, added stealth and a bunch of new functions. I can see my EM-1 and EM-5 Mk II becoming the main combination when I am specifically out to take photographs because I can take a decent variety of kit without it becoming a weightlifting exercise.

An understated point with both of these cameras is the 5-way image stabilisation, which, in my experience, adds to picture clarity compared with bigger bodied mirror-based cameras. I also find that the electronic viewfinder of the two most recent models is very good, and it's easy to forget that it's a digital screen rather than a mirror being viewed through the camera viewfinder.

I'll have to go walkabout sometime soon to get some comparative pictures.

For now, here's somewhere I frequently pass. It's just along from Bridget Jones' flat and the alleyway used in Harry Potter's Prisoner of Azkaban. It's the lock, stock and two smoking barrels gang hideout, snapped on my original EM5.