@artandtechnic@digipres.club
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artandtechnic

@artandtechnic@digipres.club

From post to production, infinity and beyond.

Video archaeologist for histories of Closed Captioning.
On-Set Digital Imaging Technician.
Owner of Art & Technic LLC.

ars sine scientia nihil est

formerly known as
@orangecomma / https://digipres.club/@artandtechnic
on the bird site

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

artandtechnic, to random
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artandtechnic, to random
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Guardian: “[U.K.] Ministry of Justice plan to destroy historical wills is ‘insane’, say experts”

‘Department hopes to save £4.5m a year by digitising – then binning – about 100m wills that date back 150 years’

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/18/ministry-of-justice-plan-to-destroy-historical-wills-is-insane-say-experts

artandtechnic, to random
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The “””collectable””” VHS ‘eBay People’
vs.
Normal People

artandtechnic, to random
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WSJ: “Why It’s Taking So Long for Americans to Get Payments Instantly”

‘Hundreds of banks use Fed’s new instant-payment service, but universal availability could remain a long way off’

Non-Paywall Link:
https://archive.ph/aeok1

artandtechnic, to random
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Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)

This entire movie is “a wonder.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus_Conquers_the_Martians

artandtechnic,
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@foone This definitely looks like fun! I want to try to watch it from the beginning, though, instead of catching it in the middle 😂. Fam are going through an entire 4-DVD collection of Xmas movies today, and that was what was on when I checked in on everyone.

artandtechnic, to random
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UCLA: “Preserving Historic Color Videotape: Mr. Television (a.k.a. Milton Berle) and Friends”

‘Until recently, the oldest entertainment program known to survive on color videotape was An Evening with Fred Astaire, broadcast live on October 17, 1958, on NBC. … Last year … a rare color videotape of the Kraft Music Hall Starring Milton Berle that predates the Astaire special by nine days (airdate October 8, 1958) was … preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.’

https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/2024/02/24/preserving-historic-color-videotape-mr-television-milton-berle

artandtechnic, to random
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On this day in 1971:

The first digital Closed Captioning system was demonstrated at the National Conference on Television for the Hearing Impaired, in Knoxville, Tennessee.

The system was developed by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS; now NIST) to disseminate accurate time information. ABC suggested that it could be used for captioning, which led to this demonstration… and, eventually, the 1980 Closed Captioning System for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

artandtechnic, to random
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NYT: “Why Doctors and Pharmacists Are in Revolt”

“I realized at end of the day that all of us are workers… You can be a physician or a factory worker, and you’re treated exactly the same way by these large corporations.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/03/business/economy/doctors-pharmacists-labor-unions.html

artandtechnic, to random
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Real cute that the controllers at SFO seemed to put the Lufthansa flight crew into a corner, by instigating a fuel emergency, in order to force a visual approach at night (contrary to Lufthansa policy).

https://ops.group/blog/us-visual-approaches-lh458/

artandtechnic, to random
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“In, Through, and Beyond!”
from
The Black Hole Soundtrack (Intrada, 2011, Remastered)

This is an ISO of the electronic instruments from “End Titles,” with an ending swoosh that was marked, as I recall, ‘do not use.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmjA-gYvbx4

keen456, to random

@artandtechnic Here's a still from a VHS capture I did. What is that band of noise at the very bottom (approximately 4-8 pixels tall, and doesn't seem to be tape-specific as it shows up regularly), and what's the best approach to getting rid of it? Thanks

artandtechnic,
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@keen456 Looks like head-switching “noise” - which is nothing to be concerned about, it’s normal. If you capture the full-height of the recording, at 486 lines (which includes the captions at the top), you’ll see a bit more of that at the bottom of the raster.

How much you see depends a lot on the VCRs used for recording / playback.

It tends to be especially prominent with early Betamax decks, and the Quasar Time Machine (which actually blanked that part of the raster).

artandtechnic,
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@keen456 Since that part of the raster is well outside of ‘safe action,’ it wasn’t a great concern at the time.

artandtechnic,
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@keen456 On non-captioned recordings, you can capture full height (720x486), and reposition your export so that you’re extracting the top 480 lines. Essentially, cropping the bottom of the frame off. While this sounds stupid, it can work incredibly well.

On captioned recordings… you’d have to see about blanking the very bottom of the frame. This feature goes by various names in various programs. I think it might be called ‘padding’ in Compressor (not sure, haven’t used it for that).

artandtechnic, to random
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NYT: “Why We’re Still Breathing Dirty Indoor Air”

‘Had indoor air quality ever been a priority, the pandemic would have exacted a far lighter toll in the United States. More than three years later, little has changed. … Two new sets of recommendations may begin to usher in change….’

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/20/health/indoor-air-covid-pollution.html

artandtechnic, to random
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New Blog: “DVD Recorders... for Preserving Captions”

‘In this essay, we describe how 'citizen preservationists,' who are digitizing & uploading vintage broadcast recordings, can preserve the Closed Captioning Data on those videotapes... with set-top DVD Recorders. We illustrate how effective a set-top DVD Recorder can be, by providing a link to a special Captioning Demo DVD, which demonstrates several facets of the original Closed Captioning System.’

https://blog.artandtechnic.com/

artandtechnic, to random
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WSJ: “Justice Department Says Collusion Suit Against Apartment Owners Should Move Forward”

‘DOJ filing asserts landlords’ use of a shared algorithm to set rental prices would constitute price fixing’

Gift Link:
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/justice-department-clears-the-way-for-collusion-suit-against-apartment-owners-e545f260?st=alo2pgxiz371g1d&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

artandtechnic, to random
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After my last post, I decided to see if the ATSC 3 / AC-4 audio clusterfutz had been cleared up yet.

OMFG of course not. 😂

Hardware support is apparently still a complete clusterfutz, with DRM, compatibility issues (people complaining that their new soundbars wont support audio from their new TVs), et cetera.

Silicondust’s solution is to … transcode the audio for the program you’re trying to watch … in ‘the cloud.’

As for ffmpeg: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/8349

artandtechnic,
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My wife summarized the situation - new equipment that’s riddled with incompatibilities - with two simple questions:

“Have these people been paying attention to the economy?”

“Are they trying to get people to stop watching broadcast TV?”

Great questions. Because if the broadcast industry is trying to do something other than sabotage themselves, I really couldn’t tell.

artandtechnic, to random
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As an FYI for anyone dealing in (historical) film/tv technical documents:

In January 2024, “all SMPTE materials including publication workflows for standards, conference papers, and the Motion Imaging Journal, will be transferred back to SMPTE.org” from IEEE Xplore.

( Not sure at this point if this includes other versions of the journal, such as “Journal of the SMPTE,” etc. although one may assume so. )

artandtechnic, to random
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Since I have a few free moments, I’ll share a bit about the Demo Closed Caption DVD-VR that I was working on this week.

On Monday/Tuesday, I generated the first revision of the dual field caption stream, and on Wednesday night I output the ProRes MOV to the set-top DVD recorder, generating two burned DVDs.

While both DVD-R discs didn’t finalize properly*, the first title on each - containing the captioning demo - was perfectly readable by computers and DVD/BluRay players.

artandtechnic,
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It seems that the Field One caption stream that I’d generated is a slightly more of a “torture test” for a Decoder than I’d anticipated, which I discovered upon seeing how various TVs misconstrued the very first CC1 caption on the disc.

(The caption demo contains data for CC1, CC2, TEXT1, and XDS services - which is entirely valid for an Analog Caption transmission, but invalid as an SCC for either field, because SCCs are intended only for CC1 data.)

artandtechnic,
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If your Decoder - software or hardware - can correctly decode and show all captions / services in the Demo, you know you have a broadly compatible Decoder implementation.

That said, since I’m short on time this week**, my next attempt(s) to generate a 100% properly finalized DVD will have to be next week.

artandtechnic,
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—

  • Factors that may have contributed to the failure of the DVD-R discs to 100% successfully finalize:

  • DVDs were old stock, that had been left in a car, in Florida, for 6 months. (Since the recordings were otherwise fine… I’m not sure that using newer discs would have made a difference, but I’ll check.)

  • While the DVD Recorder’s manual claims that it can record to -R and +R discs, my memory suggests it needed DVD+R discs for recording. Locally tracked some down, so I can buy & test later.

artandtechnic,
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** My wife is in the hospital for surgery so… there will be understandable delays in all other things.

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