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It's freaking digital!
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Author name 2010-10-12, 08:09 #1
User title: Forgetful
Member since Oct 2010 · 2 posts · Location: The Okanagan
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Subject: It's freaking digital!
I actually had to tell someone today, a person I work with on occasion, and someone who I thought I had a measure of respect for, that their digital video was not degrading over time!!

Now, I can't speak to the actual content of the video,  perhaps it was degrading too!!  But, I mean this person was actually mentally-challenged enough to say that over time, the quality of their AVI file was degrading... WTF!??!  It's freaking digital!  And, get this, and, this person works with technology, for a living!  They get paid, an awful lot, and they don't even have a simple grasp of something so basic to the fundamental understanding of everything that current technology is based on!?

I was blown away... I indicated in a diplomatic way, that unless it was converted, or somehow touched in some way, there was no bloody way it was not exactly the same as the it was 5 years ago when it was stored...  it was sitting on a hard drive, the time stamp was the same, the file size was the same....  They replied, that they were sure it was a much worse quality than when they had viewed it originally.  I suggested they view it on an old CRT... it would probably look like they remembered!

I was dumbfounded, and this person, well, there were just dumb!
Author name 2010-10-12, 08:43 #2
Member since Mar 2010 · 51 posts
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Bahaha, nice.

Reminds me of an episode of Law & Order, one of the new ones with hyper-annoying man.  I dunno what it was called.  Anyway, they were after the trail of a murderer (as usual) who had a thing for knees, and they played back one of his DVDs and showed him how it had degraded at one point 'cause he had watched the closeup of a woman's knee over and over and over.

I resumed my channel skipping at that time.
Just like NFG, but x 9!
Author name 2010-10-12, 08:55 #3
Member since Oct 2007 · 271 posts
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That episode of Law and Order famously had Neil Patrick Harris as the favored suspect. As I recall, the fanwank was that a poor-quality DVD+R actually did degrade under an inexpertly tweaked laser. More likely, this was a script adopted from one written in the 80s, where the medium in question was actually a video tape.

The psychological explanation for the degrading digital video phenomenon is that simply, our memories are better than reality. We mentally fill in gaps and correct errors in our perception, and as those images are committed to long-term memory it's this enhanced picture that ends up being recalled. So to see an AVI file years after the fact and to witness it in all its low frame rate and fuzzy focus is to have it not match up with our memory.

It's also possible that on a newer computer, the codec used for playback is different enough to produce artifacts, or that there's automatic resizing in a different player. I can think of a dozen explanations that are otherwise excusable.
Author name (Administrator) 2010-10-12, 09:17 #4
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Member since May 2011 · 2203 posts · Location: Brisbane
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Oh for sure, there are a dozen reasons this person sees the old video as lower quality.  It's entirely possible too that the old codec sucks, compared to what he sees now.  Our memories make 80s TV seem vivid and colourful but watching them re-run today is embarrassing for every living person.  Old movies are crystal clear in our minds but muddy and grainy and flat in reality. 

And yeah, I considered the idea that the laser could, given a few decades, degrade the DVD enough that it'd be noticably discoloured or crazed, but there's no way I'm giving that sort of credit to the writers of Law and Order.
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