Hey, when are we gonna get those DVDs??

Well, I was catching a neat show called "Fresh Gear" the other day on ZDTV (yes, I am a geek, and damn proud, thankyewvurrymuch), and they mentioned in their "Pipeline" segment that Pioneer hopes to have a home DVD Recorder out by the end of the year. Now, granted it will most likely be hideously expensive at first, (I think the estimates were about $2000 US, but it'll come down rather quickly, IMO) but this begs the question-- if home recordable DVD is that close, why doesn't MTV drop the doughnut (or donut for those of you that don't eat Krispy Kremes) and get those "Daria" episodes out on DVD before Christmas for us? It sure would be nice if they would, and save us the trouble of having to do it ourselves. (*Hint, hint*) I know that I keep bringing this topic up every couple of months or so, but if South Park can manage to get its first two seasons out on DVD in quick succession, surely MTV could at least roll off of the couch and do a similar favor for one of its hardest workin' shows. (Considering both shows are Viacom properties, it adds to my confusion as well.) Sorry, but I like the idea of being able to watch crystal clear episodes of "Daria" without having to always fast-forward through the commercials.

Starting to set aside my loose change, rich.

Daria: Sorry, with all of this animation, I thought I was on Nickelodeon for a moment.

Jane: You wish.

Daria: Tell me about it.

On Mon, 24 May 1999 21:55:31 GMT, [email] (paperpusher) wrote:

Maybe it's a conspiracy between Viacom and Pioneer. Maybe market research shows that Daria fans have more disposable income than South Park fans to spend on high-end consumer electronics. Maybe if you asked for Daria DVD's in a language the Viacom suits can understand, "I'm a white male age 18-35. Me and my target market would like to buy Daria DVD's."

I usually tape the episodes in SP mode and edit out the commercials. Unfortunatly my VCR has a bit of a pause/unpause lag and sometimes a few seconds get cut out so having clean VHS or DVD copies would be nice (and leave the original music in, damn it!)

It would be feasible to issue it on CD-ROM actually. With a show that's only about 21 minutes in length, putting one episode on each 650MB CD-ROM would give you 500KB/second which should be enough for pretty much broadcast quality, and it only requires a 4x speed CD-ROM drive. It's only when you want to store 90 minute movies digitally that you need DVD.

-Shez.

Shez wrote:

Um, actually, there's a rather large difference between Mpeg-1 (Video CD) and Mpeg-2 (DVD and DSS). The biggest of which are horizontal lines of resolution (approx. 100 lines more in Mpeg-2), and sound quality (Mpeg-2 has 6 separate sound channels.) 2 hours of Daria would fit on one DVD-- that's approx. 5 eps. 6 if they squeeze tight.

But the video quality of Mpeg-1 is roughly equivalent to VHS EP, while Mpeg-2 is as good as SVHS SP. (Although in some occurences, older implementations of Mpeg-2 will pixelate a little, it's not as noticeable as in Mpeg-1.)

geekily, rich.

Quinn: I can't be a brain! My friends will hate me!

I'm not very impressed with the Mpeg, the codec I have always gives a weird fuzziness to the outlines of things, the same as with a low quality jpeg. I also find the sound sync drifts badly, though this may be a peculiarity of my setup. After trying various compression methods I've discovered that Radius's Cinepak codec produces a very crisp 384x288 Daria picture with smooth animation and no fuzzy edges at all. It also gave me hi fi stereo sound with perfect lip sync. All this at 500K/second, or 300K if you drop to 12fps. I notice that although Daria is animated at 12fps (ie. each cell is used twice) as is the norm for cartoons, the camera movements (panning and zooming) are done at full speed (25fps for PAL) which gives smoother movement.

Anyway, I ended up making a Cinepak encoded avi of the "They Must Be Worried" song from Daria!, but it took a whole hour to compress the 1.5 minute song! At that speed doing a whole episode isn't a feasible proposition, especially as I'd need an intermediate 1.5-2GB video file to use as input since the software codec doesn't exactly compress in real time (big understatement!), and I don't have that much free space on my hard disk. Still, the avi of that one song was worth doing, as I can now play "They Must Be Worried" in a window on my PC whenever I want!

-Shez.

Shez wrote:

Keep in mind, of course, that this is Mpeg-1 at best quality, best HW, best SW, best render. Also, keep in mind that Mpeg-1 is a *very* lossy codec in order to keep the video data down to a little more than 1MB/minute of video. Actual results may vary considerbably due to the flakiness of the brand of Mpeg-1 compression SW you're using.

If you use software Mpeg-1 compression, you will oftentimes get strange results. There's really only 1 good Mpeg-1 software compression plug-in for Premiere, and that's the Xing plug-in.

I have an Mpeg-1 hardware video/audio capture card, and I must say that it does an excellent job of compression on the fly at 29.97 fps. As long as I don't have to make any edits in the tapes I turn into Mpeg-1s, I don't have to sit through any renders. If I do choose to edit, however, the wait time for rerender to Mpeg is 16 times the length of the finished product. (Needless to say, I don't do many edits.) <g>

Yeah, trying to do any kind of desktop video will sorely try your patience, even if you have bleeding edge technology. Right now, it looks like the Mac G3s have a bit of an edge in the speed dept for render speed, as nobody's tried to make any useful desktop video software for Linux. Yet. <g>

rich.

Jane: All I want is to make beautiful things!

Since I'm computer illiterate I don't understand this too much, however, to be able to play that song whenever you want ANYTHING is worth it !!!

DeVitoFreq (Christina) "Oh Daria,don't be shy.Show me your boobs"--Jane("Too Cute"),"I can't shoot my own mother.Not with paint,anyway."--Daria("The Daria Hunter"),"I'm not miserable,I'm just not like *them*"--Daria("The Misery Chick")

Of course I could just have learned how to sing instead.

-Shez.

Or indeed the Video CD format, Ok this is no where near as good as DVD but that way you could get 3 eps on each disk, which would match up more with what we normally get on video tape. Thought the Beavis & Butthead tapes that I have are 8 eps each, but B&B eps are significantly shorter once you cut out the comercials(adverts for us UK people <G>), and the videos. And actually the quality's not too bad quite watchable on the disk that I have seen.....Also I believe DVD players will play these as well, cirtainlty the one in my friends computer did.

Phill.

/----------------[ Courage is Grace Under Pressure. ]--------------------\

\--------[ I Want to look at life, In the Available Light ]--------------/


[email] (Phill Harvey-Smith) wrote:

Video CD is the same as MPEG-1 video and audio in the White Book CD format-- either way, you can only get about 60 minutes on a CD. All I could cram on a CD (for personal entertainment purposes only, of course-- I'll play them for my own amusement when I travel and get bored) were 2 "Daria" eps per CD. They run just a little over 21 minutes each, including the intro and the closing credits. (And I refuse to chop the credits off. It adds to the charm of the show.)

Oh, and some older DVD players will not play "home-made" Video CDs as well-- unless you use CDRWs, and they aren't very reliable, IMO-- they're a little too "lossy" for my tastes. Sony is the only brand I know of that doesn't have any compatibility problems with CDRs.

Geekily, rich.

Quinn: I can't be a brain! My friends will hate me!

this isn't really about Daria, but... SOMEbody is an Annie Mac nut too, I see...<evil grin>

Jess "Morgendorfer"

Scene from "Clerks" (Dante and Randall are talking about Dante's ex-girlfriend) Dante: In the middle of it, she called me Brad. Randall: That's nothin' man, people say crazy stuff during sex. One time I called this girl "Mom".

[email] (JMStargazr) wrote:

that makes 3 of us. lookin' forward to the TV series? <g>

rich.

Jake: Who do you want in an emergency? Superman, or your *damn inner child?*

Heck ya...I belong to a Pern RPG called Belior Weyr, it's loads of fun. Here's the website.

http://members.aol.com/Tigger112/Belior/

Jess "Morgendorfer"

Scene from "Clerks" (Dante and Randall are talking about Dante's ex-girlfriend) Dante: In the middle of it, she called me Brad. Randall: That's nothin' man, people say crazy stuff during sex. One time I called this girl "Mom".