4 ms·

Amen. Now if someone could get DVDs or streaming services to offer fast-forward and rewind that works as well as a VCR we'd be caught up to the 1980s!

by coryrc 11y ago

nickpsecurity 11y ago
Hell yes! Or even hardware acceleration for starting in random parts of videos on my PC so they don't break up and delay as often. This is the digital era. It's supposed to work more reliably than old, analog tech. I used to be able to stop my rewind or fast-forward on VCR within a few seconds of the target moment with clean play. Still not reliable with digital streaming. (sighs) Note: I do like how, even with errors, it still takes under 20 seconds for me to get to any random part of the vid. That's an improvement over the rewind/fast-forward speeds. :)
- lfowles 11y ago
  > Note: I do like how, even with errors, it still takes under 20 seconds for me to get to any random part of the vid. That's an improvement over the rewind/fast-forward speeds. :) Don't forget not having to rewind after watching/before watching. Glad that whole class of annoyance is gone, much more annoying than poor random access :)
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    That's what this meant: "Note: I do like how, even with errors, it still takes under 20 seconds for me to get to any random part of the vid. That's an improvement over the rewind/fast-forward speeds. :)"
- zdw 11y ago
  Modern video codecs use data in frames before and sometimes after the current frame to compress more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_pictures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_pictures whereas analog media stored full resolution versions of every frame. Seeking is much easier when you can pick any random location and have all the data right there ready to use, and you don't have to backtrack and try to recreate things from previous frames.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    That's true. Hence me asking for "hardware acceleration" to improve the speed to real-time if possible.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  Isn't a lot of that related to how the video is encoded/decoded though? I have only a basic understanding of how it works through working with video (not developing or tweaking actual codecs) but when I'm doing VJ-type stuff in Resolume (for example) I use a setup where all clips are encoded with a keyframe every frame. It makes for some huge clips but I can scrub or jump around or manipulate clips with no delay at all. On the opposite end you've got streaming video or even many common formats and settings for ripped/downloaded video. Those do a keyframe every (x) frames and then between keyframes the file only contains the data for changes to the keyframe. This gets you smaller files so your downloads are quicker and your streams look nicer while using less bandwidth. I know there's a lot more to it but at least with locally stored files, I thought it mostly had to do with keyframes. With streaming I'd imagine it's related more to how the stream is managed to download in chunks and maximize quality versus bandwidth (rather than focusing on quick scrubbing or quick access to random points of the video). I'm interested in this stuff so if there's something I'm missing or flat-out wrong about, feel free to educate me.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    Oh I'm not a subject matter expert on video compression. I just know the difference between using a general-purpose CPU and the ASIC version of decoders is huge. It's why you have all these weak, low-power SOC's that can do 720/1080p etc. That's the hardware acceleration. I doubt it's designed for the random access I'm describing, though. So, one for that might solve the problem. Might also need to be integrated with a good, storage subsystem if that causes any difficulties. Cool, though, that yours lets people jump around at will. :)

Amen. Now if someone could get DVDs or streaming services to offer fast-forward and rewind that works as well as a VCR we'd be caught up to the 1980s!

by coryrc 11y ago

Amen. Now if someone could get DVDs or streaming services to offer fast-forward and rewind that works as well as a VCR we'd be caught up to the 1980s!

nickpsecurity 11y ago

Hell yes! Or even hardware acceleration for starting in random parts of videos on my PC so they don't break up and delay as often. This is the digital era. It's supposed to work more reliably than old, analog tech. I used to be able to stop my rewind or fast-forward on VCR within a few seconds of the target moment with clean play. Still not reliable with digital streaming. (sighs) Note: I do like how, even with errors, it still takes under 20 seconds for me to get to any random part of the vid. That's an improvement over the rewind/fast-forward speeds. :)

lfowles 11y ago
> Note: I do like how, even with errors, it still takes under 20 seconds for me to get to any random part of the vid. That's an improvement over the rewind/fast-forward speeds. :) Don't forget not having to rewind after watching/before watching. Glad that whole class of annoyance is gone, much more annoying than poor random access :)
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  That's what this meant: "Note: I do like how, even with errors, it still takes under 20 seconds for me to get to any random part of the vid. That's an improvement over the rewind/fast-forward speeds. :)"
zdw 11y ago
Modern video codecs use data in frames before and sometimes after the current frame to compress more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_pictures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_pictures whereas analog media stored full resolution versions of every frame. Seeking is much easier when you can pick any random location and have all the data right there ready to use, and you don't have to backtrack and try to recreate things from previous frames.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  That's true. Hence me asking for "hardware acceleration" to improve the speed to real-time if possible.
soylentcola 11y ago
Isn't a lot of that related to how the video is encoded/decoded though? I have only a basic understanding of how it works through working with video (not developing or tweaking actual codecs) but when I'm doing VJ-type stuff in Resolume (for example) I use a setup where all clips are encoded with a keyframe every frame. It makes for some huge clips but I can scrub or jump around or manipulate clips with no delay at all. On the opposite end you've got streaming video or even many common formats and settings for ripped/downloaded video. Those do a keyframe every (x) frames and then between keyframes the file only contains the data for changes to the keyframe. This gets you smaller files so your downloads are quicker and your streams look nicer while using less bandwidth. I know there's a lot more to it but at least with locally stored files, I thought it mostly had to do with keyframes. With streaming I'd imagine it's related more to how the stream is managed to download in chunks and maximize quality versus bandwidth (rather than focusing on quick scrubbing or quick access to random points of the video). I'm interested in this stuff so if there's something I'm missing or flat-out wrong about, feel free to educate me.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  Oh I'm not a subject matter expert on video compression. I just know the difference between using a general-purpose CPU and the ASIC version of decoders is huge. It's why you have all these weak, low-power SOC's that can do 720/1080p etc. That's the hardware acceleration. I doubt it's designed for the random access I'm describing, though. So, one for that might solve the problem. Might also need to be integrated with a good, storage subsystem if that causes any difficulties. Cool, though, that yours lets people jump around at will. :)