Gaussian Blur on Eurovision

"Chris" wrote in message
...
In message , Agamemnon
writes

"Chris" wrote in message
...
Some DTT MPEG I-frames for amusement and/or discussion:

How about putting up some delta frames of the actual acts performing with
the perfumers in full profile and half height with those flashing screen
things behind them. Some captures of the semi-naked Moldovan bird would be
nice.

Some more snapshots - B and P frames:

http://img512.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image1yw8.png

OMG, its a complete f***ing mess. Almost the entire picture is blocked, as
if it was originated from a 64x64 pixel source, and I thought the reason it
was that bad on my DivX processed files was because I wasn't using enough
compression. If the original pictures were this bad it no wonder I can't
compress the contest into 2GB without blocking.

http://img509.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image2by6.png

Major blacking here too. All the pink areas are a complete mess and you
don't even need to enlarged to the size of a 28 inch TV or gamma correct it
to see it.

http://img480.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image3pd1.png


Another blurred mess.


The last two are the SD equivalent of the following HD frame:
http://public.yogurtrat.com/viewer.p...0513062557.PNG

http://img516.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image4bg7.png


Not as bad as the previous frames and better than I was expecting
considering it interlaced and not progressive like the original. But then
again, there isn't much here to encode.

...and the previous frame upscaled to 1280x720:

http://img512.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image5sk6.png

Its better than a jpeg of the original source compressed to 20kB but worse
than the same source compressed to 31kB.

What do the HD pictures of the Moldovan bird look like?

--
Chris

Agamemnon wrote:
|| I think I've worked out the reason for the radius 1 Gaussian Blur on
|| the BBC's coverage of the Eurovision. It's there to remove dot crawl
|| and other PAL artefacts because somewhere along the line the BBC has
|| converted the digital feed into composite PAL analogue in order to
|| insert its own Televoting captions and then redigitised it. They did
|| exactly the same thing on the Athens 2004 Olympics coverage and on
|| all European sporting feeds which are always blurred.
||
|| Isn't the BBC capable of mixing captions and its own commentaries
|| digitally and if it has to use analogue why covert it into composite
|| PAL and not component RGB?
||
|| I bet they are using an analogue feed from the satellite to TV
|| centre routed via the BT tower.

I see what you mean about the Gaussian Blu.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hOX8CV05iY

In message , Roderick
Stewart wrote
On Thu, 17 May 2007 00:40:36 +0100, "Agamemnon"
wrote:

I thought we had to pay vast sums of money as a "founder member" to be in
the contest every year, even when we would in the past have been
relegated.

That's just a myth invented by Sir Terry of Wogan.

Yes, they just pay the vast sums to him.



So much the BBCs budget for the song contest goes on Mr Wogan's fee
leaving very little to commission a decent song or to employ anyone with
any talent to sing it.

--
Alan
news2006 {at} amac {dot} f2s {dot} com

On 18 May, 10:56, Paul Martin wrote:
In article ,
Agamemnon wrote:

"Chris" wrote in message
...
Some DTT MPEG I-frames for amusement and/or discussion:

http://img181.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image0ns5.png
http://img143.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image1ao8.png
http://img244.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image2ce2.png
Very blurred and nasty ringing and blocking artefacts visible when gamma
corrected so it looks the way it would look on a CRT TV screen.

These look like any other picture taken off BBC 1's digital forms.

Exactly. Well, to be honest, there's a slight "HD look" to them. It
matches the other HD originated content the BBC show.

There's no evidence of blurring on the scoreboard. If there was, you
wouldn't be able to read the country names. Look also at the UK's
mini-flag. If there had been a PAL stage, you would not be able to
resolve that much horizontal detail.

As for what you think is Gaussian blurring on the caption... that's
probably alpha blending.

The country caption lower right during the performances is both crisp
and over sharpened. If you zoom in to individual pixel level, you can
clearly see the white black transition on a pixel boundary.

Yes, it would be lovely to have BBC 1 at 10-15Mbps, but it ain't going
to happen. Even the BBC HD channel has barely enough bitrate to provide
a reasonable picture. Go into an electrical retailer and watch it
during some sports coverage.

As suggested, those backdrops, at a certain zoom level, were never
going to be MPEG friendly!

I think we will all have to increasingly accept that if we want half
decent quality, we will have to watch HD. In the coming years, I
predict that SD simulcasts will just get worse as fewer and fewer
people who care about quality will be using the SD feed. When HD
becomes mass market, why waste the bitrate on the SD feed?

Cheers,
David.

On 18 May, 21:07, Chris wrote:
In message , Agamemnon
writes



"Chris" wrote in message
...
Some DTT MPEG I-frames for amusement and/or discussion:

How about putting up some delta frames of the actual acts performing
with the perfumers in full profile and half height with those flashing
screen things behind them. Some captures of the semi-naked Moldovan
bird would be nice.

Some more snapshots - B and P frames:

http://img512.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image1yw8.png

As expected. Exactly what I saw on my TV, though you had to pause it
to appreciate the true quality ;-) (and the PVR shows one field only
when paused, so you can see the blocks without the distraction of the
"other" field).

Has anyone found any BBC HD samples of Eurovision on the net? This
1280x720 one is from elsewhere.

Cheers,
David.

Alan writes:

So much the BBCs budget for the song contest goes on Mr Wogan's fee
leaving very little to commission a decent song or to employ anyone
with any talent to sing it.

Then they should get someone less expensive who will present it in a
more sensible manner than Sir Terry. Maybe get someone more like Katie
Boyle who used to present it.

On Mon, 21 May 2007 11:22:57 +0100, Graham Murray
wrote:

Alan writes:

So much the BBCs budget for the song contest goes on Mr Wogan's fee
leaving very little to commission a decent song or to employ anyone
with any talent to sing it.

Then they should get someone less expensive who will present it in a
more sensible manner than Sir Terry. Maybe get someone more like Katie
Boyle who used to present it.

I think they should get Brian Sewell to present it, then everything
would get the fair and honest appraisal it deserves, and he would tell
us about it in a less irritating manner.

Rod.

wrote:

As suggested, those backdrops, at a certain zoom level, were never
going to be MPEG friendly!

Here's a picture of the ESC 2007 stage:

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=484123372&size=l

There's a separate starfield backdrop farther away, and a huge, wide
see-through wall of Mitrix tiles in front of it (displaying the
lightning bolt in the above picture):

http://www.barco.com/corporate/en/products/product.asp?element=3611
http://www.barco.com/projection_systems/images/MiTRIX_01_l.jpg

The Mitrix wall extends quite a lot to the sides, and the above picture
does not quite manage to capture all of it, but you can see it in its
entirety in some of the wider shots he
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSAb97THruI.

The vertical totem (dubbed "cobra") - as well as the centre part of the
stage floor, and the catwalk - was made of OLite tiles, instead:

http://www.barco.com/events/en/products/product.asp?element=2586
http://www.barco.com/projection_systems/images/ev_OLite-510_L.jpg

The OLites have a better resolution than the Mitrix tiles, so the
totem - or the "cobra" - looks much better in closer shots than the rest
of the backdrop.

--
znark

Has anyone found any BBC HD samples of Eurovision on the net? This
1280x720 one is from elsewhere.

Cheers,
David.

The Swedish broadcast of the Semi-Final & Final have been posted to
alt.binaries.hdtv at 720p resolution, h264 encoded using TS. An added
bonus is that the compere's do not prattle on during the songs.

David

"Graham Murray" wrote in message

Alan writes:

So much the BBCs budget for the song contest goes on Mr
Wogan's fee leaving very little to commission a decent
song or to employ anyone with any talent to sing it.

Then they should get someone less expensive who will
present it in a more sensible manner than Sir Terry.
Maybe get someone more like Katie Boyle who used to
present it.

I rarely watch it any more, but when I did I always turned off the TV
sound and listened to Ken Bruce on the wireless. I like Ken, met him once,
great bloke, razor sharp sense of humour.

Ivor