5 ms·

I don't really get it. Digitize the movies and their boxes. Keeping the actual physical items seems like overkill.

oldmanjay 11y ago
> the physical qualities of VHS offer much more than the 0s and 1s carried on an electron stream directly to televisions that's the money quote. maybe watching videos with tracking issues gives the whole experience an ambient warmness missing from evil computers.
- rzzzt 11y ago
  This made me wonder if there are any plugins that would simulate the visual artifacts of head tracking, limited bandwidth, etc. for video playback, the same way as there are effect plugins for music production which approximate the characteristics of tube amps, record players and tape decks.
  - grubles 11y ago
    There is an iOS app called Glitché[0] that simulates the VHS effect for images. Video is planned. [0] http://glitche.com/ http://glitche.com/
    - krallja 11y ago
      VHS Camcorder[0] has been making the rounds on my Instagram feed. I fear $3.99 is a bit too steep for a silly video filter. [0]: https://boingboing.net/2015/08/21/vhs-camcorder-app-makes-your-v.html https://boingboing.net/2015/08/21/vhs-camcorder-app-makes-yo...
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    While I haven't heard of any project that emulated the tape-specific effects of VHS, the video game emulation community has done a lot of work on emulating NTSC. For example, Blargg's NTSC libraries[1] simulate composite and s-video derived gamma curves, blur, marginal horizontal-sync, color bleeding and fringing, and more. The color "correction" really helps the look of old game systems that were designed for NTSC. I've seen GLSL post-process filters for MAME (or was it a MAME derivative?), too. Some of those even simulated stuff like the curved surface of a CRT. Also, there is xscreensaver's "xanalogtv" hack. I wonder how hard it would be to modify one of these to include bad tracking. side note: I believe MAME has (or had?) a mode that would slowly accumulate some of "brightness" from any saturated pixel that stayed the same for a large numbe4r of frames. This data was saved globally, so if you played certain old games that were very static, you would get "monitor burn" after images. [1] http://slack.net/~ant/libs/ntsc.html http://slack.net/~ant/libs/ntsc.html
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    The Kung Fury short films have what appears to be a mock head tracking offset effect. Maybe they used an actual VCR, or faked it manually, though.
- WalterBright 11y ago
  I've found that older VHS tapes often suffer from losing the sync signals, making the display shiver and bend. This can be corrected somewhat with a device called a Time Base Corrector. One can collect the tapes and boxes, but being able to play the tapes is inevitably going away. If you've got a video projector, watching even a good quality VHS tape that way is just awful (blotchy, fuzzy, smeary). I'm all for the preservation of history, but I have no desire to handle VHS tapes ever again, and will always prefer higher res formats.
  - ams6110 11y ago
    Remember that in the heyday of VHS, a "big" TV was maybe 19", and VHS picture looked just fine on those.
    - WalterBright 11y ago
      Not really just fine. I went to the movies a lot because the TV was so lousy. These days, the HD picture is so good I no longer go to the movies.
tyrust 11y ago
Do you feel the same way about books? Or paintings?
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  I'd say this approach is fine for books if you scan them, but not if you OCR them and keep the resulting text. I've seen a lot of OCR errors, and archival copies are often not vetted before being archived. But for paintings... an image of a painting is the painting. The only advantage of the original is that, if you believe that it's the original and that it hasn't changed with the passage of time (e.g. by fading), you can prove that the original really looked like that. As soon as you have trouble with either of those assumptions, the archived copy is at least as good (and in the case of fading over time, better). There's a problem in philosophy asking whether you believe that a molecule-for-molecule copy of a painting is metaphysically equivalent to that painting. Obviously, there's no way for any test to tell them apart, but a lot of people will say that nevertheless the original is metaphysically different. Are you one of those?
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    If we expand "image" to include a 3D relief map of the brush strokes, then I might agree. But there is still forensic analysis, spectroscopy, etc. that can only be done with the original.
    - shard 11y ago
      This. You have not seen Van Gogh's paintings until you've seen them in person. He heaps on gops of paint on his canvasses, and the third dimension is an aspect of the paintings that cannot be appreciated fully in 2D reproductions. As a corollary, the lighting of a painting is an important aspect of viewing it, as the angle of light will affect highlights and shadows, especially for some paintings which use glossy paints.
  - agsamek 11y ago
    Boy - you are way wrong. If you have printed materials like books then scanning gives you everything needed for reproduction. With paintings there are many more unique elements. Eg. Not all colors are covered by rgb. Even those covered may absorb and reflect light differently. So looking at the image with different lighting or from different angle may create unique impression. There is also texture that cannot be easily scanned. We may get there with scanning and displaying technology someday but at the moment good copies are created by artists and not printed.

> the physical qualities of VHS offer much more than the 0s and 1s carried on an electron stream directly to televisions that's the money quote. maybe watching videos with tracking issues gives the whole experience an ambient warmness missing from evil computers.

rzzzt 11y ago
This made me wonder if there are any plugins that would simulate the visual artifacts of head tracking, limited bandwidth, etc. for video playback, the same way as there are effect plugins for music production which approximate the characteristics of tube amps, record players and tape decks.
- grubles 11y ago
  There is an iOS app called Glitché[0] that simulates the VHS effect for images. Video is planned. [0] http://glitche.com/ http://glitche.com/
  - krallja 11y ago
    VHS Camcorder[0] has been making the rounds on my Instagram feed. I fear $3.99 is a bit too steep for a silly video filter. [0]: https://boingboing.net/2015/08/21/vhs-camcorder-app-makes-your-v.html https://boingboing.net/2015/08/21/vhs-camcorder-app-makes-yo...
- pdkl95 11y ago
  While I haven't heard of any project that emulated the tape-specific effects of VHS, the video game emulation community has done a lot of work on emulating NTSC. For example, Blargg's NTSC libraries[1] simulate composite and s-video derived gamma curves, blur, marginal horizontal-sync, color bleeding and fringing, and more. The color "correction" really helps the look of old game systems that were designed for NTSC. I've seen GLSL post-process filters for MAME (or was it a MAME derivative?), too. Some of those even simulated stuff like the curved surface of a CRT. Also, there is xscreensaver's "xanalogtv" hack. I wonder how hard it would be to modify one of these to include bad tracking. side note: I believe MAME has (or had?) a mode that would slowly accumulate some of "brightness" from any saturated pixel that stayed the same for a large numbe4r of frames. This data was saved globally, so if you played certain old games that were very static, you would get "monitor burn" after images. [1] http://slack.net/~ant/libs/ntsc.html http://slack.net/~ant/libs/ntsc.html
- nitrogen 11y ago
  The Kung Fury short films have what appears to be a mock head tracking offset effect. Maybe they used an actual VCR, or faked it manually, though.
WalterBright 11y ago
I've found that older VHS tapes often suffer from losing the sync signals, making the display shiver and bend. This can be corrected somewhat with a device called a Time Base Corrector. One can collect the tapes and boxes, but being able to play the tapes is inevitably going away. If you've got a video projector, watching even a good quality VHS tape that way is just awful (blotchy, fuzzy, smeary). I'm all for the preservation of history, but I have no desire to handle VHS tapes ever again, and will always prefer higher res formats.
- ams6110 11y ago
  Remember that in the heyday of VHS, a "big" TV was maybe 19", and VHS picture looked just fine on those.
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    Not really just fine. I went to the movies a lot because the TV was so lousy. These days, the HD picture is so good I no longer go to the movies.

tyrust 11y ago

Do you feel the same way about books? Or paintings?

thaumasiotes 11y ago
I'd say this approach is fine for books if you scan them, but not if you OCR them and keep the resulting text. I've seen a lot of OCR errors, and archival copies are often not vetted before being archived. But for paintings... an image of a painting is the painting. The only advantage of the original is that, if you believe that it's the original and that it hasn't changed with the passage of time (e.g. by fading), you can prove that the original really looked like that. As soon as you have trouble with either of those assumptions, the archived copy is at least as good (and in the case of fading over time, better). There's a problem in philosophy asking whether you believe that a molecule-for-molecule copy of a painting is metaphysically equivalent to that painting. Obviously, there's no way for any test to tell them apart, but a lot of people will say that nevertheless the original is metaphysically different. Are you one of those?
- nitrogen 11y ago
  If we expand "image" to include a 3D relief map of the brush strokes, then I might agree. But there is still forensic analysis, spectroscopy, etc. that can only be done with the original.
  - shard 11y ago
    This. You have not seen Van Gogh's paintings until you've seen them in person. He heaps on gops of paint on his canvasses, and the third dimension is an aspect of the paintings that cannot be appreciated fully in 2D reproductions. As a corollary, the lighting of a painting is an important aspect of viewing it, as the angle of light will affect highlights and shadows, especially for some paintings which use glossy paints.
- agsamek 11y ago
  Boy - you are way wrong. If you have printed materials like books then scanning gives you everything needed for reproduction. With paintings there are many more unique elements. Eg. Not all colors are covered by rgb. Even those covered may absorb and reflect light differently. So looking at the image with different lighting or from different angle may create unique impression. There is also texture that cannot be easily scanned. We may get there with scanning and displaying technology someday but at the moment good copies are created by artists and not printed.