I just watched You Don't Mess with the Zohan at a local Cineplex cinema. It was a good movie, not one of the best I've seen this year but better than expected. However, this post isn't about the movie; it's about the projection. This was the first movie which I saw which was projected digitally, and I'm impressed.
Nowadays Cineplex cinemas have digitally projected video before the previews start. That video is of low quality compared to film. Resolution and contrast are visibly worse, the image doesn't fill the whole screen, and the image is often trapezoidal or otherwise distorted.
As soon as the previews started I was surprised by the dynamic range. Later during mostly black scenes I was surprised by how dark it was in the cinema. I thought I was just seeing how film was much better than the cheap pre-preview digital projector, but I've seen many movies before and I never noticed the difference like this. Right before the main feature, I saw a short Kodak Digital Cinema logo segment. I hadn't seen that before and its presence explained why the image seemed different.
During the movie the image seemed exceptionally sharp in well-focused areas, and of course there was the absence of typical film artifacts. There were also no reel changeover cues or noticable changeover interruptions. I couldn't even see any digital artifacts. It was a surprising improvement in quality.
It seemed as if the frame rate might have been higher but I cannot be sure. I guess that if the frame rate wasn't higher then at least the duty cycle must have been higher.
Before the credits there was a short interruption. The first part of the credits (which listed the more important actors) was a series of tinted images from the movie and text which quickly slid onto the screen from the edges. It seemed as if that wasn't normal video but a high resolution version of a slideshow presentation or Flash. The tinted image from the movie was perfectly still and the text seemed like it might be animated by a computer in the theatre instead of it all being encoded as video earlier. Overall, this part of the credits seemed kind of cheap, but it's not really a serious complaint. The scrolling part of the credits could have been done the same way, but it's harder to tell.
I look forward to seeing more digitally projected movies. If digital projectors can be this good then film is obsolete.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
Niagara Butterfly Conservatory was cool
I had already been to the Niagara Butterfly Conservatory once a few years ago and it wasn't too memorable. I remember a few neat butterflies but I can't say I was very impressed. I went again an Victoria Day and this time I was very impressed. There were countless butterflies and moths and they were all over the place. Many had very interesting iridescent colours, and some were quite big. It wasn't hard to get close to them, and surprisingly it wasn't even hard to take photos. Plus there was the rainforest with various interesting plants, and a black and seemingly metallic green poison dart frog in a display case. Here are some of my photos:
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Birds at Pt. Pelee
May brings many birds to Pt. Pelee National Park. The park is a point jutting into Lake Erie and it serves as a natural pathway for migrating birds. The whole forest is then full of birdsong like nowhere else I've been. The birds themselves are somewhat more elusive, but it's still pretty easy to spot many.
Lots of people come to photograph birds with tripods and expensive zoom lenses. I just have an Olympus C-770 digicam with 10x optical zoom, and before I felt I couldn't take decent photos of birds. They're too far to fill the frame, they often flee before I can take a photo, and it might be too dim for zoom in the forest. Now I accepted that they wouldn't fill the frame, taking photos even if they were far. I set "drive" to high speed, so I take a quick series of photos, with the hope that some wouldn't be blurred. When I got home I selected the best images and generally just cropped them with Jpegcrop.
I used to feel that birdwatching and serious bird photography was kind of weird, intellectualizing something that's simply fun to see, and through that somewhat ruining it. Through doing this and being among birdwatchers, it seems I might have been wrong; it doesn't seem like it makes birds less enjoyable. I guess it might even facilitate longer focus on the enjoyable input and so create more enjoyment of it.
Lots of people come to photograph birds with tripods and expensive zoom lenses. I just have an Olympus C-770 digicam with 10x optical zoom, and before I felt I couldn't take decent photos of birds. They're too far to fill the frame, they often flee before I can take a photo, and it might be too dim for zoom in the forest. Now I accepted that they wouldn't fill the frame, taking photos even if they were far. I set "drive" to high speed, so I take a quick series of photos, with the hope that some wouldn't be blurred. When I got home I selected the best images and generally just cropped them with Jpegcrop.
I used to feel that birdwatching and serious bird photography was kind of weird, intellectualizing something that's simply fun to see, and through that somewhat ruining it. Through doing this and being among birdwatchers, it seems I might have been wrong; it doesn't seem like it makes birds less enjoyable. I guess it might even facilitate longer focus on the enjoyable input and so create more enjoyment of it.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Why I dislike dogs
I can't say I dislike dogs themselves. I've had plenty of good experiences with my cousin's dog for example. However, what dogs are allowed to do in society is entirely unreasonable. At a park or a trail a stranger's dog might stick its nose anywhere it can reach on you or on your belongings. It might even sniff your crotch. It can also try to climb or hump your legs. Yes, it might be called normal but if you think about it without the "dogs are like that" prejudice, it's clearly a very unreasonable invasion of personal space. Imagine the criminal charges and newspaper articles if a person did that. So, why is it acceptable to have a person permit a dog to do that? Even wild animals don't!
When I'm with a person who finds this behaviour highly disturbing, that's even worse. Hearing someone I know and care about freaking out because of a dog is unpleasant. However, the dog owners in such situations often don't seem to care, and they sometimes even laugh about it.
Dog shit is another issue. Why is it reasonable for dogs to shit on a trail or sidewalk? Again, imagine if you saw a human doing it and note that even wild animals don't generally do that. Can't they do it somewhere humans don't walk all the time? The main problem here is the people who don't clean up after the dog. Nanaimo was the worst; based on what I've seen I could call it the dog shit capital of the world. However, most cities have plenty of dog shit lying around. That stuff is a pain to clean off shoes. Meanwhile, dog owners just get a small fine if they get caught, which is very unlikely. I've actually seen places where littering fines were higher than dog shit fines, which is totally unreasonable when you consider how much worse dog shit is than typical litter.
Dogs are even annoying with the noise they make. Some dogs which are stuck in yards can bark loudly for a very long time when someone's passing by on the street. It's pretty much the loudest sound one can hear in a residential area. Once again, the way it's tolerated seems quite unreasonable.
Perhaps the most important thing to note is that people have many other pets, and none are quite as annoying to strangers as dogs. Nothing else will regularly approach you while you're outside and bother you or make loud noises as you pass by. Some pets might bother you in someone's house, but that's different.
When I'm with a person who finds this behaviour highly disturbing, that's even worse. Hearing someone I know and care about freaking out because of a dog is unpleasant. However, the dog owners in such situations often don't seem to care, and they sometimes even laugh about it.
Dog shit is another issue. Why is it reasonable for dogs to shit on a trail or sidewalk? Again, imagine if you saw a human doing it and note that even wild animals don't generally do that. Can't they do it somewhere humans don't walk all the time? The main problem here is the people who don't clean up after the dog. Nanaimo was the worst; based on what I've seen I could call it the dog shit capital of the world. However, most cities have plenty of dog shit lying around. That stuff is a pain to clean off shoes. Meanwhile, dog owners just get a small fine if they get caught, which is very unlikely. I've actually seen places where littering fines were higher than dog shit fines, which is totally unreasonable when you consider how much worse dog shit is than typical litter.
Dogs are even annoying with the noise they make. Some dogs which are stuck in yards can bark loudly for a very long time when someone's passing by on the street. It's pretty much the loudest sound one can hear in a residential area. Once again, the way it's tolerated seems quite unreasonable.
Perhaps the most important thing to note is that people have many other pets, and none are quite as annoying to strangers as dogs. Nothing else will regularly approach you while you're outside and bother you or make loud noises as you pass by. Some pets might bother you in someone's house, but that's different.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
MP3 cutting adventures
I just tested out Medieval CUE Splitter version 1.0. It was broken, and it creates output files where the first few frames may be unplayable.
An MP3 file consists of series of frames and each frame always stores 1152 audio samples. If one wants to losslessly cut an MP3 file, they can do it at a frame boundary. However, the data for a frame may actually be in previous frames. (In the side information, right after the 4 byte frame header, there is a 9 bit value which tells how far back. This is used to implement the bit reservoir. For more information see this PDF on the MP3 format.) So if a cut happens right before a frame whose data is in a previous frame, that frame's data will be unavailable. At best, some data will be skipped. At worst, a poorly designed decoder will crash. In order to avoid this, an MP3 cutting utility must restructure the file after the cut.
Edit 1: I found that MP3Cutter 4 is broken in the same way. I'm also left wondering if it creates a VBR header when saving a VBR MP3.
Edit 2: mp3DirectCut 2.07 also simply cuts the file like that. At least it puts a VBR header on the output file if it's VBR.
Using mp3packer with the -b 320 -r switches one can transform an MP3 file into a 320 kbit file where all the frames are self-contained. I'm not certain if this works on all files, but it should work on all non-corrupt MP3 files. MP3 frames should always fit in 320 kbit frames. After this one can cut with any stupid MP3 cutting utility and get a valid MP3 file. However, when the files are decoded, 529x4 bytes go missing at the start of all files other than the first, apparently because most decoders have a 529 sample delay.
Edit 3: Another utility I've tried is pcutmp3. The name is short for properly cut MP3, and what it does is more proper, but even with self-contained frames the encoder delay can be around 2000, and some players such as the iPod ignore encoder delays that big. My goal is to have a smaller and more compatible encoder delay.
Edit 4: mp3splt 2.1 also cuts MP3 files in the same broken way.
Edit 5: If frames are made independent using mp3packer, and a LAME header with encoder delay set to 623 followed by the last frame of the previous file is prepended to all files other than the first, then the cut is lossless with mpg123 and Winamp.
I also see that the stupid cutting programs strip off the LAME part of the header, leading to 576 (LAME encoder delay) extra samples of silence at the start of the first file. That should be easy to fix by putting a LAME header there.
Note that the splitting process I propose should be entirely reversible. You might not end up with the MP3 file you started with, but you'd end up with the same MP3 data within it and it would lead to the same output. Lossless transformations should be reversible like that.
An MP3 file consists of series of frames and each frame always stores 1152 audio samples. If one wants to losslessly cut an MP3 file, they can do it at a frame boundary. However, the data for a frame may actually be in previous frames. (In the side information, right after the 4 byte frame header, there is a 9 bit value which tells how far back. This is used to implement the bit reservoir. For more information see this PDF on the MP3 format.) So if a cut happens right before a frame whose data is in a previous frame, that frame's data will be unavailable. At best, some data will be skipped. At worst, a poorly designed decoder will crash. In order to avoid this, an MP3 cutting utility must restructure the file after the cut.
Edit 1: I found that MP3Cutter 4 is broken in the same way. I'm also left wondering if it creates a VBR header when saving a VBR MP3.
Edit 2: mp3DirectCut 2.07 also simply cuts the file like that. At least it puts a VBR header on the output file if it's VBR.
Using mp3packer with the -b 320 -r switches one can transform an MP3 file into a 320 kbit file where all the frames are self-contained. I'm not certain if this works on all files, but it should work on all non-corrupt MP3 files. MP3 frames should always fit in 320 kbit frames. After this one can cut with any stupid MP3 cutting utility and get a valid MP3 file. However, when the files are decoded, 529x4 bytes go missing at the start of all files other than the first, apparently because most decoders have a 529 sample delay.
Edit 3: Another utility I've tried is pcutmp3. The name is short for properly cut MP3, and what it does is more proper, but even with self-contained frames the encoder delay can be around 2000, and some players such as the iPod ignore encoder delays that big. My goal is to have a smaller and more compatible encoder delay.
Edit 4: mp3splt 2.1 also cuts MP3 files in the same broken way.
Edit 5: If frames are made independent using mp3packer, and a LAME header with encoder delay set to 623 followed by the last frame of the previous file is prepended to all files other than the first, then the cut is lossless with mpg123 and Winamp.
I also see that the stupid cutting programs strip off the LAME part of the header, leading to 576 (LAME encoder delay) extra samples of silence at the start of the first file. That should be easy to fix by putting a LAME header there.
Note that the splitting process I propose should be entirely reversible. You might not end up with the MP3 file you started with, but you'd end up with the same MP3 data within it and it would lead to the same output. Lossless transformations should be reversible like that.
Friday, April 04, 2008
Another reason why the Windows console is worthless
If I view a batch file in a windowed text editor, I see é (lower case e with acute accent), but if I view view it from the command prompt I see Ú (upper case u with acute accent). If I run the batch file, the character is also interpreted as Ú, which means the command fails because it is given the wrong filename.
It seems this is happening because the console uses code page 850 while graphical applications use ISO-8859-1, and they're quite different. NTFS filenames are Unicode UTF-16 and they are translated to code page 850 for the console and ISO-8859-1 for the GUI. Sometimes, such as when pasting from the GUI to a console window, the translation works. In other situations, such as copying from the console window and pasting into the GUI, it fails. What a horrible kludge!
Fortunately, Cygwin doesn't have this problem.
It seems this is happening because the console uses code page 850 while graphical applications use ISO-8859-1, and they're quite different. NTFS filenames are Unicode UTF-16 and they are translated to code page 850 for the console and ISO-8859-1 for the GUI. Sometimes, such as when pasting from the GUI to a console window, the translation works. In other situations, such as copying from the console window and pasting into the GUI, it fails. What a horrible kludge!
Fortunately, Cygwin doesn't have this problem.
UnxUtils are broken; Cygwin is great
Years ago when I wanted some Unix utilities in Windows I got them from UnxUtils. Since then I've deleted them one by one because of various bugs. For example, I just found that find(1) doesn't find the files in one directory from one starting point but finds them from one directory deeper. The find from Cygwin works fine, though one has to get used to using Unix-style paths in Windows with it.
UnxUtils actually has a newer version on the project downloads page which isn't mentioned on the home page. I could try that but Cygwin is more widely used, tested and kept up to date. There's also MSYS from MingW, but Cygwin is easier to install and update and it can also compile MingW binaries which don't depend on Cygwin.
If you want Unix tools in Windows I highly recommend Cygwin.
UnxUtils actually has a newer version on the project downloads page which isn't mentioned on the home page. I could try that but Cygwin is more widely used, tested and kept up to date. There's also MSYS from MingW, but Cygwin is easier to install and update and it can also compile MingW binaries which don't depend on Cygwin.
If you want Unix tools in Windows I highly recommend Cygwin.
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