4 ms·

Also Wikimedia Commons' Media of the Day: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

userbinator 3y ago
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steamboat_Willie_(1928)_by_Walt_Disney.webm https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steamboat_Willie_(19... There's WebM, VP9 in various resolutions, and... MJPEG ? Setting aside the oddity of serving a 95-year-old cartoon in full HD, that's still an odd selection of codecs. Everything up to MPEG-4 ASP (XviD etc.) has already been patent-expired. There's also MP3 there, so why not an MPEG-2 (H.262), MPEG-1, or even H.261 encode?
- globular-toast 3y ago
  Why is it odd? The original is analogue. What resolution should it be scanned at? What about the Mona Lisa?
  - chungy 3y ago
    People often think that old video must be stuck to standard definition (or worse), because they're used to seeing it on NTSC/PAL broadcasts, VHS, or DVD. The reality is, these things were captured on film, and there's no reason you can't scan the film in high definition resolutions. Film is an analogue medium whose upper bound for resolution is dictated by the film stock and grain; 35mm film is sufficient to produce modern 4K scans and was one of the most common stocks in analogue video production. If anything, modern 1080p/2160p scans of old film bring the material much closer to how people with projectors originally saw the media, instead of a blurry scaled down version made for old television. If I may provide my favorite example, check out Wizard of Oz in 4K. It's from 1939, in full color, and holds up wonderfully well. The 4K transfer allows you to really appreciate the set design and makeup especially.
    - RyanHamilton 3y ago
      Thanks for mentioning Oz, that 4K is really good. Hopefully more films get that treatment.
      - guidoism 3y ago
        Really cool seeing some old music videos that were originally shot in film get the rescan update. I watched Beat It on YouTube the other day and was amazed by the quality.
    - masfuerte 3y ago
      A particular bugbear of mine is when black and white films get scanned and the process somehow introduces a bunch of moiré colour fringes into the digital copy. This feels like something that shouldn't be hard to get right.
      - chungy 3y ago
        I think I've noticed this most with SD NTSC and DVD MPEG2 transfers of B&W film. It's much less of a problem with HD Blu-ray versions.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- hashar 3y ago
  Because despite Wikipedia and sister projects being one of the largest web property, it is running on a thin budget and has starved engineering resources. As far as I know, the transcode code is maintained by a single employee (possibly as a side gig / on top of everything else) and the assistance of a volunteer. For Motion JPEG a recent config change ( https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/operations/mediawiki-config/+/967531 https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/operations/mediawiki-config... ) indicates: > Recent versions of iOS can play back suitably packaged VP9 video and Opus or MP3 audio, with a Motion-JPEG low-res fallback for older devices. So I guess it is there for back compatibility :)
  - userbinator 3y ago
    MPEG-2 or even MPEG-4 ASP seems like a better choice for back-compat.
  - manquer 3y ago
    Why though ? They spend $160M a year [1] and grew their cash reserves by 50% year on year in 2023, so not particularly running in an operating deficit environment. Transcoding is expensive but not that much, if my company doesn’t make 1/20 of Wikipedia and we can afford to do 1000s of hours a day of transcoding surely they can too. [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Wikimedia_Foundation_FS_FY2022-2023_Audit_Report.pdf https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/W...
    - laverya 3y ago
      Because in the end every organization is vulnerable to being eaten from the inside and worn as a skinsuit by parasites. Especially charities. Why would they spend money on improvements to the site when they could spend money on other things instead?
      - manquer 3y ago
        it is the easiest line item to spend on . Wikipedia has one of the best SRE teams, they were pretty transparent too, a lot of the communication was on IRC channels you could see, at least that was the case few years back. Running the top 5 website in the world is no joke especially as a non-profit and they do it well. They haven’t had any down time or major incident in the last decade which is pretty impressive. I would think their SRE team is not just good but also very motivated in the mission otherwise they would leave for much higher paying jobs, infra jobs are very lucrative if you have prior experience at more scale not much more scale than Wikipedia .
chris_wot 3y ago
Naked News was yesterday’s…

userbinator 3y ago

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steamboat_Willie_(1928)_by_Walt_Disney.webm https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steamboat_Willie_(19... There's WebM, VP9 in various resolutions, and... MJPEG ? Setting aside the oddity of serving a 95-year-old cartoon in full HD, that's still an odd selection of codecs. Everything up to MPEG-4 ASP (XviD etc.) has already been patent-expired. There's also MP3 there, so why not an MPEG-2 (H.262), MPEG-1, or even H.261 encode?

globular-toast 3y ago
Why is it odd? The original is analogue. What resolution should it be scanned at? What about the Mona Lisa?
- chungy 3y ago
  People often think that old video must be stuck to standard definition (or worse), because they're used to seeing it on NTSC/PAL broadcasts, VHS, or DVD. The reality is, these things were captured on film, and there's no reason you can't scan the film in high definition resolutions. Film is an analogue medium whose upper bound for resolution is dictated by the film stock and grain; 35mm film is sufficient to produce modern 4K scans and was one of the most common stocks in analogue video production. If anything, modern 1080p/2160p scans of old film bring the material much closer to how people with projectors originally saw the media, instead of a blurry scaled down version made for old television. If I may provide my favorite example, check out Wizard of Oz in 4K. It's from 1939, in full color, and holds up wonderfully well. The 4K transfer allows you to really appreciate the set design and makeup especially.
  - RyanHamilton 3y ago
    Thanks for mentioning Oz, that 4K is really good. Hopefully more films get that treatment.
    - guidoism 3y ago
      Really cool seeing some old music videos that were originally shot in film get the rescan update. I watched Beat It on YouTube the other day and was amazed by the quality.
  - masfuerte 3y ago
    A particular bugbear of mine is when black and white films get scanned and the process somehow introduces a bunch of moiré colour fringes into the digital copy. This feels like something that shouldn't be hard to get right.
    - chungy 3y ago
      I think I've noticed this most with SD NTSC and DVD MPEG2 transfers of B&W film. It's much less of a problem with HD Blu-ray versions.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
hashar 3y ago
Because despite Wikipedia and sister projects being one of the largest web property, it is running on a thin budget and has starved engineering resources. As far as I know, the transcode code is maintained by a single employee (possibly as a side gig / on top of everything else) and the assistance of a volunteer. For Motion JPEG a recent config change ( https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/operations/mediawiki-config/+/967531 https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/operations/mediawiki-config... ) indicates: > Recent versions of iOS can play back suitably packaged VP9 video and Opus or MP3 audio, with a Motion-JPEG low-res fallback for older devices. So I guess it is there for back compatibility :)
- userbinator 3y ago
  MPEG-2 or even MPEG-4 ASP seems like a better choice for back-compat.
- manquer 3y ago
  Why though ? They spend $160M a year [1] and grew their cash reserves by 50% year on year in 2023, so not particularly running in an operating deficit environment. Transcoding is expensive but not that much, if my company doesn’t make 1/20 of Wikipedia and we can afford to do 1000s of hours a day of transcoding surely they can too. [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Wikimedia_Foundation_FS_FY2022-2023_Audit_Report.pdf https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/W...
  - laverya 3y ago
    Because in the end every organization is vulnerable to being eaten from the inside and worn as a skinsuit by parasites. Especially charities. Why would they spend money on improvements to the site when they could spend money on other things instead?
    - manquer 3y ago
      it is the easiest line item to spend on . Wikipedia has one of the best SRE teams, they were pretty transparent too, a lot of the communication was on IRC channels you could see, at least that was the case few years back. Running the top 5 website in the world is no joke especially as a non-profit and they do it well. They haven’t had any down time or major incident in the last decade which is pretty impressive. I would think their SRE team is not just good but also very motivated in the mission otherwise they would leave for much higher paying jobs, infra jobs are very lucrative if you have prior experience at more scale not much more scale than Wikipedia .

chris_wot 3y ago

Naked News was yesterday’s…