6 ms·

There's something beautiful about the fact that the video is FAR larger in size than the program that initially generated the output. Almost worth watching for

There's something beautiful about the fact that the video is FAR larger in size than the program that initially generated the output. Almost worth watching for that fact alone.

kubanczyk 6y ago
Your comment's html source code (the entire <div>) is also larger with its 380 bytes.
- kubanczyk 6y ago
  Can be gzipped down to 275 though.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  It always stings when I make a website/app pulled through all the optimizers and compression algorithms, and the content people fuck it all up by adding 10MB of images :/.
  - tiborsaas 6y ago
    You are building a passenger airliner optimized to don't crash and burn, don't worry about the cargo :)
derefr 6y ago
I’ve pondered before the idea of a video codec that works like RAR, where the video embeds an arbitrary user-specified virtual machine that can be used to decode the video frames. (How is this not just a program binary? Because it still would have the semantics of a video stream, with no random access to frame data, only tape-head-like access.) Seems like this would be perfect for videos that are just e.g. gameplay of games made of tiles+sprites: the video could just store one copy of the assets, and the frames could just be tile maps + sprite position information. It would also work well for “videos” that are really just a single static image. Or videos that are visualizations of the audio stream: the VM could actually take the audio frames as input and output the respective video frame.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I think Super Smash Bros records replays as a random seed and user input, then generates the video on the fly from that.
  - recrof 6y ago
    also, doom.
  - derefr 6y ago
    Sure, but the various machinima/demo file-formats of games are just application state-data formats, not video formats per se. The difference comes in what can decode them. An application state-data format can only be decoded by the original application, because necessary context—in this case, the game engine that translates user input to game-state and then to displayed frames, and also the library of visual assets the game uses to render those frames—is in the application, rather than in the video. A video format is self-contained, and usually not domain-specific. Many encoders and many decoders can be written to target a video format, and the decoders should not have to ship with an asset library (let alone a game engine) in order to properly render specific videos. A format like I'm talking about—one that doesn't know anything about application state, but does understand that it's compositing and placing a set of embedded assets each frame, rather than only knowing about pixels/gradels—seems like something generically useful to me. (Heck, we're close to support for such a format already, since many video players already understand the idea of compositing arbitrary stuff with placement instructions on the screen each frame, care of support for the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubStation_Alpha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubStation_Alpha subtitle format. That format is exactly the kind of "vector video" I'm talking about, except the only primitives it can position and style are text elements. Add RGBA-textured rectangles as another primitive type to it, and you'd get a video format!) And yes, I'm basically talking about the visual equivalent of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module_file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module_file (embedded samples/synth patches + sequencing information); or, if you prefer another analogy, "what Flash movies are if you exclude the ability to execute ActionScript."

There's something beautiful about the fact that the video is FAR larger in size than the program that initially generated the output. Almost worth watching for that fact alone.

kubanczyk 6y ago

Your comment's html source code (the entire <div>) is also larger with its 380 bytes.

kubanczyk 6y ago
Can be gzipped down to 275 though.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
It always stings when I make a website/app pulled through all the optimizers and compression algorithms, and the content people fuck it all up by adding 10MB of images :/.
- tiborsaas 6y ago
  You are building a passenger airliner optimized to don't crash and burn, don't worry about the cargo :)

derefr 6y ago

I’ve pondered before the idea of a video codec that works like RAR, where the video embeds an arbitrary user-specified virtual machine that can be used to decode the video frames. (How is this not just a program binary? Because it still would have the semantics of a video stream, with no random access to frame data, only tape-head-like access.) Seems like this would be perfect for videos that are just e.g. gameplay of games made of tiles+sprites: the video could just store one copy of the assets, and the frames could just be tile maps + sprite position information. It would also work well for “videos” that are really just a single static image. Or videos that are visualizations of the audio stream: the VM could actually take the audio frames as input and output the respective video frame.

saagarjha 6y ago
I think Super Smash Bros records replays as a random seed and user input, then generates the video on the fly from that.
- recrof 6y ago
  also, doom.
- derefr 6y ago
  Sure, but the various machinima/demo file-formats of games are just application state-data formats, not video formats per se. The difference comes in what can decode them. An application state-data format can only be decoded by the original application, because necessary context—in this case, the game engine that translates user input to game-state and then to displayed frames, and also the library of visual assets the game uses to render those frames—is in the application, rather than in the video. A video format is self-contained, and usually not domain-specific. Many encoders and many decoders can be written to target a video format, and the decoders should not have to ship with an asset library (let alone a game engine) in order to properly render specific videos. A format like I'm talking about—one that doesn't know anything about application state, but does understand that it's compositing and placing a set of embedded assets each frame, rather than only knowing about pixels/gradels—seems like something generically useful to me. (Heck, we're close to support for such a format already, since many video players already understand the idea of compositing arbitrary stuff with placement instructions on the screen each frame, care of support for the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubStation_Alpha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubStation_Alpha subtitle format. That format is exactly the kind of "vector video" I'm talking about, except the only primitives it can position and style are text elements. Add RGBA-textured rectangles as another primitive type to it, and you'd get a video format!) And yes, I'm basically talking about the visual equivalent of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module_file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module_file (embedded samples/synth patches + sequencing information); or, if you prefer another analogy, "what Flash movies are if you exclude the ability to execute ActionScript."