Help with video formats
Etext #116, Video of the first moon landing, needs attention, and I'm no video format expert. There are three files: landiavi.zip landimpg.zip landiqt.zip all in etext94/. The AVI is perfect. The MPG has perfect picture, but no sound. Given the disparity in file sizes, I don't think this was corruption. The QT/MOV won't play for me at all. Yes, I may not have the latest QT, but this file is from 1994!! :-) The obvious solution is to make MPG and QT files from the AVI. A complication that, thankfully, we don't need to deal with is that the landiqt.zip on archive.org is corrupt; same file size but some bytes different, leading to a corrupt zip. Not a problem, because we can work from the file on ibiblio, and just replace the archive version. If someone knowledgeable in this area could contact me off-list, and help me towards getting a good solution, I'd appreciate it! jim
Sending this to the whole list because I think it rates some discussion.. That mpeg is an elemental stream, video only. If there is a higher quality original source somewhere, I'd be happy to reencode into different formats... video codecs have come a long way in the last 10 years. There was a DVD released a few years back by NASA, but it was a Fox release.. undoubtably tied up in copyright somewhere. Commentary, new presentation, and at the least a collection copyright. 3 discs, 10 hours of video, or some such. As to formats: At the minimum, I would suggest something similar to archive.org's system.. a high quality archival version (Of an open standard.. MPEG-2 will probably be around for a while, even with the patents) and then smaller versions (I would suggest MPEG-1, MPEG-4, and QT/Sorenson.. although the last is debatable.) MPEG-1 can be played well on a P-90 or so, and is widely available both on Windows and other operating systems. If you want to go lower, Indeo or Cinepack will work even on 486s.. but the codecs to support them are getting difficult to find. R C On 5/22/05, Jim Tinsley <jtinsley@pobox.com> wrote:
Etext #116, Video of the first moon landing, needs attention, and I'm no video format expert.
There are three files:
landiavi.zip landimpg.zip landiqt.zip
all in etext94/.
The AVI is perfect. The MPG has perfect picture, but no sound. Given the disparity in file sizes, I don't think this was corruption. The QT/MOV won't play for me at all. Yes, I may not have the latest QT, but this file is from 1994!! :-)
The obvious solution is to make MPG and QT files from the AVI.
A complication that, thankfully, we don't need to deal with is that the landiqt.zip on archive.org is corrupt; same file size but some bytes different, leading to a corrupt zip. Not a problem, because we can work from the file on ibiblio, and just replace the archive version.
If someone knowledgeable in this area could contact me off-list, and help me towards getting a good solution, I'd appreciate it!
jim
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That mpeg is an elemental stream, video only. If there is a higher quality original source somewhere, I'd be happy to reencode into different formats... video codecs have come a long way in the last 10 years. There was a DVD released a few years back by NASA, but it was a Fox release.. undoubtably tied up in copyright somewhere. Commentary, new presentation, and at the least a collection copyright. 3 discs, 10 hours of video, or some such.
<http://www.google.com/search?q=first+landing+on+the+moon+video+site%3 Anasa.gov> seems to supply links to NASA videos of the first moon landing. Otherwise perhaps people at NASA might help. Assuming of course that the original poster cannot be traced. -- branko collin collin@xs4all.nl
On Sun, May 22, 2005 at 08:25:24PM +0200, Branko Collin wrote:
That mpeg is an elemental stream, video only. If there is a higher quality original source somewhere, I'd be happy to reencode into different formats... video codecs have come a long way in the last 10 years. There was a DVD released a few years back by NASA, but it was a Fox release.. undoubtably tied up in copyright somewhere. Commentary, new presentation, and at the least a collection copyright. 3 discs, 10 hours of video, or some such.
<http://www.google.com/search?q=first+landing+on+the+moon+video+site%3 Anasa.gov> seems to supply links to NASA videos of the first moon landing. Otherwise perhaps people at NASA might help.
Assuming of course that the original poster cannot be traced.
Why, when we have a perfectly good AVI, do we have to trace anybody? Google gives me, like, 400 converter programs immediately. I just thought there would be someone here who could _do_ it with more expertise than I. jim
On 5/22/05, Jim Tinsley <jtinsley@pobox.com> wrote:
On Sun, May 22, 2005 at 08:25:24PM +0200, Branko Collin wrote:
That mpeg is an elemental stream, video only. If there is a higher quality original source somewhere, I'd be happy to reencode into different formats... video codecs have come a long way in the last 10 years. There was a DVD released a few years back by NASA, but it was a Fox release.. undoubtably tied up in copyright somewhere. Commentary, new presentation, and at the least a collection copyright. 3 discs, 10 hours of video, or some such.
<http://www.google.com/search?q=first+landing+on+the+moon+video+site%3 Anasa.gov> seems to supply links to NASA videos of the first moon landing. Otherwise perhaps people at NASA might help.
Assuming of course that the original poster cannot be traced.
Why, when we have a perfectly good AVI, do we have to trace anybody? Google gives me, like, 400 converter programs immediately. I just thought there would be someone here who could _do_ it with more expertise than I.
Because it is not a perfectly good avi.. it is low resolution, and very noisy. I can convert it to another codec.. I can even run a temporal filter on it and reduce the noise a little. Or I can grab the audio track off the avi, reencode it, and mux it with the mpeg.. which is also noisy, but in a different fashion (block artifacts, ringing around edges, etc.) But all of that is not as good as getting a more accurate capture of the original. To me, converting those video files is like automated conversion of text to html.. useful to some, but referring back to the original text delivers a much better final product. For 1994, that is very good digital video footage. For 2005.. well, most camera phones do better. BTW, the mac file is fine, if mislabelled.. it is binhexed. Once you extract the data fork of 0005.QT, it plays just fine. Actually, I'd say it the best of the three, by a fair margin. R C
On Sun, May 22, 2005 at 03:04:51PM -0400, Robert Cicconetti wrote:
On 5/22/05, Jim Tinsley <jtinsley@pobox.com> wrote:
On Sun, May 22, 2005 at 08:25:24PM +0200, Branko Collin wrote:
But all of that is not as good as getting a more accurate capture of the original. To me, converting those video files is like automated conversion of text to html.. useful to some, but referring back to the original text delivers a much better final product.
For 1994, that is very good digital video footage. For 2005.. well, most camera phones do better.
For 11 years, anybody could have come to us with improvements to it, and they still can. Such is the nature of PG; things get built on, improved, re-formatted, whatever. 16MB was quite a chunk of real-estate to devote to this back in 1994. 16MB is not so scary now! If you, or someone, can get better originals, then you should by all means let us know.
BTW, the mac file is fine, if mislabelled.. it is binhexed. Once you extract the data fork of 0005.QT, it plays just fine. Actually, I'd say it the best of the three, by a fair margin.
Thanks! That's all I needed to know to restore the file to a state playable by the average user today. Binhex . . . I haven't used that in YEARS. If the other two had also had the wrong extensions, I do think I would've got suspicious; as it was, and with the archive.org corruption, I didn't look hard enough. OK, the MOV is now fixed on both servers, and that's an end to the errata requirement. jim
Jim Tinsley wrote:
Why, when we have a perfectly good AVI, do we have to trace anybody? Google gives me, like, 400 converter programs immediately. I just thought there would be someone here who could _do_ it with more expertise than I.
OK, here are a few reasons why the original AVI _isn't_ perfectly good: - It's extremely low resolution (240 x 180), not good in a Hi-Def world - It's blocky - It has many visible compression artifacts - The audio is uncompressed but at 22 KHz, again not very Hi-Def So, there are a few ways we could improve it: - Increase the resolution - Use a more modern CODEC - If we're _going_ to use MPEG-1, use a more modern compressor - Increase the audio fidelity - Create a losslessly compressed version (feasibility?) - Create a version using an open format (Ogg Theora + Vorbis / FLAC?) - Add audio into the MPG - Include an increased bitrate version for those on broadband+ And, of course, the reason why we shouldn't start off with the original PG versions: they're low-fi and they aren't going to get any better by re-encoding them. I second the other poster's suggestion to revisit the files. I'll even help if my help's needed. Cheers, Holden
participants (4)
-
Branko Collin -
Holden McGroin -
Jim Tinsley -
Robert Cicconetti