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General => General Technical Chat => Topic started by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 01:41:11 am

Title: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 01:41:11 am
I don't pretend to understand LTT's business model, but he seems to be able to fund a small army of individuals doing his video production, probably essential if you consider the sheer volume of his organisation's output, and that he seems to put a lot of emphasis on the technical production quality.

Now whether the RED cameras add enough value to justify themselves, certainly not. However bearing in mind the airplay he's given them I'd imagine he's not paying rack rate for these, nor pretty much everything his channels review.
focus peaking.

I split this out as new thread from an old post.

This is insane, he has six video editors, presumably all full time, but there isn't really a lot of content on the channel for so many editors, not even two videos a day. What do these editors actually do?
Sure he has a TechQuickie and another channel. But all up it it would barely crack 2 videos a day total average across all channels.
It's like they have just gone so overboard on the 8k RED cameras and other hardware that they have just created a production system that requires so much more work to produce content.
I don't get it.
If I had no other distractions at all I could probably produce almost the same rate of technical videos myself as a one-man-band.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yFQd4MaKK0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yFQd4MaKK0)

[attachimg=1]
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 01:54:06 am
The other channels:

So across all three channels I calculate just over 1.5 videos per day on average total.

[attachimg=1]

[attachimg=2]
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: ataradov on July 30, 2019, 01:54:39 am
That's the thing. May be you need 6 editors to produce 2 videos a week. I have zero interest in computer hardware, yet I find myself watching more videos from LTT than EEVBlog. I'm not sure there is a one big contributing factor, but there are definitely a lot of small things.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 01:59:17 am
That's the thing. May be you need 6 editors to produce 2 videos a week.

The point I'm getting at is if you need 6 editors to make 1.5 computer tech videos a day on average then you must be really guilding the lilly on the fine details. Why do that for Youtube?
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 02:02:57 am
Seems they answered this question here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHbqzPCE_Pk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHbqzPCE_Pk)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: ataradov on July 30, 2019, 02:03:47 am
To get 2.79 B views and all the money associated with it.

May be that's the answer - they do it even if it is just YouTube. And people can feel the effort.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: SiliconWizard on July 30, 2019, 02:11:27 am
To get 2.79 B views and all the money associated with it.

May be that's the answer - they do it even if it is just YouTube. And people can feel the effort.

Yep. I too think there's no way you can get THAT many views and subscribers without all this effort producing videos, even if the resulting videos may not look to you like it's worth it. Just looks more professional. Even just the fact that people KNOW there is a whole staff behind the guy gets him a lot more audience.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 02:20:31 am
That's the thing. May be you need 6 editors to produce 2 videos a week. 10 videos a week.

You do if you aren't careful how you shoot stuff and you guild the lilly on all the details.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 02:24:31 am
Nope, I disagree. I doubt these other channels have anything close to the staff LTT has.
https://socialblade.com/youtube/top/category/tech/mostsubscribed
Of course you can rightly argue the type of videos they do they need a lot of staff doing stuff, but to me having 6 full time editors just tells me that they don't have an efficient enough production system and are fussing over details maybe they don't need to fuss over?
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: ataradov on July 30, 2019, 02:24:42 am
If care takes time and effort, then it may be better to shoot unorganized. As long as the end result pays the salary of all the people involved.

You say that you have organized the process of shooting and editing to the bare minimum linear order. It is excellent for one man operation, but it shows in the end result. Sometimes it is fine, sometimes I open the video scroll through 3-5 timestamps  and close it.

Having more people also prevents general burnout and further reduction in quality.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 02:39:50 am
https://socialblade.com/youtube/top/category/tech/mostsubscribed

On another note, has the heck does Adam Savage's tested channel (among others) get the same social blade B rating as my lousy channel?
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: ataradov on July 30, 2019, 02:49:24 am
Hard to tell without knowing how that rating is calculated. I really want to like their channel, but I just can't. The only thing I watch there is one day builds, since it is uninterrupted Adam on his own. I can't stand the rest of the team.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: wilfred on July 30, 2019, 03:04:47 am
Youtube seems to be (or wants to) changing from a collection of random independent content creators to become a more reliable source of advertiser friendly big channels. Do they make a profit yet?

Maybe content creators who get on board will be favoured by the algorithm. Given the fixed real estate on the YT front screen they will have to be ruthless in choosing what goes there. And that is the purpose of the algorithm. Maximise advertising revenue from the allocation of screen space. Just like supermarkets do with shelf space. 

Channels with a reliable stream of new content will carry higher weight in the selection.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 03:14:32 am
Hard to tell without knowing how that rating is calculated. I really want to like their channel, but I just can't. The only thing I watch there is one day builds, since it is uninterrupted Adam on his own. I can't stand the rest of the team.

I just watch Adam's builds as well. I don't know what content the others do really.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 03:16:57 am
Channels with a reliable stream of new content will carry higher weight in the selection.

Yet the Recommended videos tab now shows me mostly several year old videos. That algorithm is broken, never used to be like that, it used to show mostly fresh content.
I asked about this in twitter and everyone said they saw the same thing.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: coppice on July 30, 2019, 03:24:58 am
Youtube seems to be (or wants to) changing from a collection of random independent content creators to become a more reliable source of advertiser friendly big channels. Do they make a profit yet?

Maybe content creators who get on board will be favoured by the algorithm. Given the fixed real estate on the YT front screen they will have to be ruthless in choosing what goes there. And that is the purpose of the algorithm. Maximise advertising revenue from the allocation of screen space. Just like supermarkets do with shelf space. 

Channels with a reliable stream of new content will carry higher weight in the selection.
I suspect YouTube has given up on the idea that they will ever make a profit from what they have been doing, and are prepared to slash and burn because they have nothing to lose. Some of their recent actions make it look like they are hoping to become the conduit for output from the main stream media, and don't care if they hurt and alienate the independent producers who made them big (I specifically say big, rather than successful, because YouTube has not been successful. A successful business makes money.). That should provide them with consistently advertiser friendly material, but it doesn't sound like a winning strategy to me. I don't see how they could keep the big media companies happy and siphon off a good profit at the same time.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 03:33:24 am
I suspect YouTube has given up on the idea that they will ever make a profit from what they have been doing, and are prepared to slash and burn because they have nothing to lose. Some of their recent actions make it look like they are hoping to become the conduit for output from the main stream media, and don't care if they hurt and alienate the independent producers who made them big

The problem is they still need the eyeballs from the independent content creators to keep the whole ship afloat. If they switched to only mainstream media content Youtube would literally die within days.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: coppercone2 on July 30, 2019, 04:10:32 am
I think if you lay down a series of coins (perhaps Australian quarter equivalents) from the local communication studies building in your university to your lab you can have the same staffing

you might need crossing guards though if they are all walking with selfie sticks etc

I doubt they get paid much because they get celebirty status on a major youtube channel if they show up in a reflection. Plus you would get a COOL intro like CNN.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: coppercone2 on July 30, 2019, 04:15:05 am
Personally I would prefer more advanced equipment teardowns and higher end prototypes if you want to burn money (like having a die bonded package or EEVBLOG asic commissioned).

buy the roof of the office complex to setup radio equipment??

thin film deposition uCurrent mark III with higher bandwidth and matched temperature cofefficents on everything? advanced magnetics construction? fiber systems?

I think otherwise you end up with a doritos x-treme commercial

arent your videos supposed to inspire us to save up money for weird hardware to build strange things, not get alpha-wave activity in our brains looking at computer hardware we will never buy ?

I think it can also fail if its boring but advanced (like the signal path fails to catch my interest), because it has no damn goal other then to categorize equipment. Ok, so I got my 110GHz generator working, now what? Very useful if you need it, but its more like a technical reference then something I would watch regularly.

If anything, get a applications engineer. Half the time I build something off a forum or youtube, I have to get lucky to figure out a damn use for it (meanwhile I am questioning why). Computers are easy because no matter what you end up building or buying, so many people are making games you are bound to find some thing at least partially worth your investment. Can linus really go wrong with a build? If its slow you will just play a older game.

So the linus build I built was not up to snuff for the latest crysis, but I did manage to get quake 3 running on it ok and had a good time online for a few days.. can't really give a bad review (vs years of torment wondering about what to do with a VNA meter I learned how to repair.. then you get so burned out trying to find a use for your investment that you don't even feel like watching the channel anymore).

And I think comparing your channel to a PC mods channel is kinda ridiculous because PC mods are practically bling. If you talk to young people, having a nice PC is actually like a conversation piece. This just does not apply for a grey industrial box with a circle thing on it. You might need 3 hours and a spec sheet to even explain what the grey box does, not even how it is better then other grey boxes. People trying to understand you might even start getting eye twitches.. (the kinda stuff you need to keep a binder at your desk for to get the manager to stop asking you to put it back into the closet because it looks bad for a tour).

At least its less painful to hear about the latest fortnite case vs the lakers game..............
Title: your friends and the lab
Post by: coppercone2 on July 30, 2019, 04:53:11 am
your friends and your lab lab (not the arduino and laptop on the living room coffee table)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc-Tva632D0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc-Tva632D0)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: SteveyG on July 30, 2019, 06:27:26 am
That's the thing. May be you need 6 editors to produce 2 videos a week. I have zero interest in computer hardware, yet I find myself watching more videos from LTT than EEVBlog. I'm not sure there is a one big contributing factor, but there are definitely a lot of small things.

It's clearly a preference of the viewer. I enjoyed LTT when they did the office move and all the blogs around that. Because of the situation, they didn't heavily edit the videos around that time so it felt a lot more engaging.

Soon after, they went to heavily over produced videos as which point I unsubscribed. I prefer the somewhat adhoc/amateur style video.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: krish2487 on July 30, 2019, 08:58:29 am
I suspect it maybe because they schedule a rather large pipeline of videos and they just assign editors to work on different videos.
They almost certainly have videos prepped /under progress to be released over the course of the next two to three weeks on the editors table now..
while they shoot the subsequent weeks videos today.


I think it is a rather creative use of resources. Plan for a LOT more than what you need and then schedule your delivery. Either way, the content is not wasted, just staggered, and they always have atleast a couple of videos as a stand in if a scheduled video is not ready on its delivery date..

Edit: The more I think about it, the more it seems likely since most of the videos they produce (except for zero day product reviews or first look videos) most of their videos are rather time agnostic.. It does not matter if the video in question is released a day early or a day late..

Just my thoughts...
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: SteveyG on July 30, 2019, 10:21:44 am
I suspect it maybe because they schedule a rather large pipeline of videos and they just assign editors to work on different videos.
They almost certainly have videos prepped /under progress to be released over the course of the next two to three weeks on the editors table now..
while they shoot the subsequent weeks videos today.


I think it is a rather creative use of resources. Plan for a LOT more than what you need and then schedule your delivery. Either way, the content is not wasted, just staggered, and they always have atleast a couple of videos as a stand in if a scheduled video is not ready on its delivery date..

Edit: The more I think about it, the more it seems likely since most of the videos they produce (except for zero day product reviews or first look videos) most of their videos are rather time agnostic.. It does not matter if the video in question is released a day early or a day late..

Just my thoughts...

Pipelining still requires the same amount of effort. There is an initial push to build up the backlog, but from that point forward it's no different to editing videos for immediate release.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Mr. Scram on July 30, 2019, 10:38:58 am
I've never considered LTT videos to have a high production value. Despite the RED cameras shots are often unsharp and colour grading and lighting is all over the place. They always strike me as a well meaning bunch of amateurs who happened to get popular.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 11:02:37 am
I've never considered LTT videos to have a high production value. Despite the RED cameras shots are often unsharp and colour grading and lighting is all over the place. They always strike me as a well meaning bunch of amateurs who happened to get popular.

Yes, the stuff they do really doesn't warrant 8k RED cameras, it's just crazy. From what I've seen of LTT videos it's mostly shot freehand blog style.
And you get the impression it was shot in a hurry on the fly, but that's not surprising given that the amount of stuff Linus does on camera. They probably don't have time to set up shots or set up lighting, except for pre-designated sets.
The "production value" essentially comes in the editing.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: krish2487 on July 30, 2019, 11:09:51 am


True, but also the number of videos they work on, simultaneously. Out of the 6-8 editors they have, I think atleast 4 editors will be working at any point of time on a video.
What I want to say is, the pipeline is broken down to parallel workload for editors instead of a sequential one. and, as I said.. maybe a fallback video or two incase of not meeting a video edit on time..


Quote from: SteveyG on Today at 08:21:44 pm (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=201549.msg2580483#msg2580483)


>Quote from: krish2487 on Today at 06:58:29 pm (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=201549.msg2580327#msg2580327)
I suspect it maybe because they schedule a rather large pipeline of videos and they just assign editors to work on different videos.
They almost certainly have videos prepped /under progress to be released over the course of the next two to three weeks on the editors table now..
while they shoot the subsequent weeks videos today.


I think it is a rather creative use of resources. Plan for a LOT more than what you need and then schedule your delivery. Either way, the content is not wasted, just staggered, and they always have atleast a couple of videos as a stand in if a scheduled video is not ready on its delivery date..

Edit: The more I think about it, the more it seems likely since most of the videos they produce (except for zero day product reviews or first look videos) most of their videos are rather time agnostic.. It does not matter if the video in question is released a day early or a day late..

Just my thoughts...



Pipelining still requires the same amount of effort. There is an initial push to build up the backlog, but from that point forward it's no different to editing videos for immediate release.


Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: The Soulman on July 30, 2019, 11:11:36 am
I believe he also produces commercial ads and promos  for (local?) television?
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: coppice on July 30, 2019, 11:27:42 am
I've never considered LTT videos to have a high production value. Despite the RED cameras shots are often unsharp and colour grading and lighting is all over the place. They always strike me as a well meaning bunch of amateurs who happened to get popular.

Yes, the stuff they do really doesn't warrant 8k RED cameras, it's just crazy. From what I've seen of LTT videos it's mostly shot freehand blog style.
And you get the impression it was shot in a hurry on the fly, but that's not surprising given that the amount of stuff Linus does on camera. They probably don't have time to set up shots or set up lighting, except for pre-designated sets.
The "production value" essentially comes in the editing.
I think they use exotic equipment for image (not photographic image) reasons. They aren't prepared to put the effort into getting the most out of the equipment, and maybe that's all they need for their business model. Lots of people are impressed by "full HD" or "full UHD" on material that's so blurry the high definition angle is obviously irrelevant.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: krish2487 on July 30, 2019, 11:39:25 am


That and coupled with the 6 editors and extremely busy looking office is a good sales pitch for any "potential" investor.
It does give the impression of a big organization.


Quote from: coppice on Today at 09:27:42 pm (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=201549.msg2580627#msg2580627)


>Quote from: EEVblog on Today at 09:02:37 pm (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=201549.msg2580564#msg2580564)


>Quote from: Mr. Scram on Today at 08:38:58 pm (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=201549.msg2580510#msg2580510)
I've never considered LTT videos to have a high production value. Despite the RED cameras shots are often unsharp and colour grading and lighting is all over the place. They always strike me as a well meaning bunch of amateurs who happened to get popular.



Yes, the stuff they do really doesn't warrant 8k RED cameras, it's just crazy. From what I've seen of LTT videos it's mostly shot freehand blog style.
And you get the impression it was shot in a hurry on the fly, but that's not surprising given that the amount of stuff Linus does on camera. They probably don't have time to set up shots or set up lighting, except for pre-designated sets.
The "production value" essentially comes in the editing.


I think they use exotic equipment for image (not photographic image) reasons. They aren't prepared to put the effort into getting the most out of the equipment, and maybe that's all they need for their business model. Lots of people are impressed by "full HD" or "full UHD" on material that's so blurry the high definition angle is obviously irrelevant.


Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Mr. Scram on July 30, 2019, 12:08:52 pm
Yes, the stuff they do really doesn't warrant 8k RED cameras, it's just crazy. From what I've seen of LTT videos it's mostly shot freehand blog style.
And you get the impression it was shot in a hurry on the fly, but that's not surprising given that the amount of stuff Linus does on camera. They probably don't have time to set up shots or set up lighting, except for pre-designated sets.
The "production value" essentially comes in the editing.
The editing is decent, but nothing spectacular. I've seen much more impressive Youtube productions that equal or outgun pretty much any professional television production. I don't know why they have so much staff but it obviously works for them and people seem to enjoy the content so why not. If you can afford it and it works there's little incentive to change things. It'd just be a risk.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Mr. Scram on July 30, 2019, 12:12:47 pm
I think they use exotic equipment for image (not photographic image) reasons. They aren't prepared to put the effort into getting the most out of the equipment, and maybe that's all they need for their business model. Lots of people are impressed by "full HD" or "full UHD" on material that's so blurry the high definition angle is obviously irrelevant.
I'm not sure whether they don't want to put the effort in or are simply unable to achieve those production levels, but at the same time I don't think people care. The klutziness seems part of LTT's charm.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: coppercone2 on July 30, 2019, 12:31:21 pm
is it gonna have a zoom in rotation matrix view of a dip 8 op amp with sunglasses and gold chains overlaid on it with rap music thumping in the back ground?
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Mr. Scram on July 30, 2019, 12:56:41 pm
is it gonna have a zoom in rotation matrix view of a dip 8 op amp with sunglasses and gold chains overlaid on it with rap music thumping in the back ground?
Is what going to have that? Is this random bot chatter?
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: hans on July 30, 2019, 01:32:12 pm
I also read that they do 3rd party videos. They used to co-host the NCIX channel, but since NCIX is bankrupt I'm not sure what other customers they have (perhaps local, I'm not US/Canadian so can't tell).

I've never considered LTT videos to have a high production value. Despite the RED cameras shots are often unsharp and colour grading and lighting is all over the place. They always strike me as a well meaning bunch of amateurs who happened to get popular.

Yes, the stuff they do really doesn't warrant 8k RED cameras, it's just crazy. From what I've seen of LTT videos it's mostly shot freehand blog style.
And you get the impression it was shot in a hurry on the fly, but that's not surprising given that the amount of stuff Linus does on camera. They probably don't have time to set up shots or set up lighting, except for pre-designated sets.
The "production value" essentially comes in the editing.

I think one reason they cited for liking 8K footage, is the ability to do stabilize, reframe and zoom in on content in edit. I guess that's quite valuable to catch the many occasions Linus will drop stuff.

They actually do have camera operators and people that set up lighting for each set, but it seems none of it is permanent and I'm guessing they are constantly shuffling and reorganizing pieces of kit.

LTT used to freehand blog style, now it isn't anymore usually. Sometimes they do these live dicking around videos for extra clown entertainment value, but most of their videos is pre-scripted "read this from the teleprompter now" type of content. They also got a writers/reviewers team (probably same size as their editor group) that do projects for videos and write & review these scripts.
I'm not a video blogger myself, but from writing experience I think the quote from Mark Twain applies here as well:  “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”  If they want to thoroughly review a product or present a project in under 10 - 20 minutes, that requires probably significantly more preperation and polish than creating longer videos (not a judgement, it's a choice).

But I've got to agree, they seem to be a very large group to make 1.5 - 2 videos per day (probably around 30 minutes worth of content daily). On the other hand, if it works for them... I guess that's good?!.. I've got no idea how much money they charge per sponsor spot for a typical video, but I imagine it's several thousand dollars considering their videos typically get upwards of 1M views and these spots are baked/transitioned in smoothly for each video.

Multiply that by 365 videos per year, and you're probably easily in the 1.5M$ - 2M$ revenue range. I guess that's enough for them to easily have 10 - 20 people running around.. (note that these almost all of these guys are not qualified engineers asking for a 100k$ pay check).
Here they go into detail for this topic: https://youtu.be/bHbqzPCE_Pk
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 30, 2019, 01:44:00 pm
That's the thing. May be you need 6 editors to produce 2 videos a week. I have zero interest in computer hardware, yet I find myself watching more videos from LTT than EEVBlog. I'm not sure there is a one big contributing factor, but there are definitely a lot of small things.

It's clearly a preference of the viewer. I enjoyed LTT when they did the office move and all the blogs around that. Because of the situation, they didn't heavily edit the videos around that time so it felt a lot more engaging.

Soon after, they went to heavily over produced videos as which point I unsubscribed. I prefer the somewhat adhoc/amateur style video.

i get the impression that hey have done well and can afford to hire people who don't have to work that hard and they all have a good time. I got fed up with their channels as it was just hyped bull about hardware often with little understanding of the underlying tochnology and they have 0 electronics understanding so any time they go their they make fools of themselves to people like us but the majority of their viewers will be lapping it up. i do not see the point of their extreme and impractical and prohibitively expenisve builds. The whole collection of channels is noise as far as I'm concerned from some teenagers that never grew up. i mean they need a guy that nearly completed a degree to put their "from scratch" projects together :palm:
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: hans on July 30, 2019, 01:59:01 pm
You mean, they make their money off a business development/commercial value basis (for their sponsors/"customers") rather than hard technical work? And that is what sells really well on YouTube and television? How surprising. :scared:

These guys may be nerds, gadget freaks or whatever buzzword fits them on a technical level, but in the end, their content type is more of entertaining and "influential" in nature rather than purely informative or educational.

They are often accused of being Intel/Nvidia shills, after all, they often favour these products first hand when starting a new project. They then try to play down this with comedy in their content, like: "look, they were right, we only like NVIDIA!!11!". Well, that's no surprise if they only showcase crazy projects are pointless with high-end stuff (which has been Intel/NVIDIA the last decade or so), for example a desktop with half a TB of RAM (you only needed 640K of RAM after all right?).
However I see it as a similar thing as supercars: you really don't need a car that can go 200mph, and you also don't really need to make an effort to make such a car louder and more shouty on the road. But still people will mess around with them, and that kind of content will get a ton of attention from "enthusiasts".
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 30, 2019, 02:04:19 pm
Well true. i mean when i built my last rig my dick got a whole 2 inches longer ;). They obviously entertain but I wauld not what a channel about computers purely to be entertained. Even when I hear Linus (yea nice name for the channel bet it's not his real one) trying to talk technicalities even though I do not understand the subject first hand myself it is obvious that he has quickly looked the subject up. But if that's entertaining i guess he will get views.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: SiliconWizard on July 30, 2019, 02:11:23 pm
Well, some people seem to still be pretty naive regarding being successful on Youtube...
Sure the channels with huge audience all have a much more entertaining content than technical. Just the way it works. Same on TV or on any other media.

Even Electroboom's channel, which has a much more "entertaining" factor than EEVBlog, but is kinda in the same area, has many more viewers and subscribers. Oh well. (That said, he may not make as much money as Dave. I don't know, but I would tend to think so. So the number of views is certainly not the only factor, but it plays a huge role for sponsors.)

So, LTT has a big audience, makes a lot of money and can afford a pretty big workplace, expensive gear and several employees. He's probably not doing things the most efficiently, but it works, it has created jobs, and having that many employees allows him to probably have lighter days for him and his team. What's wrong with that?

Of course the videos could be better produced with less resources, but who cares? Their whole point is to have a successful business, not to do things the most efficiently possible with the most technical and honest content... and, if they can have a succesful business without ruining their personal lives, why do the same with fewer resources?

Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 30, 2019, 02:15:54 pm
Well taking their channel as entertainment yea sure, but it worries me that people will take their attemps at technical output seriously.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Bud on July 30, 2019, 02:18:12 pm
His name is Linus Sebastian.

They have a stupid guy who is sitting regularly with Linus on WAN shows, all he does is giggling and looking at Linus. I have no idea what value he brings to the group.
In general i think their success is not in tech content but in something else that is in the manner , maybe energy. There are plentt of highly technical channels on the Tube where the creators mumble jumble and speak as if they are dying.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 30, 2019, 02:21:01 pm
It's all the image thing. multiple people makes it look better in some peoples eyes. People seem to prefer entertainment.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: coppice on July 30, 2019, 02:24:37 pm
They have a stupid guy who is sitting regularly with Linus on WAN shows, all he does is giggling and looking at Linus. I have no idea what value he brings to the group.
The idiot sidekick is a classic role. The dumb can related to him, and the pseudo smart can sneer. Much of the audience is happy.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 02:26:54 pm
I'm not a video blogger myself, but from writing experience I think the quote from Mark Twain applies here as well:  “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”  If they want to thoroughly review a product or present a project in under 10 - 20 minutes, that requires probably significantly more preperation and polish than creating longer videos (not a judgement, it's a choice).

it's true for Youtube video production too I can assure you.

Quote
But I've got to agree, they seem to be a very large group to make 1.5 - 2 videos per day (probably around 30 minutes worth of content daily). On the other hand, if it works for them... I guess that's good?!.. I've got no idea how much money they charge per sponsor spot for a typical video, but I imagine it's several thousand dollars considering their videos typically get upwards of 1M views and these spots are baked/transitioned in smoothly for each video.

A 1M plus sponsor spot would be in the order of $10-$20k easily, that's only $10-$20 CPM. So they can afford the editors and other staff no problems.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 02:33:45 pm
So, LTT has a big audience, makes a lot of money and can afford a pretty big workplace, expensive gear and several employees. He's probably not doing things the most efficiently, but it works, it has created jobs, and having that many employees allows him to probably have lighter days for him and his team. What's wrong with that?

Nothing wrong with it at all, I was just kinda shocked to watch that video see they had 6 full time editors. Then I thought they must make half a dozen videos a day or something, and then kinda shocked again to find it's only 1.5 a day over all channels.
I think Linus probably had some sort of grand vision for some huge media empire, and just kinda made it happen. I'm not sure it organically happened that way, but I could be wrong. I watch almost nothing of LTT so have no real idea of the history.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Black Phoenix on July 30, 2019, 02:53:02 pm
Well they are also the owners of Float Plane, a suppose platform that is a alternative to early access compared with Youtube:

Quote
Its basically video hosting site with streaming function to allow users to directly support their favourite creators. You pay fee per creator and see whatever content they have in there. This can be video without ads, videos of better quality, BTS videos, early access, exclusive streaming etc.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: SiliconWizard on July 30, 2019, 02:58:09 pm
I have watched a few. To me Linus has the "businessman" profile, knows how to create events, attract audience. He's clearly not the typical engineer who wants to share his experience and knowledge, and then good thing if it can make a little extra money. Linus clearly has marketing skills.

I don't know how it really happened. I think there's still not really a unique "secret sauce" for becoming a successful entrepreneur. Always a combination of hard work, dedication, the right mindset and some luck too.

I had watched one video where they were building kind of a gigantic "centralized" liquid cooling system for all their computers. That's when I realized how many people worked there, and also how they would embark on funky projects, requiring a lot of resources, mainly for the entertainment factor, even though there's always some technical basis.

Not sure how LTT functions exactly, but from what I've seen on a few videos, the team doing video editing also helps with LTT's projects on a regular basis, they don't just edit videos. At least that seemed so back when I watched. Maybe they have grown yet some more and now those people are fully dedicated to one task, but I don't think they used to.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 03:18:44 pm
Well they are also the owners of Float Plane, a suppose platform that is a alternative to early access compared with Youtube:

For years I've been hearing about Floatplane from every LTT fan on the planet, "why don't you join it" etc
But there was never any info on it, anywhere, I was like, meh.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Mr. Scram on July 30, 2019, 03:29:18 pm
Well true. i mean when i built my last rig my dick got a whole 2 inches longer ;). They obviously entertain but I wauld not what a channel about computers purely to be entertained. Even when I hear Linus (yea nice name for the channel bet it's not his real one) trying to talk technicalities even though I do not understand the subject first hand myself it is obvious that he has quickly looked the subject up. But if that's entertaining i guess he will get views.
As I've said before I think the klutziness is part of the appeal. I'm not entirely convinced it's done wholly on purpose as part of it seems involuntary incompetence, but giving people things they can relate to is obviously not going to hurt the views. The dropping things and doing badly executed modifications seem to be intentionally introduced or capitalized upon elements, others seem less intentional. It's clear that all the in depth channels garner smaller numbers. Most people aren't interested in the nitty gritty or nuanced views. Going for silly extremes and keeping things more superifical seems to be the recipe for success on Youtube. Videos about destroying expensive things, silly challenges or giving away high value items consistently score well.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 30, 2019, 03:34:09 pm
Basically people are superficial so superficial channels work. We live in a brain dead society, beginning of the end :)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Mr. Scram on July 30, 2019, 03:41:20 pm
Basically people are superficial so superficial channels work. We live in a brain dead society, beginning of the end :)
We always lived in a braindead society, it's just that recorded history tended to be recorded by the above average part of it. With social media it's visible in all its glory.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 30, 2019, 03:52:29 pm
cmon, people actually had hobbies once, now they are too lazy, people do not have hobbies any more, a small minority have actual hobbies ond electronics as a hobby was saved by the advent of cheap microcontrollers and has now been hijacked by lazy people that think blinking an LED on an arduino is "doing electronics".
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Mr. Scram on July 30, 2019, 04:01:04 pm
cmon, people actually had hobbies once, now they are too lazy, people do not have hobbies any more, a small minority have actual hobbies ond electronics as a hobby was saved by the advent of cheap microcontrollers and has now been hijacked by lazy people that think blinking an LED on an arduino is "doing electronics".
That would be called "Old Man Syndrome"  ;D

"Never has youth been exposed to such dangers of both perversion and arrest as in our own land and day. Increasing urban life with its temptations, prematurities, sedentary occupations, and passive stimuli just when an active life is most needed, early emancipation and a lessening sense for both duty and discipline, the haste to know and do all befitting man's estate before its time, the mad rush for sudden wealth and the reckless fashions set by its gilded youth--all these lack some of the regulatives they still have in older lands with more conservative conditions."

Describes modern life and its electronic temptations, doesn't it? Not really, as it was written in 1904.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: SiliconWizard on July 30, 2019, 04:02:24 pm
Well, all this online media consumption sparks new passions for some, but encourages passiveness for most.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 30, 2019, 04:24:49 pm
The burst of the internet has only happened over the last couple of decades. streaming services and so called social media over the last decade if less. Once you had to work for your entertainment. Now you just slap the TV on and gawp at it with the content ever brain numbing, of if you can be assed to use one finger social media where you can fester in an evironment that reinforces your views. People who think that posting their outrage at politicians on facebook makes a difference are a waste of space but we have to endure them.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: dnwheeler on July 30, 2019, 05:47:44 pm
There's an interesting video on LTT made by one of the editors showing his workflow. It's roughly four hours long, if I remember right. I think they've said that a typical 10-12 minute video takes several man days to produce, including research, writing a script (yes, everything is scripted, even it if looks candid), setup, lighting, filming, shooting B roll, recording product placement, and editing everything (color grading, text and graphics overlays, etc.). They typically have 3-4 such videos in production at once, just for their own content.

LTT presents and image that very finely tuned to their target audience, providing a very consistent platform for advertisers and other sponsors.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: coppice on July 30, 2019, 07:07:59 pm
There's an interesting video on LTT made by one of the editors showing his workflow. It's roughly four hours long, if I remember right. I think they've said that a typical 10-12 minute video takes several man days to produce, including research, writing a script (yes, everything is scripted, even it if looks candid), setup, lighting, filming, shooting B roll, recording product placement, and editing everything (color grading, text and graphics overlays, etc.). They typically have 3-4 such videos in production at once, just for their own content.

LTT presents and image that very finely tuned to their target audience, providing a very consistent platform for advertisers and other sponsors.
Everything LTT produce sounds scripted, and most is narrated at a speed that suggests they target an audience that isn't trying to think about anything being said.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: coppercone2 on July 30, 2019, 09:43:17 pm
what he is doing is kinda easy compared to... electronics design and laboratory work? (potentially very frustrating but none the less easier).

its systems interoperability vs physics/nature

and dave jones is supposed to be unscripted.. its just not compatible (and it would be creepy)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 30, 2019, 10:16:15 pm
Well all they do is script some waffle. It's 90% image, good if you can get it I guess. Not my thing.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on July 30, 2019, 10:16:35 pm
I could never watch a full video of LTT, because he seems so.. insincere to me.  Being scripted explains a lot.

Some people want just bread and circuses, some don't.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: RoGeorge on July 30, 2019, 10:36:46 pm
It's either quantity or quality.  Pick one.  Other said, can not be popular and elitist at the same time.

Guess which strategy will survive in the long run.   ;D
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on July 30, 2019, 10:40:21 pm
Guess which strategy will survive in the long run.   ;D
A billion flies cannot be wrong: excrement tastes delicious.  :horse:

My point was, I've never seen LTT as an educational/informational channel, more like one of those gag shows where they do funny stuff and show expensive products they got for free.  Some like it, fine.  But, please, don't see it like a model everyone should follow, because more viewers is better than fewer viewers.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 10:46:16 pm
There's an interesting video on LTT made by one of the editors showing his workflow. It's roughly four hours long, if I remember right. I think they've said that a typical 10-12 minute video takes several man days to produce, including research, writing a script (yes, everything is scripted, even it if looks candid), setup, lighting, filming, shooting B roll, recording product placement, and editing everything (color grading, text and graphics overlays, etc.). They typically have 3-4 such videos in production at once, just for their own content.
LTT presents and image that very finely tuned to their target audience, providing a very consistent platform for advertisers and other sponsors.

When you have to colour grade your Youtube tech review videos, it's safe to say you are over doing it a tad.
But hey, it works for them, so whatever.
And yes, a polished 10min video can easily take a couple of days work.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: rs20 on July 30, 2019, 10:46:40 pm
They always strike me as a well meaning bunch of amateurs who happened to get popular.

Isn't that almost the definition of a professional? I mean, substitute "popular" with "paid" and you're there.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 10:47:39 pm
It's either quantity or quality.  Pick one.  Other said, can not be popular and elitist at the same time.
Guess which strategy will survive in the long run.   ;D

At the extreme end of the Youtube quality bell curve is Captain Disillusion.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Mr. Scram on July 30, 2019, 10:52:26 pm
When you have to colour grade your Youtube tech review videos, it's safe to say you are over doing it a tad.
But hey, it works for them, so whatever.
And yes, a polished 10min video can easily take a couple of days work.
Too bad they suck at it :P I feel a channel like Marques Brownlee's is getting it right. Great photography, framing, styling, grading and editing. They obviously think about what they're doing and then very deliberately do it right. Few television productions manage to get to that level, including the view count.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 10:54:35 pm
I could never watch a full video of LTT, because he seems so.. insincere to me.  Being scripted explains a lot.

For scripted I think he does really well at presenting, explains the popularity.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 10:57:53 pm
When you have to colour grade your Youtube tech review videos, it's safe to say you are over doing it a tad.
But hey, it works for them, so whatever.
And yes, a polished 10min video can easily take a couple of days work.
Too bad they suck at it :P I feel a channel like Marques Brownlee's is getting it right. Great photography, framing, styling, grading and editing. They obviously think about what they're doing and then very deliberately do it right. Few television productions manage to get to that level, including the view count.

He's another channel that uses crazy high end gear:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKyul7puruQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKyul7puruQ)

But even with all that insane I still hate the top down shot. Maybe it's just me...
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Mr. Scram on July 30, 2019, 11:04:27 pm
He's another channel that uses crazy high end gear:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKyul7puruQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKyul7puruQ)
At least it shows! The results tell me they know how to eke out the performance of their gear.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 11:10:25 pm
He's another channel that uses crazy high end gear:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKyul7puruQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKyul7puruQ)
At least it shows! The results tell me they know how to eke out the performance of their gear.

Yes, I just don't see the same level of quality in a LTT video. It's like it could have been shot with the gear I have.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Towger on July 30, 2019, 11:24:28 pm
At the opposite end. Kermit Weeks channel is largely shot with a basic camera/phone on a selfie stick with minimum editing.  He has a steady hand and does a good job with it, there are interview episodes which almost look like he has separate camera man.  The ability to chat a way, look at an item and subconsciously take a decent video at the same time.

https://youtu.be/8im_ZghEpLs
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: SiliconWizard on July 30, 2019, 11:25:08 pm
@Mr. Scram: Well, yeah, I don't think they suck that bad. It's rather well done and it works for them. It attracts both viewers and advertisers/sponsors. Again they are apparently doing what it takes to get them where they want to be, so why would they do any differently? Of course you may not like what they do and that's fine, you may think they are using a lot more resources than needed for the result they get, but they don't appear to be in need of advice. ;D

Anyway, to me it's mainly just computer hardware reviews. There are literally thousands of web sites, magazines and Youtube channels doing the same, so making it in this category is probably not as easy as it looks. The added entertainement, drama and funny projects are just excuses for doing reviews and showing gear.

By nature what they do is not a lot more than augmented advertising. Exactly like the web sites and magazines doing the same. I remember Linus even inserts an ad inside each of his videos, that he pitches himself. That should clearly tell you how LTT works. It's basically an advertising channel, with just the right amount of entertainment and tips to get enough audience.

Don't expect this to be an engineering channel. It has nothing to do with a channel like EEVBlog, and hopefully EEVBlog never becomes that! (Although I still wish Dave to make as much cash :D as long as it doesn't become an entertainment show, or an advertising channel to sell Keysight stuff...)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: ataradov on July 30, 2019, 11:28:00 pm
There is another angle to having all that gear, which Linus pointed out on one of the WAN Shows. They objectively need to employ people, there is no way around it. And people need to be kept interested, otherwise they leave. And part of that increasing "toys" collection is that camera operators want to work with different and better gear and improve their skills.

And the cost of that camera compared to a salary of a good worker is really negligible.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 11:29:23 pm
There is another angle to having all that gear, which Linus pointed out on one of the WAN Shows. They objectively need to employ people, there is no way around it. And people need to be kept interested, otherwise they leave. And part of that increasing "toys" collection is that camera operators want to work with different and better gear and improve their skills.
And the cost of that camera compared to a salary of a good worker is really negligible.

That makes sense.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 30, 2019, 11:39:04 pm
This just popped up, Smart Every Day's huge data problem that Linus attempts to fix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcWSrIiR1tY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcWSrIiR1tY)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: RoGeorge on July 30, 2019, 11:48:27 pm
Just seen that, and thumbed it up Austrian way  ;D
I don't recall any other video so low from Destin's channel  :-\
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 31, 2019, 12:05:43 am
I don't recall any other video so low from Destin's channel  :-\

He got a free server out of it  :-+
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: coppercone2 on July 31, 2019, 03:23:31 am
some talented youtubers were messing with video way before youtube (i.e. angry videogame nerd).
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Black Phoenix on July 31, 2019, 03:39:00 am
Related with the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6O9VdFzI7s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6O9VdFzI7s)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: wilfred on July 31, 2019, 06:00:37 am
That Smarter Everyday video led me to a LTT video showing the Saturn V Instrument Unit. That alone was reason enought to watch it.

It did also show some post processing effects. So maybe LTT editors do more than just edit.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 31, 2019, 06:07:19 am
That Smarter Everyday video led me to a LTT video showing the Saturn V Instrument Unit. That alone was reason enought to watch it.

Yes, Linus did a great job on the Saturn V video, I was impressed.
It was very likely he had to write that on-site and shoot it, he mentioned they had to keep the place open late for him.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 31, 2019, 07:16:35 am
they shoot in 8K? I am sitting 1m from a 42.5" 4K screen. It has 4 pixels/mm (104dpi), i also have a 27" 4K screen with 208dpi that i can sit 0.5m from. I cannot see the pixels on a 4K screen. I would argue that youtube should limit it's output to HD unless the user asks for 4K. I cannot tell the diference between 4K and HD when I am sat 1m from the screen and the only reason i got a 4K screen was so that fonts would be smooth. Why even bother to shoot a youtube vide in 8K? at 4x the required datarate, oh I suppose it's some stupid fps rate as well. But I guess it's bragging rights and that attracts and audience - wow must match this channel is was shot at 4x the resolution and 3 times the frame rate my eyes will appreciate or my hardware can work at but sure it makes a difference.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Black Phoenix on July 31, 2019, 07:31:39 am
they shoot in 8K? I am sitting 1m from a 42.5" 4K screen. It has 4 pixels/mm (104dpi), i also have a 27" 4K screen with 208dpi that i can sit 0.5m from. I cannot see the pixels on a 4K screen. I would argue that youtube should limit it's output to HD unless the user asks for 4K. I cannot tell the diference between 4K and HD when I am sat 1m from the screen and the only reason i got a 4K screen was so that fonts would be smooth. Why even bother to shoot a youtube vide in 8K? at 4x the required datarate, oh I suppose it's some stupid fps rate as well. But I guess it's bragging rights and that attracts and audience - wow must match this channel is was shot at 4x the resolution and 3 times the frame rate my eyes will appreciate or my hardware can work at but sure it makes a difference.

For what I read, since I don't understand anything about video, most of people using the 8K cameras do that and then downsample the video to 4K. For what I read, again gives more info regarding the average of the colours in the pixels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W6JfiC-QBk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W6JfiC-QBk)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emuKA3tBDBw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emuKA3tBDBw)

It's also used to crop and reframing, so basically they shoot 8K and crop what they want into 4K.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6yiTjLzjoo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6yiTjLzjoo)

Again regarding what I read and listen, don't have any experience with video editing. And to be sincere after 4K I don't note any difference. The biggest I note is in close ups to a face of a person, you can really see the texture of the skin of a person and hairs in 4K compared with 1080p.

Still I note more difference in resolution in Animation, specially Anime/Computer FX Movie from 4K to 1080P that real life actors. In my honest opinion, 1080P in a good OLED TV with HDR multi zone looks way better that Normal 4K in IPS screens, correctly calibrated to DCI-P3
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 31, 2019, 07:39:03 am
I understand why one may want to shoot at a higher resolution. I use a 24Mp DSLR but rarely use pictures at more than the 8Mp of my 4K monitor but yes in photos i may want to crop and do work on it which is best done at a higher resolution and then down sampled. For the same reason i have stitched photos froman 8Mp camera to a total frame of 50Mp with overlapping of each frame such as to double the data in the image but that is photography, a still photo where you can gaze at the image as long as you like. But in video all of these principles are a waste of time. Sure a shit 8K camera will get you good 4K and shit 4K will get you good HD due to downsampling but if you have a very good quality 4K camera you do not need to down sample. As it is multiple elements on the sensor make up each pixel in the image.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Black Phoenix on July 31, 2019, 07:46:22 am
Exactly, that's how I think too, specially when I jumped from the Nikon D90 I had for more that 7 years to the D7500. First the increase of file size, but with that the extra colour definition of the sensor and the requirement to best framing and a big allowance to crop when things don't go as I wanted.

Photo were you spend a lot of time looking is more important that quality of high definition and big resolution that when video were the image moves and that high quality is not always perceptible.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: krish2487 on July 31, 2019, 07:59:26 am


I really doubt if the price of this specific camera in question (the red 8k) will be negligible to a really skilled camera operator..
lesser.... sure...
insignificant / negligible... certainly not
I dont know if the camera operator for LTT is a seasoned red operator.. and if that  was a recruiting criteria for hiring him.. If so, then maybe the gap between the camera and the operator reduces.. otherwise.. the camera is still, potentially, much more of a expensive equipment than a operator.


Quote from: ataradov on Today at 09:28:00 am (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=201549.msg2582370#msg2582370)
There is another angle to having all that gear, which Linus pointed out on one of the WAN Shows. They objectively need to employ people, there is no way around it. And people need to be kept interested, otherwise they leave. And part of that increasing "toys" collection is that camera operators want to work with different and better gear and improve their skills.

And the cost of that camera compared to a salary of a good worker is really negligible.


Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: TheAmmoniacal on July 31, 2019, 08:38:40 am
Linus Media Group is much bigger than his website shows - and even more if you consider Floatplane (LMG is the sole owner AFAIK). In a recent WAN show I seem to remember 35-36 employees? They had 20 employees a year ago https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/8839ad/we_are_linus_tech_tips_a_youtube_channel_that/ (https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/8839ad/we_are_linus_tech_tips_a_youtube_channel_that/) and had 6 job listings some months ago, and posted another two vacant positions recently.

All new hires get a 6 month grace period where they are not revealed to the public.

Hard to tell what the real number is at this point.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 31, 2019, 08:45:27 am
For what I read, since I don't understand anything about video, most of people using the 8K cameras do that and then downsample the video to 4K. For what I read, again gives more info regarding the average of the colours in the pixels.

Of little to no consequence on Youtube

Quote
It's also used to crop and reframing, so basically they shoot 8K and crop what they want into 4K.

Sure. But how about some basic camera skills to get framing right in the camera to begin with, then no extra editing step needed.
Zoom is handy, but most content doesn't really benefit from that much.

Quote
Again regarding what I read and listen, don't have any experience with video editing. And to be sincere after 4K I don't note any difference. The biggest I note is in close ups to a face of a person, you can really see the texture of the skin of a person and hairs in 4K compared with 1080p.

If oyu upload in 4k then Youtube encodes at a higher bitrate, so less compression artefacts. One advantage of 4k uploads.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 31, 2019, 08:49:05 am
with the camera resolution it's the same old "my dick is bigger than yours" thing. What next? 16K Somewhere on youtube is a very good video by a guy about the real resolution requirements and he shows that HD is adequate enough so 4K is plenty and even editing in 4K to show at 4K or HD is fine. doing it in 8K is just bragging rights for the camera gear, their dicks and the the computers required to process and store that. Of course some people will watch the channes "because it must be good if they use all that gear" and are oblivious to its vacuous nature in terms of actual content.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: tszaboo on July 31, 2019, 08:50:17 am
Well, they have the Techlinked, which is researched, scripted, shot, edited, and uploaded the same day. He has employes, meaning they work 9-5, as I understood they are looking for faster equipment, cause they cannot go home until it is uploaded. If you go to their website, https://www.linusmediagroup.com (https://www.linusmediagroup.com) they only list 4 editors. The clickbait title could have been a clickbait. People take vacations, and the show must go on? And as I understand they also upload to chinese youtube.

And the RED camera: Wouldnt you have one? It is cool tech.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 31, 2019, 08:51:01 am
One of the best channels about video production is Filmaker IQ
Brilliant videos.

https://www.youtube.com/user/FilmmakerIQcom (https://www.youtube.com/user/FilmmakerIQcom)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 31, 2019, 08:52:38 am
Well, they have the Techlinked

I included that channel in my 3 channel total video count, 1.5 videos per day average for all 3 channels combined, so 1 video every two days on average for each channel.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 31, 2019, 08:55:14 am
If oyu upload in 4k then Youtube encodes at a higher bitrate, so less compression artefacts. One advantage of 4k uploads.

Really? what is the bitrate per Mp ? the advantage to 4K is that you can't see the pixels so even at an equivalent compression rate to HD of data rate to pixel count you can't see the artifcts that may still be there because they are too small to see. Plus the more pixels there are the more the adjacent ones are alike so easier to compress. You may as well do HD at the same bit rate as 4K and it will look equally sharp.

A good human eye can distinguish 2 dots 1mm apart at 1m, I am 1m from my screen and I have 4 dot per mm. 2 dots per mm are fine for video and I usually set a youtube video to HD even if 4K is available, but the shooting and processing in 4K will have benefitted the quality as there are 4 dots input to every dot of output, but 8K is just silly unless you want to crop loads in which case learn to shoot.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 31, 2019, 08:59:17 am
At the end of the day 4K streaming will just increase the load on the internet and servers, is it really worth the electricity being used to power these wasted resources? we are supposed to be watching our carbon footprint and yet we are drawing data and the associated energy cost unneccesarily just for an ego boost. I am watching youtube in 4K get me! really? I could not even tell that i was watching 4K the first time I did, I don't miss it watching in HD.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: wilfred on July 31, 2019, 09:29:01 am

For what I read, since I don't understand anything about video, most of people using the 8K cameras do that and then downsample the video to 4K. For what I read, again gives more info regarding the average of the colours in the pixels.


16.5 stops of dynamic range is what I heard from the 140K video. It sounded too good at about 3 stops more than the best full frame DSLRs. Naturally it was double shot.
https://www.red.com/red-101/hdrx-high-dynamic-range-video (https://www.red.com/red-101/hdrx-high-dynamic-range-video)

Still good if you need it and know how to use it. Some interesting discussions about various aspects of video production there too.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 31, 2019, 10:06:06 am
again for indoor shooting lots of dynamic range is not essential and with all the background work they are doing they must be setting up lighting properly?
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on July 31, 2019, 12:42:42 pm
If oyu upload in 4k then Youtube encodes at a higher bitrate, so less compression artefacts. One advantage of 4k uploads.

Really? what is the bitrate per Mp ? the advantage to 4K is that you can't see the pixels so even at an equivalent compression rate to HD of data rate to pixel count you can't see the artifcts that may still be there because they are too small to see. Plus the more pixels there are the more the adjacent ones are alike so easier to compress. You may as well do HD at the same bit rate as 4K and it will look equally sharp.

Youtube don't tell you. But people have done experiments and the same footage uploaded in 4k looks better when played back at 1080p then if you uploaded it at 4k. It must be allocating a higher bandwidth to the internal 1080p than a 1080p upload.

Quote
A good human eye can distinguish 2 dots 1mm apart at 1m, I am 1m from my screen and I have 4 dot per mm. 2 dots per mm are fine for video and I usually set a youtube video to HD even if 4K is available, but the shooting and processing in 4K will have benefitted the quality as there are 4 dots input to every dot of output, but 8K is just silly unless you want to crop loads in which case learn to shoot.

The detail comes out in the compression (i.e. moving images) rather than actual pixels in static images.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 31, 2019, 02:00:11 pm


Youtube don't tell you. But people have done experiments and the same footage uploaded in 4k looks better when played back at 1080p then if you uploaded it at 4k. It must be allocating a higher bandwidth to the internal 1080p than a 1080p upload.



Which is what i suspect and recording and processing in 4K is not excessive, I'd just not bother to whatch in 4K and risk buffering. But 8K ? that is just silly for talking head videos.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: SiliconWizard on July 31, 2019, 03:24:22 pm
But 8K ? that is just silly for talking head videos.

Certainly sounds silly for Youtube viewing. But I suspect people filming in 8K are more or less expecting that someday they could "sell" their videos to TV channels or something...
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 31, 2019, 03:28:01 pm
a TV channel at over 4K? nope. look at the resounding success that 3D cinema is......., Oh, It not, is it? I think cinema could use 4K but not much more and TV only needs HD maybe 4K, I'd settle for 1440p but not 2160p. It may come but what TV station wants 8K? lots of linuses video's are time sensitive, at best they may have historic value one day.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: technix on July 31, 2019, 03:38:49 pm
a TV channel at over 4K? nope. look at the resounding success that 3D cinema is......., Oh, It not, is it? I think cinema could use 4K but not much more and TV only needs HD maybe 4K, I'd settle for 1440p but not 2160p. It may come but what TV station wants 8K? lots of linuses video's are time sensitive, at best they may have historic value one day.
At least a few news agencies in China has been shooting at 9k for producing in 8k. Currently the public feed is mostly 1080p25 and 720p25 with a few 2160p50 pilot channels available, but the agency managing broadcast television is awarded a 5G license for using that technology for OTA television with 4K and 8K public feeds.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: SiliconWizard on July 31, 2019, 03:39:05 pm
I don't know much about current TV broadcasting standards, but I think 4K is already the standard for what a typical TV channel ideally expects to get from third parties even when they just broadcast at Full HD.

8K certainly seems ahead of its time but it may become again what TV channels expect to get in a few years from now... to broadcast in 4K.

And yes I'm just guessing here, maybe this wishful thinking is part of some Youtubers' megalomania! ;D

But it's likely just a marketing tool. They are probably hoping that having 8K videos when many competitors only film in 4K makes them have an edge, whatever it is good for...
Ahh, marketing!
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: technix on July 31, 2019, 03:44:03 pm
But it's likely just a marketing tool. They are probably hoping that having 8K videos when many competitors only film in 4K makes them have an edge, whatever it is good for...
Ahh, marketing!
Also their viewer group are high end. I want to bet that RED is willing to sell LTT their equipment at a discount, as they can see their potential customers in LTT viewers. This means LTT videos, with their proud displays of "toys," becomes somewhat of a RED ad. Earned media is to be cherished.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 31, 2019, 03:45:07 pm
I don't know much about current TV broadcasting standards, but I think 4K is already the standard for what a typical TV channel ideally expects to get from third parties even when they just broadcast at Full HD.

8K certainly seems ahead of its time but it may become again what TV channels expect to get in a few years from now... to broadcast in 4K.

And yes I'm just guessing here, maybe this wishful thinking is part of some Youtubers' megalomania! ;D

But it's likely just a marketing tool. They are probably hoping that having 8K videos when many competitors only film in 4K makes them have an edge, whatever it is good for...
Ahh, marketing!

Totally pointless, so i can whatch on a 43" screen with 8 pixels per mm, total waste of resources, it's just a race to have "the biggest dick".
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: tszaboo on July 31, 2019, 03:49:11 pm
I don't know much about current TV broadcasting standards, but I think 4K is already the standard for what a typical TV channel ideally expects to get from third parties even when they just broadcast at Full HD.
You would think so. Even big Hollywood movies are made in Full HD and upscaled later. Like the new Avengers movie. Billions of dollars spent on it. CGI is rendered in Full HD. And they made a breakdown of it, 96% of the movie is CGI.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Mr. Scram on July 31, 2019, 04:01:46 pm
You would think so. Even big Hollywood movies are made in Full HD and upscaled later. Like the new Avengers movie. Billions of dollars spent on it. CGI is rendered in Full HD. And they made a breakdown of it, 96% of the movie is CGI.
Do you have a source for that? I'm pretty sure that's not correct. Looks like 2K and 2.8K were common standards and 4K is quickly becoming a new standard. The last Avengers movies seem to have been filmed on Arri cameras, which I think are 2.8K but possibly the new models are higher resolution cameras. Note that I just Googled all of this, so I may be way off the mark. :P
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: technix on July 31, 2019, 04:02:42 pm
Totally pointless, so i can whatch on a 43" screen with 8 pixels per mm, total waste of resources, it's just a race to have "the biggest dick".
Small steps may not be impressive, but when it accumulates it makes a difference.

For display technologies I certainly have something to say here. For a long time my monitor was a 22-inch 1680x1050 Lenovo OEM unit. Moving from that to a 21.5-inch 1920x1080 one (iMac at my previous job) does not feel like much. But if the pixel density keeps growing, 24-inch 3840x2160 (Dell P2415Q I am currently using) certainly makes a difference to my eyes. Here the increase of angular pixel density crossed a threshold.

You would think so. Even big Hollywood movies are made in Full HD and upscaled later. Like the new Avengers movie. Billions of dollars spent on it. CGI is rendered in Full HD. And they made a breakdown of it, 96% of the movie is CGI.
CGI rendering is compute intensive. It took my dual Xeon E5-2680 machine over two minutes to render a single static frame of KiCad board model in 4K using ray tracing, the standard way of rendering CGI movies. It took Blender Foundation no less than three months on a render farm to render their 15-minute CGI animated short Sintel at full 4K resolution. (https://durian.blender.org/news/sintel-4k-rendering/) To render a 90-minute feature film using 4K means a year and a half just on render farms alone. Rendering in 1080p cuts the render time to 25% of that with native 4K so it makes financial sense to upscale.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 31, 2019, 04:48:41 pm

Small steps may not be impressive, but when it accumulates it makes a difference.

For display technologies I certainly have something to say here. For a long time my monitor was a 22-inch 1680x1050 Lenovo OEM unit. Moving from that to a 21.5-inch 1920x1080 one (iMac at my previous job) does not feel like much. But if the pixel density keeps growing, 24-inch 3840x2160 (Dell P2415Q I am currently using) certainly makes a difference to my eyes. Here the increase of angular pixel density crossed a threshold.


No you have totally missed the point. The bigger the screen gets the further away you sit so your angle oy view is constant. You will reach a point where there are enough pixels. Unless you plan to have lats of data on your screen and sit very close 4K is all you need and already in excess of what standard vision can appreciate. If you are watching a film you won't be panning your head around will you? so why do you want more angular resolution than you can see? I bought a big screen so that i could sit further away from it for the same angle of view. If I use my 27" 4K screen i will sit closer to it so same angle of view and same pexels per degree.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: technix on July 31, 2019, 05:05:43 pm
No you have totally missed the point. The bigger the screen gets the further away you sit so your angle oy view is constant. You will reach a point where there are enough pixels. Unless you plan to have lats of data on your screen and sit very close 4K is all you need and already in excess of what standard vision can appreciate. If you are watching a film you won't be panning your head around will you? so why do you want more angular resolution than you can see? I bought a big screen so that i could sit further away from it for the same angle of view. If I use my 27" 4K screen i will sit closer to it so same angle of view and same pexels per degree.
There are films (and other media) out there that you are supposed to pan your head around. There are dome-screen IMAX cinemas out there that requires some head panning to see the whole thing. Some people play games with three monitors (or an ultra-wide one) that is curved and reach way out of their field of view, as those games are supposed to be played that way. Quite a few exhibits at 2018-2019 Shanghai Biennale used that concept, but at least to me it can be hard to understand (although I am not sure whether it is the contents that I failed to grasp or the technique that lost me.) This kind of hyper-field-of-view media requires some paradigm shift in directing and screenwriting to work, and very few directors and screenwriters can currently do that without making viewers dizzy, so it is not common yet.

As of 8K transmission, even without 8K displays it can still make sense to transmit 8K media in the public feed. One example would be sending multiple camera angles at the same time and allow the viewer to select it on their own and/or enable full-resolution 3D - use one 8K stream to carry 4x 4K feeds, or 2x 3D 4K feeds for example. This can be popular in, for example, sport events.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 31, 2019, 05:14:47 pm
No you have totally missed the point. The bigger the screen gets the further away you sit so your angle oy view is constant. You will reach a point where there are enough pixels. Unless you plan to have lats of data on your screen and sit very close 4K is all you need and already in excess of what standard vision can appreciate. If you are watching a film you won't be panning your head around will you? so why do you want more angular resolution than you can see? I bought a big screen so that i could sit further away from it for the same angle of view. If I use my 27" 4K screen i will sit closer to it so same angle of view and same pexels per degree.
There are films (and other media) out there that you are supposed to pan your head around. There are dome-screen IMAX cinemas out there that requires some head panning to see the whole thing. Some people play games with three monitors (or an ultra-wide one) that is curved and reach way out of their field of view, as those games are supposed to be played that way. This kind of hyper-field-of-view media requires some paradigm shift in directing and screenwriting to work, and very few directors and screenwriters can currently do that without making viewers dizzy, so it is not common yet.

As of 8K transmission, even without 8K displays it can still make sense to transmit 8K media in the public feed. One example would be sending multiple camera angles at the same time and allow the viewer to select it on their own and/or enable full-resolution 3D - use one 8K stream to carry 4x 4K feeds, or 2x 3D 4K feeds for example. This can be popular in, for example, sport events.

Now you are distorting the argument. We were talking about filming resolutions not gaming output where if you listen to linus lower resolution and higher framerate is preferd. No it does not make sense to send 8K transmissions even with multiple images in the frame because the screen is still the same size! I repeat, it's not about the content it's about how it is viewed. You cannot appreciate a resolution higher than 4K, you would struggle with 1080p and 1440p would be the most I'd worry about if it was there at no extra cost. I can see the point of 4K shooting in that you get more detail to play with in production and hey if it's available in 4K I don't have a prblem with that but 8K is pointless and anyone claiming to see the difference at the same angle of view is lying, 1080p to 2160p, yea some can tell the difference if the look so I personally am happy viewing in 1080p but at 4320p you should just go and buy penis enlargement pills!
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: technix on July 31, 2019, 05:42:45 pm
We were talking about filming resolutions not gaming output where if you listen to linus lower resolution and higher framerate is preferd.
I am talking displays that goes beyond human FOV, regardless of resolution. That makes sense on its own regardless of what type of content is being shown, be it games or video, although content producers (and apparently you) need some paradigm shifting before start producing (or understanding) such contents. Avant garde artists are already experimenting with the general idea of breaking the boundary of human's front-facing field of view in audiovisual art and make the viewers' heads (at least eyeballs) move a bit while experiencing the work. As in, you are supposed to pan your head viewing that type of work. This stuff goes beyond the state of the art, and I don't blame anyone for not being able to wrap their minds around it for now.

No it does not make sense to send 8K transmissions even with multiple images in the frame because the screen is still the same size! I repeat, it's not about the content it's about how it is viewed. You cannot appreciate a resolution higher than 4K, you would struggle with 1080p and 1440p would be the most I'd worry about if it was there at no extra cost.
Be it four individual streams or four images stitched into a single video frame, multi-stream transmission needs technology that can cover all the pixels. It is much easier to define a multi-stream standard using stitched frames, as it turns what is a supposedly messy situation into a much simpler, single high resolution video stream plus multichannel audio scenario that can be easily covered by extending existing single-stream surround-sound public broadcasting technology. You don't see all the extra pixels anyway as it is cropped out in your TV, however those data must be there just so your neighbor can switch to a different camera angle than you do yet the broadcaster do not need to add another broadcast stream to handle that.

I can see the point of 4K shooting in that you get more detail to play with in production and hey if it's available in 4K I don't have a prblem with that but 8K is pointless and anyone claiming to see the difference at the same angle of view is lying, 1080p to 2160p, yea some can tell the difference if the look so I personally am happy viewing in 1080p but at 4320p you should just go and buy penis enlargement pills!
Shooting in 8K for a 4K production allows certain fixes to be applied without affecting the quality of the final 4K output. You get redundancy in source material, allowing errors to be covered up seamlessly. A simple example would be cancelling out a slightly shaky camera, as it sacrifices pixels around the edge to compensate for camera shakiness. Also it allows up to 2x pixel-perfect "digital zoom" so editors can get some headroom for post technique. Even for a perfect 8K source the downsampling process averages 4 pixels into one allowing the inherent noise on the image sensor to be averaged out into something color correction can fix.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 31, 2019, 06:12:05 pm
Ok this is pointless. We were talking about YouTube production and conventional TV, not art instalations and 360 degree video but by all means carry on talking to yourself. I stopped reading your response at the first paragraph as you are going off topic and just want to be right.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Sparky49 on July 31, 2019, 06:31:08 pm
Ok this is pointless. We were talking about YouTube production and conventional TV, not art instalations and 360 degree video but by all means carry on talking to yourself. I stopped reading your response at the first paragraph as you are going off topic and just want to be right.

With respect, you seem to just keep repeating "it's pointless" (which is only your opinion), and continually ignore the cases presented to you.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 31, 2019, 06:51:46 pm
Ok this is pointless. We were talking about YouTube production and conventional TV, not art instalations and 360 degree video but by all means carry on talking to yourself. I stopped reading your response at the first paragraph as you are going off topic and just want to be right.

With respect, you seem to just keep repeating "it's pointless" (which is only your opinion), and continually ignore the cases presented to you.

i was refering to someone that to push an argument for 8K live transmissions has now gone off topic and is talking about totally different things.

"with respect" get yourself a 43" 4K screen fill it with alternate white and black dots sit 1m from it and tell me what you see, can you clearly focus on a single point - no you cannot. I am sorry but I cannot help it if people want to push things that defy human appreciation and therefore have no technical validity. But if it makes you feel better go for it. Linus clearly has the money to buy the kit and pay people to do the slower processing just so that he can annonce to his audience that it was filmed in 8K as though they can tell the difference but sure once you tell everyone i am sure that even the 1080p viewers will swear that they can see the diference between 2160p shooting and 4320p shooting.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Bud on July 31, 2019, 07:07:49 pm
As someone mentioned above, compressing 8k source vs 4k source to a same size output likely will produce less block artefacts and better visual on dynamic scenes, which make sence to me.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Sparky49 on July 31, 2019, 07:53:56 pm
i was refering to someone that to push an argument for 8K live transmissions has now gone off topic and is talking about totally different things.

"with respect" get yourself a 43" 4K screen fill it with alternate white and black dots sit 1m from it and tell me what you see, can you clearly focus on a single point - no you cannot. I am sorry but I cannot help it if people want to push things that defy human appreciation and therefore have no technical validity. But if it makes you feel better go for it. Linus clearly has the money to buy the kit and pay people to do the slower processing just so that he can annonce to his audience that it was filmed in 8K as though they can tell the difference but sure once you tell everyone i am sure that even the 1080p viewers will swear that they can see the diference between 2160p shooting and 4320p shooting.

I have never tried a black and white pixel test, but at only 1m on a 43" display I can very clearly see pixels in a 1080 display - it is clear even on my 22" 1080p desktop monitor. Maybe I would like to see crisper outlines on my displays, with fewer jagged edges - maybe not. Either way, with a 12 year old PC I don't think it could handle 4k, and I don't need to change atm, so I won't. Doesn't make it 'pointless' to upgrade though - I just have different priorities to other people. Regardless, are we are now perhaps shifting the goalposts from moving objects in a video to static images? If so, then talking about black/white pixel tests seems to be diverging from the topic (why might Linus Tech Tips use or need 8k equipment for videos) just as much as 8k live transmissions - perhaps.  :)

Many times people in this thread have given technical reasons for shooting in 4k (or higher), whether that's for reframing video, lower artifacting, but you seem to keep ignoring that because you want to be right.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on July 31, 2019, 09:36:05 pm
Consider the following test pattern (click to open in your browser; view in 100%/excat pixels):
https://www.nominal-animal.net/answers/test-pattern.png (https://www.nominal-animal.net/answers/test-pattern.png)

Left half has 50% B/W checkerboard pattern, right side is 50% gray.  (They probably won't have the same brightness on your display because of gamma correction; it might have helped if I'd added an sRGB chunk to the PNG.)
Each half has four "Test" words.  First two are antialised, the second two not.  Second and fourth have a thin black outline for enhancing the separation from the background.

The question is, can you tell the left side background is patterned and not an uniform shade of gray?
Is there a visual difference between the two pairs of "Test" words, on either side?

If the answer to both is no, then your display at that particular viewing distance has higher resolution than you can visually perceive, and increasing the resolution (while keeping the viewing distance the same) won't make a difference even in computer use.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: thm_w on July 31, 2019, 09:40:10 pm
Linus did a video on a Sharp 8k TV recently, he clearly reflected the effort involved. He has recommend getting a 1440p screen over 4k many times, for cost or refresh rate, etc. Of course he gets excited about new tech and pushing the limits of the tech, thats his personality. Whether the tech is useful/meaningful is irrelevant, its interesting, just don't take the videos at face value.

Pay isn't a lot for his staff afaik, but they get to use high end gear, work on their own ideas for projects and have a fun place to work, so it balances out somewhat:
https://ca.indeed.com/salaries/Writer-Salaries-at-Linus-Media-Group-Inc.,-British-Columbia

I'd rather see employers like him over what I've experienced any day of the week.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: nctnico on July 31, 2019, 09:47:35 pm
Offtopic: I've watched the video in the first post. I think someone should donate an anti-static wrist band to Linus. Maybe he is wearing an ankle strap but the work area doesn't look like a typical ESD safe environment. It just made me cringe a little.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Sparky49 on July 31, 2019, 09:49:35 pm
Consider the following test pattern (click to open in your browser; view in 100%/excat pixels):
https://www.nominal-animal.net/answers/test-pattern.png (https://www.nominal-animal.net/answers/test-pattern.png)

Left half has 50% B/W checkerboard pattern, right side is 50% gray.  (They probably won't have the same brightness on your display because of gamma correction; it might have helped if I'd added an sRGB chunk to the PNG.)
Each half has four "Test" words.  First two are antialised, the second two not.  Second and fourth have a thin black outline for enhancing the separation from the background.

The question is, can you tell the left side background is patterned and not an uniform shade of gray?
Is there a visual difference between the two pairs of "Test" words, on either side?

If the answer to both is no, then your display at that particular viewing distance has higher resolution than you can visually perceive, and increasing the resolution (while keeping the viewing distance the same) won't make a difference even in computer use.

fwiw, at about 1m from my 22" 1080 monitor the answer to both is, yes, clear as day. :P
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: KaneTW on July 31, 2019, 09:58:58 pm
Consider the following test pattern (click to open in your browser; view in 100%/excat pixels):
https://www.nominal-animal.net/answers/test-pattern.png (https://www.nominal-animal.net/answers/test-pattern.png)

Left half has 50% B/W checkerboard pattern, right side is 50% gray.  (They probably won't have the same brightness on your display because of gamma correction; it might have helped if I'd added an sRGB chunk to the PNG.)
Each half has four "Test" words.  First two are antialised, the second two not.  Second and fourth have a thin black outline for enhancing the separation from the background.

The question is, can you tell the left side background is patterned and not an uniform shade of gray?
Is there a visual difference between the two pairs of "Test" words, on either side?

If the answer to both is no, then your display at that particular viewing distance has higher resolution than you can visually perceive, and increasing the resolution (while keeping the viewing distance the same) won't make a difference even in computer use.

I'm running at 1440p. When sitting upright, I can see the pattern. When leaned back (= higher distance) I can no longer see the pattern directly but the text edges are noticeably grainier.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: thm_w on July 31, 2019, 10:11:24 pm
Offtopic: I've watched the video in the first post. I think someone should donate an anti-static wrist band to Linus. Maybe he is wearing an ankle strap but the work area doesn't look like a typical ESD safe environment. It just made me cringe a little.

Its not an ESD safe environment, and no he doesn't care:
- Humidity here is about 60% right now, and is generally high almost year round
- PC gear should be reasonably ESD protected on exposed connectors
- PC cases are going to be grounded

That said, his electronics failure rate is quite high, some might be explained from ESD that or from tossing around gear and pushing stuff to its limits.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 31, 2019, 10:16:14 pm
Consider the following test pattern (click to open in your browser; view in 100%/excat pixels):
https://www.nominal-animal.net/answers/test-pattern.png (https://www.nominal-animal.net/answers/test-pattern.png)

Left half has 50% B/W checkerboard pattern, right side is 50% gray.  (They probably won't have the same brightness on your display because of gamma correction; it might have helped if I'd added an sRGB chunk to the PNG.)
Each half has four "Test" words.  First two are antialised, the second two not.  Second and fourth have a thin black outline for enhancing the separation from the background.

The question is, can you tell the left side background is patterned and not an uniform shade of gray?
Is there a visual difference between the two pairs of "Test" words, on either side?

If the answer to both is no, then your display at that particular viewing distance has higher resolution than you can visually perceive, and increasing the resolution (while keeping the viewing distance the same) won't make a difference even in computer use.

I can see the diferrence and i can guess particularly after being told that the left is some sort of pattern but i could not describe it to you. I certainly cannot point to a pixel. Now if it were moving even at a slow speed I certainly would not spot the pattern with ease.

This is of course an extreme example and not representative of actual usage. Most images and video will have far less change in graduation between pixels so it would be even harder to pick out pixels. 4K with a normal viewing angle is the limit of what we casually see. even after some processing at 4K I doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference as artifacts between pixels will be so small.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on July 31, 2019, 10:28:31 pm
As someone mentioned above, compressing 8k source vs 4k source to a same size output likely will produce less block artefacts and better visual on dynamic scenes, which make sence to me.

Will it? using a higher resolution will hide artefacts as they are smaller, at 4K artefacts between 2 or 3 pixels will be hard to spot particularly on mation, so at 8K they will dissapere, they are still there and if you later want to "zoom in" well you can't. There is no having more for less unless you have a better compression algorithm. It makes sense to work one step above where you want to be so that the end result is as clean as possible, A bit like using a 14 bit ADC when the higest 12 bits are all you need but by simply discarding the last two bits any noise goes away but at 8K versus 4K if you are going to throw the data avay anyway why bother? It's like having a crappy DSLR and knowing you can never use it at it's full resolution as it will be grainy, same as using a higher quality one with half the resolution. As i mentioned above i used to turn out 50Mp images from a 8Mp camera with superb quality, you could zoom right in to the pixel level and see great detail. But to do that i basically shot everything twice over by using a 50% overlap between frames and merged the images with panoramic software. That was justifyable as a one off photo and art peice and i have not bothered in years now.

But if at 4K you can scarcy see blemishes in a decen quality image and you shooting journalism/talking head etc I still don't see why the effort to go higher other than bragging rights.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: BrianHG on July 31, 2019, 11:06:45 pm
The advantage of a quality created 4k youtube upload is if you watch that video downsampled to 1080p, it looks almost as good as an authentic 25-50mbit bluray.  1080p youtube uploads are smeary and the difference is clearly visible on my 90 inch 1080p video projector.

Now, at that size, youtube 4k video played at 4k is actually smeary compared to an authentic 4k UHD Bluray (which was filmed in at least 4K which most Hollywood productions aren't), so, if you want true 4K quality, once again you might need to watch an 8k youtube video downsampled to 4k.  However, with any display below 60 inches, I rarely see a use for true full 50mbit 4k video.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on July 31, 2019, 11:19:30 pm
Yup, that is the most extreme example.  Things like viewing angle, color reproduction, dynamic range, and so on are much more important.

Besides, Youtube videos are quite heavily compressed.  The effective resolution is somewhat less than the actual resolution.

Just as a personal hobby, I've done some research on psychovisual perception, specifically into how to control the information density, and the information conveyed to a human observer, when describing atomic structures.  For example, when you have a model of a molecule, or say some nanotubes and clusters in some interesting configuration, doing a "photorealistic" rendering -- as if the atoms were marbles, often interatomic bonds described using sticks -- can give the utterly wrong intuition as to what is important in the picture.  It is as if some people saw a completely different thing than others.  You need explanatory text, and tell the viewers what to look for, completely the opposite what the old "a picture says more than a thousand words" proverb states!

The best-working solutions I found was simplification, and leveraging cartoon imagery: cel shading, outlines.  In particular, varying outline thickness to establish the depth difference at an edge (so that an edge with the background close to the edge is thin, but an edge with the background far away is thick), works for molecular models better than e.g. photorealistic shadows do.  (A combination of cel-shading, simple penumbra shadows, and dark edge thickness control, seems to work best, although my human test victimsubject sample is tiny.)
(There is no physical reason why that is so, though.  My guess is that it helps the visual centers in the brain separate the visual entities better, and acts like "visual annotation" helpers for the human brain.  Similar to, say, speed lines in comics, that probably works by "hinting" to the brain that "this part of the background is perceived as blurry, because there is motion here".)

For photographs and video, you almost never get perfectly horizontal or vertical edges with a full 100% intensity difference between neighboring pixels.  This is the main reason why DCT/iDCT compression methods work so well.  For video, a much better test is something like how small text (compared to the size of the display) you can read at standard distance, or how narrow a moving and rotating wire or string you can perceive on top of different backgrounds.  It is also possible that DCT compression followed by downsampling and then recompression yields a better visual quality with the same bitrate than downsampling alone, although I haven't seen any research into that; it's just a personal guess.

Sharpness in itself is not an end goal.  As long as there have been movies, filtering ("smoothing") human faces has been used as a cinematic effect to bring something ethereal, "more beautiful than nature" quality to the visuals.  If you can perceive more in the face of some person displayed than in real life (where the faces cover the same solid angle in your vision), you get another "uncanny valley" effect; you lose the immersion effect.  You really only need sharpness for details humans will try to perceive.

Finally, the human eye is not an uniform sensor (it is sharpest at a small region, with relatively poor resolution elsewhere, more suited for motion detection), and even when we see something, we may perceive it differently.  It is trickier than you might think.  Here's an example:
(https://cdn.ebaumsworld.com/mediaFiles/picture/24627/86029973.jpg) (https://cdn.ebaumsworld.com/mediaFiles/picture/24627/86029973.jpg)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on August 01, 2019, 07:37:09 am
You would think so. Even big Hollywood movies are made in Full HD and upscaled later. Like the new Avengers movie. Billions of dollars spent on it. CGI is rendered in Full HD. And they made a breakdown of it, 96% of the movie is CGI.
Do you have a source for that? I'm pretty sure that's not correct. Looks like 2K and 2.8K were common standards and 4K is quickly becoming a new standard. The last Avengers movies seem to have been filmed on Arri cameras, which I think are 2.8K but possibly the new models are higher resolution cameras. Note that I just Googled all of this, so I may be way off the mark. :P

They used a custom 6K IMAX camera:
https://www.popsci.com/camera-avengers-imax/ (https://www.popsci.com/camera-avengers-imax/)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_of_Avengers:_Infinity_War_and_Avengers:_Endgame (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_of_Avengers:_Infinity_War_and_Avengers:_Endgame)
If you watch it in IMAX you get more in the frame using a 1.90:1 aspect ratio
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 01, 2019, 07:53:38 am
The advantage of a quality created 4k youtube upload is if you watch that video downsampled to 1080p, it looks almost as good as an authentic 25-50mbit bluray.  1080p youtube uploads are smeary and the difference is clearly visible on my 90 inch 1080p video projector.

Now, at that size, youtube 4k video played at 4k is actually smeary compared to an authentic 4k UHD Bluray (which was filmed in at least 4K which most Hollywood productions aren't), so, if you want true 4K quality, once again you might need to watch an 8k youtube video downsampled to 4k.  However, with any display below 60 inches, I rarely see a use for true full 50mbit 4k video.


at 90" that is just shy of 1p/mm at 1080p. Obviously you would be standing a good distance away like 3m. But essentially what you are saying is that at any resolution the bitrate for that resolution is too low so you have to use a resolution that gets you the datarate you need because fuzzy 4K is as good as sharp 1080p which is what i have been trying to explain. As 4K is already more resoltution than the eye can see particularly in a moving image even if it's not pin sharp it does not matter, so why use 8K or 32Mp frames, I mean that is insane. It won't help on youtube if the limit is 4K and as 4K is more than the eye can see then do it in 4K. again, we are only talking about talking head shooting here not filming the lsat example of a natural landscape before it is destroyed forever.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 01, 2019, 07:54:57 am
You would think so. Even big Hollywood movies are made in Full HD and upscaled later. Like the new Avengers movie. Billions of dollars spent on it. CGI is rendered in Full HD. And they made a breakdown of it, 96% of the movie is CGI.
Do you have a source for that? I'm pretty sure that's not correct. Looks like 2K and 2.8K were common standards and 4K is quickly becoming a new standard. The last Avengers movies seem to have been filmed on Arri cameras, which I think are 2.8K but possibly the new models are higher resolution cameras. Note that I just Googled all of this, so I may be way off the mark. :P

They used a custom 6K IMAX camera:
https://www.popsci.com/camera-avengers-imax/ (https://www.popsci.com/camera-avengers-imax/)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_of_Avengers:_Infinity_War_and_Avengers:_Endgame (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_of_Avengers:_Infinity_War_and_Avengers:_Endgame)
If you watch it in IMAX you get more in the frame using a 1.90:1 aspect ratio



So they are pretty much filming in what would be 4K at 6:9 and using the extra resolution for the wide screen format?
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 01, 2019, 08:01:58 am
There is a channel on youtube called TLDR news, they do 4K yet the vast majority of the imagery is animation and pictures and i doubt the footage they use from say the BBC comes to them in 4K, but as there is no need to actually buy a 4K camera as they produce everything inside a computer, meh, why not if it keeps the viewers engaged who think they are getting more out of cartoon images. I expect tha data footprint is low as the range of colours is small and the frames don't differ much from each other.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on August 01, 2019, 08:05:00 am
The advantage of a quality created 4k youtube upload is if you watch that video downsampled to 1080p, it looks almost as good as an authentic 25-50mbit bluray.  1080p youtube uploads are smeary and the difference is clearly visible on my 90 inch 1080p video projector.

Now, at that size, youtube 4k video played at 4k is actually smeary compared to an authentic 4k UHD Bluray (which was filmed in at least 4K which most Hollywood productions aren't), so, if you want true 4K quality, once again you might need to watch an 8k youtube video downsampled to 4k.  However, with any display below 60 inches, I rarely see a use for true full 50mbit 4k video.


at 90" that is just shy of 1p/mm at 1080p. Obviously you would be standing a good distance away like 3m. But essentially what you are saying is that at any resolution the bitrate for that resolution is too low so you have to use a resolution that gets you the datarate you need because fuzzy 4K is as good as sharp 1080p which is what i have been trying to explain. As 4K is already more resoltution than the eye can see particularly in a moving image even if it's not pin sharp it does not matter, so why use 8K or 32Mp frames, I mean that is insane. It won't help on youtube if the limit is 4K and as 4K is more than the eye can see then do it in 4K. again, we are only talking about talking head shooting here not filming the lsat example of a natural landscape before it is destroyed forever.

I shoot my stuff in a mix of 4K (60Mbps) and 1080p (28Mbps).
4K for teardown and other detailed stuff like my Apollo 50th outside talking head shots.
But things like the Apollo 50th panel discussions were 1080p for the lower file sizes and the uselessness of it for low light indoor talking head from a distance shots.
Recent scope bench tutorial videos like 1228 and 1223 for example are only 1080p worthy.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 01, 2019, 08:13:45 am


I shoot my stuff in a mix of 4K (60Mbps) and 1080p (28Mbps).
4K for teardown and other detailed stuff like my Apollo 50th outside talking head shots.
But things like the Apollo 50th panel discussions were 1080p for the lower file sizes and the uselessness of it for low light indoor talking head from a distance shots.
Recent scope bench tutorial videos like 1228 and 1223 for example are only 1080p worthy.


and that makes perfect sense. If you suddenly announced you were filming in 8K and putting everything out in 4K it would not make me want to watch stuff more.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on August 01, 2019, 08:44:17 am


I shoot my stuff in a mix of 4K (60Mbps) and 1080p (28Mbps).
4K for teardown and other detailed stuff like my Apollo 50th outside talking head shots.
But things like the Apollo 50th panel discussions were 1080p for the lower file sizes and the uselessness of it for low light indoor talking head from a distance shots.
Recent scope bench tutorial videos like 1228 and 1223 for example are only 1080p worthy.


and that makes perfect sense. If you suddenly announced you were filming in 8K and putting everything out in 4K it would not make me want to watch stuff more.

For both I also shoot at the lowest bitrate possible (60Mbps 4K 30fps, 28Mbps 1080p 60fps), higher bitrates have no advantage for any of the footage I shoot, and at an average of say 30min of footage per video, at 60Mbps that's 13.5GB per 30min video. When you shoot hundreds of videos that stuff adds up. 8k is just totally stupid, let alone the data rates those RED cameras do. No wonder they were forced to build these insane servers to handle it all. It's just creating huge problems for practically no benefit. Quite frankly is doe NOT show in the final product, they could get the same results with 4k consumer cameras.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 01, 2019, 08:51:24 am
oh but the results show in the viewer numbers ;)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on August 01, 2019, 11:24:05 am
oh but the results show in the viewer numbers ;)

I have better gear than PewDiePie, where's my Diamond Youtube award?
https://www.looxcie.com/pewdiepie-setup/ (https://www.looxcie.com/pewdiepie-setup/)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 01, 2019, 11:58:55 am
well do gaming videos and you will get one ;)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Black Phoenix on August 01, 2019, 12:06:03 pm
well do gaming videos and you will get one ;)

Gaming Videos, Stupid trendy things and you will be soon in the Diamond plaque. What sells is not knowledge...
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: BrianHG on August 01, 2019, 05:36:10 pm
The advantage of a quality created 4k youtube upload is if you watch that video downsampled to 1080p, it looks almost as good as an authentic 25-50mbit bluray.  1080p youtube uploads are smeary and the difference is clearly visible on my 90 inch 1080p video projector.

Now, at that size, youtube 4k video played at 4k is actually smeary compared to an authentic 4k UHD Bluray (which was filmed in at least 4K which most Hollywood productions aren't), so, if you want true 4K quality, once again you might need to watch an 8k youtube video downsampled to 4k.  However, with any display below 60 inches, I rarely see a use for true full 50mbit 4k video.


at 90" that is just shy of 1p/mm at 1080p. Obviously you would be standing a good distance away like 3m. But essentially what you are saying is that at any resolution the bitrate for that resolution is too low so you have to use a resolution that gets you the datarate you need because fuzzy 4K is as good as sharp 1080p which is what i have been trying to explain. As 4K is already more resoltution than the eye can see particularly in a moving image even if it's not pin sharp it does not matter, so why use 8K or 32Mp frames, I mean that is insane. It won't help on youtube if the limit is 4K and as 4K is more than the eye can see then do it in 4K. again, we are only talking about talking head shooting here not filming the lsat example of a natural landscape before it is destroyed forever.

I shoot my stuff in a mix of 4K (60Mbps) and 1080p (28Mbps).
4K for teardown and other detailed stuff like my Apollo 50th outside talking head shots.
But things like the Apollo 50th panel discussions were 1080p for the lower file sizes and the uselessness of it for low light indoor talking head from a distance shots.
Recent scope bench tutorial videos like 1228 and 1223 for example are only 1080p worthy.
Ok, we have a little misunderstanding here.  The quality issue is with, how and the quality of how youtube compresses the 4k and 1080p video.
@Simon, you are assuming that when youtube provides you a 1080p video that it is pixel accurate without smearing anything.  It is far from it.  Youtube's 1080p smears a box of pixels of around 3x3, even 4x4 when the details are soft or there is motion.  Yes, Youtube will compress sharp black on white text relatively down to a pixel, but it has trouble with fine textures like skin of smooth objects.

Now, it looks like I need to put my money where my mouth is, so, I will grab a screenshot of the same video with my desktop set to 1920x1080, but I'll grab the same frame with youtube set to 1080p and 4k.

Here you go:  ((this is where I got this frame from) https://youtu.be/A9J1gkw9BI0?t=181 )
I assure you no trickery,  These are the same frame in the video which is why I included the original source frames and youtube time stamp.  Yes, if you check side by side, there are other details in the sand on the table which are all smeared up, but, I used the black glove since the smearing is clearly chunks over hundreds of pixels.

Original Youtube video set to 1080p snapshot in .png which was played on my desktop which is set to 1920x1080:
[attachimg=1]
Same original Youtube video set to 4k snapshot in .png which was played on my desktop which is set to 1920x1080:
[attachimg=2]
Side by side close up of the glove.  notice how youtube's 1080p version is smeared with a fraction, if any, of the black rubber texture, stretch marks, pores and some sand grains which are not there which are present in the 4k version which was played on a 1080p desktop.
[attachimg=3]

All these details are easy to be represented on a 1080p display and large enough to see at a distance since they are HUGE, like 20x20 pixels, or on a 45 degree angle, 20x60 pixels.
I know how mentally when looking at people bodies, faces, clothing, how our mind can mentally fill in the blanks ignoring this smearing effect, especially how you may be used to cable/satellite crap 1080p tv, but the same smearing effect is present there as well.  A simple 1080p blueray at 1080p has better definition than youtube's 4k video and it has nothing to do with fine the dots are.  A normal bluray would have not trouble capturing that black glove's subtle texture's shading and stress lines.  In fact, I seen 720p recordings outperform youtube's 1080p mode on a regular basis.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: BrianHG on August 01, 2019, 05:47:17 pm
Ok, finally go the new picture attachment system to do what I want.  It has a few bugs with multiple attachments...
There is no cheating in my above comparison.  That scene was relatively still without motion.
Youtube's 1080p sucks crap just looking at a latex gloved finger which was videoed so close, it was as large as most of the screen.
Youtube's 4k by comparison also sucks crap considering a normal 1080p bluray would have done a better job at 1080p native with that latex glove.
Imagine how much better an authentic UHD 4k Bluray at 4k must be beyond youtube's crummy 4k mode which only comes close to a bluray 1080p when down sampled to 1080p.

@Simon, it's not the pixel resolution that's important here, it that youtube allows 4x the bandwidth for a 4k upload.  This leads to less compression smearing, however, bluray allows for up to 50megabit/second burst during rapid scene changes with a sustained 35megabit per second.  This is why even the youtube 4k down sampled to 1080p is still said to be worse than a 1080p bluray with that 50megabit per second bandwidth which would even reveal the background noise grain of the camera's CCD in that scene, not to mention some of compression smearing which is still present in the demo image I uploaded.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 01, 2019, 06:09:29 pm
Surely the major point of 8K is not what it does now but what it does for tomorrow. Wouldn't you have liked to see the moon landing stuff in a decent res with HDR? The kind of quality that their static photos gave? So in 10 years time when someone views these youtube videos, don't you want them to look decent instead of 'state-of-the-ark' from a decade ago? We are limited now mostly in bandwidht, online and OTA. Maybe next year they improve massively and the thing that's going to fill 'em up is hi-res video (probably porn). You want to reshoot all your videos to take advantage?

I scan all paperwork that comes in, and regardless of the use it's going to be put to right now I scan at the highest resolution I can. You can always make things look worse; improving quality takes foresight.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on August 01, 2019, 08:23:37 pm
Wouldn't you have liked to see the moon landing stuff in a decent res with HDR?
Are you seriously comparing videos of people babbling about hardware to a moon landing?

Not everything is worth the storage costs.  I'm pretty sure you don't scan advertisements and spam, for example.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: thm_w on August 01, 2019, 08:42:53 pm
Are you seriously comparing videos of people babbling about hardware to a moon landing?

Not everything is worth the storage costs. 

Irrelevant, this is not taxpayer money here, its his own money so if its worth it to him thats all that matters.
The server was using seagate X10 drives, ~$27/TB. Thats enough for an hour or two of footage, hardly a lavish expense.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 01, 2019, 08:44:56 pm
Quote
Not everything is worth the storage costs.

We're talking shooting, not uploading. Shoot it hi-res and you can upload in lo-res, then mid-res, then hi-res as the whim takes you. The storage is all yours so it's your decision and no-one elses.

Or shoot in lo-res and then upload in, well, what you got?

I am reminded of looking as SD video and wondering WTF this 4K rubbish is about - surely HD is easily good enough. Who would need some fancy pie in the sky like 4k? And yet not long after it's the minimal spec for just about everything. Why do you think 8k won't follow the same path? Gosh, the way things are looking it's even too late to be an early adopter now!

[edit: typos. keyboard must be stuck in the MDA era]
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on August 01, 2019, 11:45:56 pm
I am reminded of looking as SD video and wondering WTF this 4K rubbish is about
No, that's completely different to what I was talking about.  I was countering your argument that "we should use 4K for everything because it might be the standard in the future".

Sure, anything unique or important, you should shoot and store in the highest resolution and best quality you are able to.  I do so myself.  That does not mean you should do everything that way, just because most of the content is not worth it.  And, before you upgrade your camera to a higher resolution, you should ensure that you have everything else well in hand, that it is truly the camera that is the quality bottleneck, and not something else.

Right now, because I have a 1920x1080 display, I prefer 1080p content.  That may change in the future.  It definitely will, if I get a larger than 22" display -- however, as I mentioned before, color reproduction etc. are more important to me, so I tend to look at the panel quality instead of resolution first.  Sometimes, when I watch videos, I drop the resolution because I want to drop the bandwidth used; usually because I'm doing something else (say, downloading large software packages or whatever) and not really watching the video.  It annoys the heck out of me that I cannot keep the audio quality high, while dropping the video quality.  I especially like technical stuff where I can switch to looking at a very high resolution photo of the thing at hand (outside Youtube, of course), while still listening.  (I do not like looking at talking heads at all, btw; they annoy me.)

I would be surprised if that kind of quality jumping is not common among other viewers with max. 20 Mbit/s net connections.

In practice, my stance means that one should consider stuff like lighting, high-res photos of the details (on a forum or a separate article associated with the video), audio quality, and so on, much before worrying about whether to use 1080p or 4K resolution right now.  If you have the hardware, sure; use it.  But, first ensure that you have the lighting, mics, suitable stage (non-echoy, suitable background), still photography equipment etc. at hand, or you're putting the cart before the horse.  Priorities.

Even then, the bit rate (or more precisely, compression quality, as compression efficiency varies between formats) is more important than the resolution.  For example, if you have poor lighting, so your camera sensor is struggling to get the necessary dynamic range, you'll have a noisy image, no matter the bit rate.  That poses a huge problem for compression, especially DCT-based ones (all we use right now are), as the compression algorithms cannot really distinguish noise components from details.  So, if you use a 4K camera with poor lighting, you can get worse visual results than using a 1080p camera with good lighting.

Resolution just isn't that important: it does not override the other stuff you need to get good visual quality.

Some think that color correction can handle lighting deficiencies, but that's just not true.  Old-style fluorescent lights are notorious for this, because their spectrum is spiky and not smooth, we humans just happen to perceive it as white.  However, different materials -- even skin -- reflect that light in different ways, because the light spectrum only contains spikes, instead of being continuous.  It can happen that a pigment on the surface happens to absorb some particular frequencies well (absorption lines), and if those coincide with some (but not all) of the spikes in the light spectrum, you get a completely wrong color for that surface.  The only way to fix that kind of errors is to recolor the image by hand, pixel by pixel, because the original color information simply did not reach the camera sensor at all, due to poor lighting!
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on August 02, 2019, 01:24:54 am
Wouldn't you have liked to see the moon landing stuff in a decent res with HDR?
Are you seriously comparing videos of people babbling about hardware to a moon landing?
Not everything is worth the storage costs.  I'm pretty sure you don't scan advertisements and spam, for example.

I just had a guy on Twitter try and argue that I should delete all my old RAW footage hard drives and re-use them  ::)
All my old stuff was heavily compressed in the transcode to save space and upload time back in the day. I could actually go back to the raw footage and redo higher quality versions of old videos if I wanted to.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Black Phoenix on August 02, 2019, 04:10:02 am
Another video related with the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOTpArWyaUM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOTpArWyaUM)

Basically here they explain everything that was done and their own choices. Yes it's a sponsored video from a company that sells video and photography equipment but it gives a little more insight related with the topic in question.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on August 02, 2019, 04:15:41 am
I could actually go back to the raw footage and redo higher quality versions of old videos if I wanted to.
Yup, exactly.  You do it if you think it is worth it, not because it is possible.

Whenever I create illustrations in Inkscape, I keep my originals in Inkscape SVG (has all sorts of extra metadata), and save a copy as plain or optimized SVG, and hand-tune it if I feel like it.  I often do that while still thinking about the problem at hand.  Sometimes, I just grab a screenshot or existing image, add the illustrative bits, flatten the image, and export it, without retaining the originals, if that works better or I feel like it.  Just because something can be done at maximum resolution, does not mean it is always worth it.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 02, 2019, 07:11:08 am

@Simon, it's not the pixel resolution that's important here, it that youtube allows 4x the bandwidth for a 4k upload.  This leads to less compression smearing, however, bluray allows for up to 50megabit/second burst during rapid scene changes with a sustained 35megabit per second.  This is why even the youtube 4k down sampled to 1080p is still said to be worse than a 1080p bluray with that 50megabit per second bandwidth which would even reveal the background noise grain of the camera's CCD in that scene, not to mention some of compression smearing which is still present in the demo image I uploaded.


Oh, screw me! what have I been saying post after post? that the only reason for 4K is the bandwidth you get with it and that HD with the same bandwidth would look as good! but no everyone can see 4K resolution and I'm the mad one!
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 02, 2019, 07:14:47 am


Right now, because I have a 1920x1080 display, I prefer 1080p content.  That may change in the future.  It definitely will, if I get a larger than 22" display -- however, as I mentioned before, color reproduction etc. are more important to me, so I tend to look at the panel quality instead of resolution first.  Sometimes, when I watch videos, I drop the resolution because I want to drop the bandwidth used; usually because I'm doing something else (say, downloading large software packages or whatever) and not really watching the video.  It annoys the heck out of me that I cannot keep the audio quality high, while dropping the video quality.  I especially like technical stuff where I can switch to looking at a very high resolution photo of the thing at hand (outside Youtube, of course), while still listening.  (I do not like looking at talking heads at all, btw; they annoy me.)


Yep same here, ok i have 4K displays but yea, if it's not important, on a small HD screen or I am not lookind at it I set it to 720p,
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 02, 2019, 08:04:35 am
I could actually go back to the raw footage and redo higher quality versions of old videos if I wanted to.
Yup, exactly.  You do it if you think it is worth it, not because it is possible.

Er, but that's what we're arguing. He couldn't do that if his original footage was the res and quality of his upload. Did he think, then, "in a few years I'll have broadband and YouTube will have limitless storage AND viewers will have 4K monitors"? I doubt it - more likely he did it, and stored it, because he could.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on August 02, 2019, 09:33:12 am
And I'm saying, not could, but because that seemed the reasonable choice.

Right now, if you do say BigClive or AvE or EEVblog type of stuff, I don't see resolution as the bottleneck.  I see lighting, audio, and colors more important -- and I do like how Dave does those in general.  For the masters, you probably can get more bang for your buck by using less compression, i.e. higher bit rates for the 1080p resolution.

I'm only arguing against 4K being the "obvious" choice.  In my opinion, it is not obvious, not yet, unless you got those other things (lighting, audio/mics, background, non-echoing "studio" setup) taken care of first.  When you have lighting you don't need to fight against, with good enough color rendering index that things look the same on the video as they look to you in real life, and you don't need to fight to get your audio clean, stable, and so on, then the next step may be upgrading resolution; however, that requires a much more grunty workstation for video editing, more storage space for the masters, more upload bandwidth, and so on.  Or, the better option might be to keep the same resolution for now, but get a second camera or a microscrope for close-up videos, and a dedicated still cam for close-up zoomable photos for the website.  Or something else not 4K.

To recap: maxing out on video resolution is not a sensible way to go.  You need to look at what you are doing, and maximize the video quality, however you quantify it, and your resource use to get there.  Usually it means getting gear often ignored, like better lights (and lots of it), good mics, even good still cameras for tech stuff for associated articles/blog posts.  It depends on the content.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on August 02, 2019, 11:33:29 am
Right now, if you do say BigClive or AvE or EEVblog type of stuff, I don't see resolution as the bottleneck.  I see lighting, audio, and colors more important -- and I do like how Dave does those in general.  For the masters, you probably can get more bang for your buck by using less compression, i.e. higher bit rates for the 1080p resolution.

For the mostly static tripod shots we do the bitrate (mine is lowest 28Mbps for 1080p60) is already fairly overkill. There just isn't enough changing data to matter, like a moving hand, 90% is just static.
I take a lot of care in my framing, and do now use studio matched colour temp lights to each side of the camera a far bit (they tend to swamp out scope screens though), as the roof lights in the new lab are a bit of mess, so the studio lights correct that. Fixed whitebalance in camera to match.
https://products.aputure.com/hr-672/
I have never corrected colour in editing ever in the last 10 years.

Quote
I'm only arguing against 4K being the "obvious" choice.  In my opinion, it is not obvious, not yet, unless you got those other things (lighting, audio/mics, background, non-echoing "studio" setup) taken care of first.  When you have lighting you don't need to fight against, with good enough color rendering index that things look the same on the video as they look to you in real life, and you don't need to fight to get your audio clean, stable, and so on, then the next step may be upgrading resolution; however, that requires a much more grunty workstation for video editing, more storage space for the masters, more upload bandwidth, and so on.

Yes, 4K30fps forces me to 60MBpbs minimum vs 28Mbps for 1080p60
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on August 02, 2019, 11:40:59 am
Er, but that's what we're arguing. He couldn't do that if his original footage was the res and quality of his upload. Did he think, then, "in a few years I'll have broadband and YouTube will have limitless storage AND viewers will have 4K monitors"? I doubt it - more likely he did it, and stored it, because he could.

Yes, because I could. In fact I kept high res render masters which I then transcoded to lower quality/size for upload.
Only a fool would spend years making content only to throw away the originals, for what, the want of a couple of hard drives.
All of my raw footage and masters up to video 1000 or fit on 3 x 2TB hard drives. The first 500 or so videos fit on just one 2TB drive.

At one point I did actually set a machine to automatically re-transcode all my old master renders into a higher quality original and just left it running. But a lab reshuffle  stopped that and I'm not sure what happened to it.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on August 02, 2019, 11:56:06 am
Another video related with the subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOTpArWyaUM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOTpArWyaUM)

I used to shoot on a DV tape PAL Canon camcorder and import using Firewire  ;D
The quality and sound was terrible, but people didn't care back then.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: SiliconWizard on August 02, 2019, 01:18:23 pm
Ahah yeah, things evolve. It didn't matter at the time, it does now.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody" ;D
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 02, 2019, 02:13:53 pm
i think we have spent so many decades to get to where we are that we have gotten into the habbit of always waiting for the next development. Well we can stop now. We have achieved the screen desities we need, the only vague justification for higher resolutions is very very large dispalys but again unless you can see it all in one take why bother.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 02, 2019, 02:50:01 pm
Indeed. Why bother with a work bench bigger than you can reach anything. Or see everything without moving your head or eyes. Or more screwdrivers than you have hands to hold them. Or browser tabs at all - if you're not looking at the page why bother having it loaded.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on August 03, 2019, 12:10:51 am
i think we have spent so many decades to get to where we are that we have gotten into the habbit of always waiting for the next development. Well we can stop now. We have achieved the screen desities we need, the only vague justification for higher resolutions is very very large dispalys but again unless you can see it all in one take why bother.

I'd rather move from 4k/30 to 4k/60 than to 8k/30
My cameras only do 4k/30
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: KL27x on August 03, 2019, 12:18:19 am
Quote
i think we have spent so many decades to get to where we are that we have gotten into the habbit of always waiting for the next development. Well we can stop now. We have achieved the screen desities we need, the only vague justification for higher resolutions is very very large dispalys but again unless you can see it all in one take why bother.
It's not a matter of do we need it or not, but what else do we do with that manpower. If you are X company, you can say ok, we're good enough, then fire half your employees. But the other company gonna do it. And unless the marketing machine has something more interesting to trumpet, 8k is going to be the it thing.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: coppercone2 on August 03, 2019, 12:39:10 am
i think we have spent so many decades to get to where we are that we have gotten into the habbit of always waiting for the next development. Well we can stop now. We have achieved the screen desities we need, the only vague justification for higher resolutions is very very large dispalys but again unless you can see it all in one take why bother.

lol, this is how I felt when Far Cry 1 came out, that it was like, the best graphics you would ever need for a videogame (since it ran smooth, it was all lush/naturey outdoors... Now it looks old. I thought after playing games on something like Lithtech engines... no way you can do too much better then farcry.

Don't be bill gates.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: SiliconWizard on August 03, 2019, 12:59:47 am
Yeah. As for me, I'll be feeling like it's "enough" when displays made for close viewing are 1200DPI and TV displays are 300DPI.
 ;D

We're getting there, but still a bit to go.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 03, 2019, 07:30:10 am
Quote
i think we have spent so many decades to get to where we are that we have gotten into the habbit of always waiting for the next development. Well we can stop now. We have achieved the screen desities we need, the only vague justification for higher resolutions is very very large dispalys but again unless you can see it all in one take why bother.
It's not a matter of do we need it or not, but what else do we do with that manpower. If you are X company, you can say ok, we're good enough, then fire half your employees. But the other company gonna do it. And unless the marketing machine has something more interesting to trumpet, 8k is going to be the it thing.

Yea' the marketing machine and the stupid customers.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 03, 2019, 07:32:10 am
Yeah. As for me, I'll be feeling like it's "enough" when displays made for close viewing are 1200DPI and TV displays are 300DPI.
 ;D

We're getting there, but still a bit to go.


Oh you can appreciate all those pixels or you just trolling?
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on August 03, 2019, 08:55:11 am
At that point (1200DPI displays) we can just switch to pure vector graphics for GUI stuff, and will need to adjust the desktop APIs to work better for various resolutions.  Right now, a lot of applications still have issues with high DPI displays.  (Almost all web sites used to have issues with display resolutions.  I definitely remember the time when most sites had a footer with "this site best viewed with WxH", until we humans learned how to do it better.  Have you noticed how much more popular SVG has become for non-photography content?)

Video content is not that problematic, since compression occurs in the frequency domain (usually in some variant of the YCrCb color space), and it can be scaled; but the storage, bandwidth, and computing power required for compression/decompression is definitely relevant.

Computer graphics are harder.  Just look at how your devices render fonts on the display you use.  Here's mine:
(http://nominal-animal.net/answers/text-rendering.png)
The fewer pixels you have to display a glyph, the more careful you need to be to render it at maximum fidelity.  Truetype fonts, for example, have hinting, small programmatic adjustments that make them look better at different sizes, by adjusting the shape of the glyphs.  (That tech stalled for a long while, too, until the bottleneck patents expired.  If only you knew how much of an obstacle software/math patents have been for IT and computer use in general!)  This particular font does not look like it's well hinted, based on none of them being aligned on a pixel boundary (vertical lines having an antialiased edge all they way, see h, i, l, and n in particular).

At 1200 DPI (assuming at least a foot away from your eyes), antialiasing isn't productive anymore, because human eyes cannot see the difference anyway.  However, if the device can only reproduce a limited number of colors, or has a poor dynamic range (especially black being just dark gray, not "black"), its usefulness is limited.  Even at 100 DPI (about 4 pixels per mm, common nowadays), viewing angles, dynamic range/intensity, and sometimes color reproduction, is more important than resolution.

It is not just a matter of upping the resolution; these things are interconnected with other things that need to evolve correspondingly, or we're just putting a racing spoiler on a cardboard box.  And, once again, it depends on the content, too.

(One of the reasons for my forays into psychovisual models is how poor the imagery in molecular dynamics publications is.  It's like they're just filler; usually chosen from a poor angle, and either make the files HUGE and slow, or have such a poor resolution they hurt ones eye.  When they do have a big resolution, you need to wonder if the image is intended to be physically representative, or just an illustration with very little to do with the actual molecule/system configuration.  Authors rarely say.  What I'd like, is to let users "render" the models, with at least outlines using vector elements; with either cel-shaded vector fills or lower-resolution rendered pixmaps underneath.  They'd make the article PDFs smaller and thus easier/cheaper to store, but also make it easier to generate good-quality illustrations.  Win-win.  The tech has existed to do this for well over a decade now, it's the human authors/scientists that do not bother.)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 03, 2019, 09:16:45 am
See my screen shot of your text. As you can see from the main screen shot without making the font large I have the slight diagonal of the straight bit of an "e" represented with 3 pixes across, what more do i want. As i said, at normal angle of wiew a 4K screen has 4x the pixel desity that I I can see individual pixes. Remember standard vision can see two dots 1mm apart at 1m, my dots are 0.25mm apart at 1m.

I use a font that is deliberately curvy and full of random agles as i have visual problems with parallel lines but on a low res screen it is hard to read because of the awful rendition.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 03, 2019, 09:23:11 am
And of course we are now talking screen resolutions not filming resolutions. 8K may make for a nice screen for some specific use but still 4K vide is plenty and even with an 8K screen I'd not watch video at more than 4K.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: technix on August 03, 2019, 10:33:48 am
And of course we are now talking screen resolutions not filming resolutions. 8K may make for a nice screen for some specific use but still 4K vide is plenty and even with an 8K screen I'd not watch video at more than 4K.
Those two are related though, as you should not produce video in a lower resolution than it is intended to be consumed on, unless there is a damn good reason to do so (for example, not to spend an additional year on render farms for CGI contents.)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 03, 2019, 11:20:39 am
And of course we are now talking screen resolutions not filming resolutions. 8K may make for a nice screen for some specific use but still 4K vide is plenty and even with an 8K screen I'd not watch video at more than 4K.
Those two are related though, as you should not produce video in a lower resolution than it is intended to be consumed on, unless there is a damn good reason to do so (for example, not to spend an additional year on render farms for CGI contents.)

Oh yea? pray explain what is wrong with putting one video pixel onto 4 sreen pixels when that video pixel is 1/16 the size of what the eye can appreciate (4K) and the screen pixels are 1/64 of what the eye can appreciate. at 4K even a non perfect multiple would be hard to decern in the video cards upscaling.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: technix on August 04, 2019, 04:26:10 am
Oh yea? pray explain what is wrong with putting one video pixel onto 4 sreen pixels when that video pixel is 1/16 the size of what the eye can appreciate (4K) and the screen pixels are 1/64 of what the eye can appreciate. at 4K even a non perfect multiple would be hard to decern in the video cards upscaling.
You are going to see the difference since while it is beyond what an eye can appreciate it just barely did so.

Speaking of, have you heard of MSAA on certain games? That means the game engine would render images internally at 8K or even 16K but using only basic algorithms (for example no anti-aliasing) then scale it down as "anti-aliasing." A monitor that goes way beyond human reception limit does that at an analog level, as pixels get blended together when human eyes see it. This also allows HDR-ish effects without actually supporting HDR on the panel (akin to color dithering)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: KaneTW on August 04, 2019, 05:24:58 am
Yep, exactly. Also a similar phenomenon with high refresh rate displays. There's a wide spectrum between "recognized as moving image" and "actually smooth image". 30 FPS footage is unwatchable to me, 60 FPS is fine, for fast spaced stuff 120FPS is ideal.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 04, 2019, 07:57:46 am
Oh yea? pray explain what is wrong with putting one video pixel onto 4 sreen pixels when that video pixel is 1/16 the size of what the eye can appreciate (4K) and the screen pixels are 1/64 of what the eye can appreciate. at 4K even a non perfect multiple would be hard to decern in the video cards upscaling.
You are going to see the difference since while it is beyond what an eye can appreciate it just barely did so.

Speaking of, have you heard of MSAA on certain games? That means the game engine would render images internally at 8K or even 16K but using only basic algorithms (for example no anti-aliasing) then scale it down as "anti-aliasing." A monitor that goes way beyond human reception limit does that at an analog level, as pixels get blended together when human eyes see it. This also allows HDR-ish effects without actually supporting HDR on the panel (akin to color dithering)

No I don't play games, I guess that is what my silly 16 thread processor is aimed at and why such power is required ;)

Again we are talking about display output and how games work not talking head shot filming resolution. It sounds like it is fater to to generate the video data in the way you describe so, so be it. If you look at the screen shots I posted above you can see that my fonts on a 4K screen are already using some sort of dithering with a red and blue outlines. I cannot see those, I can start to see them if I get 200mm away from the screen at which point it starts to go out of focus for my eyes anyway....

Yes you could have an 8K monitor and i said that above but I still don't see the point of 8Kvideo recording or transmissions. If you want HDR effects as you say as your excuse for 8K monitors then you cannot put 8K footage onto it as you need the extra pixels to produce the intermediate colours that each individual pixel can't achive alone.

but looking at my nice expensive LG monitor i really don't see the need for any more dynamic range and I'm sure it has high dynamic range already. With HDR you need to be clear on what you are asking for. Again we have gotten so used to limited technology that we have learnt to always want more. Do you want to achieve proper representation of the humanly perceivable range or do you want to bring out even more detail? HDR was actually round the other way when it started. It was a way of capturing more dynamic range and compressig it into the range of the human eye or the screen. If current screen dynamic range meets what the eye can see why do you want more?
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 04, 2019, 08:04:17 am
In fact you are not talking about total dynamic range but the equivalent of oversampling, monitors are already good with lots of levels. you can't extend the range in the way you describe.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: technix on August 04, 2019, 09:06:09 am
If you look at the screen shots I posted above you can see that my fonts on a 4K screen are already using some sort of dithering with a red and blue outlines. I cannot see those, I can start to see them if I get 200mm away from the screen at which point it starts to go out of focus for my eyes anyway....
That is subpixel anti-aliasing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering). All the reds and blues, when mapped correctly to the pixel geometry of our monitor, gives you a correct black that matches the pixel immediately next to it.

but looking at my nice expensive LG monitor i really don't see the need for any more dynamic range and I'm sure it has high dynamic range already. With HDR you need to be clear on what you are asking for. Again we have gotten so used to limited technology that we have learnt to always want more. Do you want to achieve proper representation of the humanly perceivable range or do you want to bring out even more detail? HDR was actually round the other way when it started. It was a way of capturing more dynamic range and compressig it into the range of the human eye or the screen. If current screen dynamic range meets what the eye can see why do you want more?
Standard screen dynamic range, as defined by sRGB, does not even cover 100% of the human color perception range. Current trends in HDR is actually cover that first and talk color resolution later.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on August 04, 2019, 10:39:52 am
Yep, exactly. Also a similar phenomenon with high refresh rate displays. There's a wide spectrum between "recognized as moving image" and "actually smooth image". 30 FPS footage is unwatchable to me, 60 FPS is fine, for fast spaced stuff 120FPS is ideal.

What do you do at the movies with 24fps? get some sort of visual sickness and have to leave?  :-//

On frame rate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM16aiSSpFk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM16aiSSpFk)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 04, 2019, 01:11:03 pm
Quote
What do you do at the movies with 24fps?

There's an interesting question!

Personally, I have no problem with movies. Never think about flicker or anything like that, so 24fps would seem to be just fine.

Except it isn't. Cars with low-refresh LED lights are a right pain and I see every separate flash when my eyes move. For multiplexed displays, don't we usually say that 100Hz is minimum to prevent flicker in peripheral vision?

Perhaps the difference is in persistence. With movies, the frame is displayed for far longer than it isn't (that is, it's full on and then changes in a blink, full on, blink, etc). For multiplexed displays they are more off than they are on - flash, off while other bits flash, flash, etc.

So it's not just the fps that counts, but also the duty cycle of each frame.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: technix on August 04, 2019, 02:12:28 pm
What do you do at the movies with 24fps?
There is also historic baggage at play. 24fps movies have been there for more than a century. Even though modern technologies allows higher frame rate, for the sake of compatibility with old film projectors movies still have to be shot at 24fps.

Perhaps the difference is in persistence. With movies, the frame is displayed for far longer than it isn't (that is, it's full on and then changes in a blink, full on, blink, etc). For multiplexed displays they are more off than they are on - flash, off while other bits flash, flash, etc.
You hit the nail on the head here. Film projectors can have a very high duty cycle with some clever engineering. LCD duty cycle is restricted by how fast TFT gates will discharge. This is even worse for CRT, which is why we used to see people run their CRT monitors at 85fps to reduce flicker.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: SiliconWizard on August 04, 2019, 03:06:32 pm
Yeah. As for me, I'll be feeling like it's "enough" when displays made for close viewing are 1200DPI and TV displays are 300DPI.
 ;D

We're getting there, but still a bit to go.


Oh you can appreciate all those pixels or you just trolling?

We're not going to do it all over again, but obviously the key point is the difference between still images (or low frame rate) and fast-motion videos.

For still images, you can definitely see the difference. My reasoning for ~1200DPI for close viewing and still or very low frame rate images is that it's pretty much the acceptable resolution to get a quality image on printed documents. I can definitely see the difference with a 600DPI print. Typical displays these days (at least those we're talking about here) are emitting light (either directly with OLED or through backlighting), so sure the perception is a bit different than on a printed sheet, but that gives a ballpark idea.

A 4K display still seems completely absurd on a mobile phone to many people (and it kind of is given the typical use), but you can definitely see the difference compared to a Full HD display even on such small screens. That's already pretty high DPI.

And as someone mentioned, high DPI allows to limit or remove antialiasing techniques altogether, which thus makes the images appear much "crisper".

Again, and as discussed in another thread, in presence of fast motion, the perception is a little different and we don't "see" as many details, so that would  tend to matter less, although I think limiting antialiasing (without compromising smoothness) would have benefits even on fast motion videos.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 04, 2019, 03:58:41 pm

For still images, you can definitely see the difference. My reasoning for ~1200DPI for close viewing and still or very low frame rate images is that it's pretty much the acceptable resolution to get a quality image on printed documents. I can definitely see the difference with a 600DPI print. Typical displays these days (at least those we're talking about here) are emitting light (either directly with OLED or through backlighting), so sure the perception is a bit different than on a printed sheet, but that gives a ballpark idea.


Are we talking about displays or print? print DPI is not the same as screen DPI, which is why DPI should be used for print and PPI for screens as the technology is different. Yes printed matter needs to be printed at high resolutions because typically a printer prints a dot of a colour ink, it can't print a half dot for half the colour intensity. So to print you have to print a pattern of full intensity dots so small that the eye cannot possibly see them and that the combined dots and white paper create the lesser colour intensities. You may remember that early photo printers had extra colours to trry and help print lighter colours mainly in light cyan and magenta. I happened into an artists shop a couplo of weeks ago and his large format printer had 10 colours in it. This is becaus at low colour intesities the space between a dots becomes quite visible unless high dot resolution is used so say yau want 5% cyan, that is one dot of ink to a lot of white space and in starts to show. But print that with an ink that is 50% cyan at the outset and you are printing 10% of 50% intensity dots so there is a more even spread of ink to paper.

Displays do not work like this, any pixel can represent any colour so you do not need as many. If i scan something I scan at 300PPI becaus that is plenty. Obviously to print it it will have to be done at 1200DPI or more for accurate colour rendition.

my first scanner could do black and white versus gray scale. this meant that it literally stored 1 bit data, black, or white, if you did it at high enough resolution you would end up being able to see the gray scale....

Quote

A 4K display still seems completely absurd on a mobile phone to many people (and it kind of is given the typical use), but you can definitely see the difference compared to a Full HD display even on such small screens. That's already pretty high DPI.


No you can't see the difference. I run my phone at HD and I cannot tell the difference, 720p yes I can see the difference but 1080p is fine and 2160p is a waste of battery. I suspect the higher resolution maybe to support things like 3D technology in the future.

Quote
And as someone mentioned, high DPI allows to limit or remove antialiasing techniques altogether, which thus makes the images appear much "crisper".

Yep and at 4K I cannot see te dots so antialiasing is no longer needed

Quote
Again, and as discussed in another thread, in presence of fast motion, the perception is a little different and we don't "see" as many details, so that would  tend to matter less, although I think limiting antialiasing (without compromising smoothness) would have benefits even on fast motion videos.


Well whatever they are doing now seems pretty good.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 04, 2019, 04:11:17 pm
Quote
Displays do not work like this, any pixel can represent any colour

Kind of, and not really. A pixel is usually made up of two or more dots of differing colours, in varying patterns and shapes.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/Pixel_geometry_01_Pengo.jpg/200px-Pixel_geometry_01_Pengo.jpg)

That's how they can do sub-pixel rendering. When a manufacturer quotes DPI, do they mean PPI literally or single-colour dots - obviously, whatever they choose will affect the desirability of the product, so one probably needs to be a little cynical :)

[edit: link didn't work]
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 04, 2019, 04:16:38 pm
Each pixel in a screen is a set of RGB, that can by and large represent any colour and is NOT the same as a "dot" in printing. Marketers who do not understand the technology think that DPI and PPI are the same, they are not and usually it does not matter when we know which type of technology we are discussing until someone who thinks they are clever comes along and says that we need 1200PPI screen because they always print their stuff at 1200DPI.......
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: KaneTW on August 04, 2019, 04:26:01 pm
Yep, exactly. Also a similar phenomenon with high refresh rate displays. There's a wide spectrum between "recognized as moving image" and "actually smooth image". 30 FPS footage is unwatchable to me, 60 FPS is fine, for fast spaced stuff 120FPS is ideal.

What do you do at the movies with 24fps? get some sort of visual sickness and have to leave?  :-//

On frame rate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM16aiSSpFk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM16aiSSpFk)

It's usually not a problem in theaters, but I have huge issues watching TV. It's really noticeable and unpleasant when some low-framerate action scene appears.

Similarly, it's super jarring when frame rate drops to 30-40 in a video game.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: SiliconWizard on August 04, 2019, 05:29:12 pm
Each pixel in a screen is a set of RGB, that can by and large represent any colour and is NOT the same as a "dot" in printing. Marketers who do not understand the technology think that DPI and PPI are the same, they are not and usually it does not matter when we know which type of technology we are discussing until someone who thinks they are clever comes along and says that we need 1200PPI screen because they always print their stuff at 1200DPI.......

You're missing the point. There's a large panel of different printing technologies, and not two distribute "dots" and colors quite in the same way. Likewise, pixels on a screen are effectively made of RGB dots on most displays, and those dots are not distributed quite in the same way depending on the display technology and even maker either. The DPI figure can be a bit misleading, just take it (yeah indeed PPI is the more correct term for displays) as a measure of spatial information density. Some manufacturers use the term in a marketing way just to maximize a figure, so you still have to be careful of course. Some printers may state DPI as the number of individual color dots per inch (and not the number of possible "pixels"), some state it as the actual number of "pixels" (resolution) per inch. The term is a bit misleading in itself, because the end-result in terms of density will largely depend on the techology used.

Now to get this whole color dots situation out of the way, just take a purely monochrome print. Then 1200DPI is indeed the effective information density. I can perceive a difference between 600DPI and 1200DPI on purely monochrome prints, especially on text. Maybe you can't, or maybe you just don't care.

On displays, I can definitely see the difference between Full HD and 4K even on a 5-6" display. And again especially on text and vector graphics. That just looks significantly crisper. Again that's probably a matter of antialiasing, but that's not the point. Text without antialiasing on a Full HD display even on a 5" panel doesn't look good in general. With 4K res, it becomes possible.

Sure there are also many individual variations on how our senses work, so don't take your own perception of things (which is a largely subjective matter) as a general rule. I don't. Hence the "as for me".
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 04, 2019, 07:45:44 pm
However the screen pixel is made up it is a single unit from the users perspective. As you showed earlier even on an LCD some use 2 green dots in each set of 4 that make up a pixel. But we talk about pixels. 8K screens does not mean 8K of sub pixels but whatever it takes to make a full dot.

Whatever the print technology it will be basod around similar priciples. You have coloured inks that can be deposited in a minimum size and "dithering" is what it is all about. If you try to look at it from a digital point of view it's like saying: take the smallest area your eye can appreciate, now divide that into 256 unique areas, that is the resolving power you need so theoretically your print resolution needs to be 300x256DPI. Obviously this is an insane resolution and this is NOT how printers usually work, a wider view of dots is taken along with the blending of colours.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 04, 2019, 10:14:55 pm
I don't think that's quite right. From the referenced illustration, what is a pixel? You might have 2 red, 2 greens and one blue between, prsumably two pixels. Does the pixel start on the green dot or blue or red? It looks to me that a pixel is very poorly defined and may have varying numbers of sub-dots (or, dots may be shared between pixels).

For printing, you'd think it would be the same (that is, discrete dots making up a print element. But the inks can be overlayed so a single dot could in fact be almost any colour, and therefore much higher res than a screen with the same number of physical dots.

But that also depends on the paper. I imagine your common or garden 80gsm photocopier stuff wouldn't do justice to 600dpi or higher. Something similar probably applies to screens - there is a point where it becomes 'good enough' and better would be nice but it's not a big enough issue to actually pay for it. My monitors, for instance :)

Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: BrianHG on August 05, 2019, 12:38:27 am
Ohhh god, not the clear type bullshit sub-pixel rendering.

Special note for those you-tubers who use system screen shots.

TURN OFF THE BLOODY CLEAR TYPE in windows, or set it to CRT screen mode.

I hate those bloody color fringes around the fonts it creates when you have a large display.

In fact, I don't youtube and I personally turn it off myself.

Youtubes compression and scaling, plus for those of us who have Red Green Blue pixels which sit on top of each other wont get that color fringing any more.  Also, if you zoom into your desktop, you wont be blowing up those color fringing.

(Yes, I know what sub-pixel scaling and rendering is.  It doesn't belong in an mpeg compressed video which may be rendered at multiple resolutions and mpeg's color resolution is 1/4 that of a PC RGB's resolution where these fine pixel accurate color lines exist...)

Also, if you grab screenshots from Adobe Acrobat Reader, set it's font rendering settings to Computer Monitor as well.

See attached photo...
[attachimg=1]
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: BrianHG on August 05, 2019, 01:05:43 am
Desktop example:
[attachimg=1]
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: BrianHG on August 05, 2019, 01:11:17 am
ClearType with youtube is a No-No unless you can guarantee every single one of the following:

1. You encoded your video at the resolution of your desktop.
2. You never zoomed into your desktop.
3. All your viewers are playing your video at the native screen resolution.
4. All your viewers have that native resolution computer screen.
5. All your viewers are running the video at full screen.
6. Your viewer's monitor's RGB pixel order matches the one you own and tuned the TrueType for.

This is the only chance that ClearType's sub-pixel rendering font technology might be reproduced properly on the end screen to a degree since the mpeg also lowers the color resolution sampling by 1/4 as well.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: BrianHG on August 05, 2019, 01:18:13 am
At that point (1200DPI displays) we can just switch to pure vector graphics for GUI stuff, and will need to adjust the desktop APIs to work better for various resolutions.  Right now, a lot of applications still have issues with high DPI displays.  (Almost all web sites used to have issues with display resolutions.  I definitely remember the time when most sites had a footer with "this site best viewed with WxH", until we humans learned how to do it better.  Have you noticed how much more popular SVG has become for non-photography content?)

Video content is not that problematic, since compression occurs in the frequency domain (usually in some variant of the YCrCb color space), and it can be scaled; but the storage, bandwidth, and computing power required for compression/decompression is definitely relevant.

Computer graphics are harder.  Just look at how your devices render fonts on the display you use.  Here's mine:
(http://nominal-animal.net/answers/text-rendering.png)
The fewer pixels you have to display a glyph, the more careful you need to be to render it at maximum fidelity.  Truetype fonts, for example, have hinting, small programmatic adjustments that make them look better at different sizes, by adjusting the shape of the glyphs.  (That tech stalled for a long while, too, until the bottleneck patents expired.  If only you knew how much of an obstacle software/math patents have been for IT and computer use in general!)  This particular font does not look like it's well hinted, based on none of them being aligned on a pixel boundary (vertical lines having an antialiased edge all they way, see h, i, l, and n in particular).

At 1200 DPI (assuming at least a foot away from your eyes), antialiasing isn't productive anymore, because human eyes cannot see the difference anyway.  However, if the device can only reproduce a limited number of colors, or has a poor dynamic range (especially black being just dark gray, not "black"), its usefulness is limited.  Even at 100 DPI (about 4 pixels per mm, common nowadays), viewing angles, dynamic range/intensity, and sometimes color reproduction, is more important than resolution.

It is not just a matter of upping the resolution; these things are interconnected with other things that need to evolve correspondingly, or we're just putting a racing spoiler on a cardboard box.  And, once again, it depends on the content, too.

(One of the reasons for my forays into psychovisual models is how poor the imagery in molecular dynamics publications is.  It's like they're just filler; usually chosen from a poor angle, and either make the files HUGE and slow, or have such a poor resolution they hurt ones eye.  When they do have a big resolution, you need to wonder if the image is intended to be physically representative, or just an illustration with very little to do with the actual molecule/system configuration.  Authors rarely say.  What I'd like, is to let users "render" the models, with at least outlines using vector elements; with either cel-shaded vector fills or lower-resolution rendered pixmaps underneath.  They'd make the article PDFs smaller and thus easier/cheaper to store, but also make it easier to generate good-quality illustrations.  Win-win.  The tech has existed to do this for well over a decade now, it's the human authors/scientists that do not bother.)

Those colors around your text is NOT truetype fonts.
That's a RGB sub-pixel rendering scheme to increase horizontal resolution of old 800x600, or 1024x768 low resolution LCD screens for old laptops.  And for that low res, it does help.  It's been around since WinME.  Today with 1080p or 4k on such a laptop screen, it useless.
That sup-pixel rendering technology is called:
'ClearType'.
If you don't want those color fringes, just turn it off in Windows.  See my examples 2-3 posts above.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on August 05, 2019, 06:39:42 am
Those colors around your text is NOT truetype fonts.
:-DD
No, it is a font rendering scheme.  The font itself, DejaVu Serif, is a TrueType font, though.

Today with 1080p or 4k on such a laptop screen, it useless.
No, it works absolutely fine on this HP EliteBook 840 G4 with a 14" 1920x1080 display.  No, it does not run Windows; never has.

I can even change that font rendering scheme to other ones, without rebooting my machine; I just find this one fits my use cases best.  Changing a setting without having to reboot your machine would blow your mind apart, I bet!  :-DD
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 05, 2019, 06:43:48 am
I don't think that's quite right. From the referenced illustration, what is a pixel? You might have 2 red, 2 greens and one blue between, prsumably two pixels. Does the pixel start on the green dot or blue or red? It looks to me that a pixel is very poorly defined and may have varying numbers of sub-dots (or, dots may be shared between pixels).

For printing, you'd think it would be the same (that is, discrete dots making up a print element. But the inks can be overlayed so a single dot could in fact be almost any colour, and therefore much higher res than a screen with the same number of physical dots.

But that also depends on the paper. I imagine your common or garden 80gsm photocopier stuff wouldn't do justice to 600dpi or higher. Something similar probably applies to screens - there is a point where it becomes 'good enough' and better would be nice but it's not a big enough issue to actually pay for it. My monitors, for instance :)



Please don't talk about things you do not understand. I ran offset printing machines, I know how printing works, and regardless of the technology the basic priciple is the same. Just get a magnifying glass out and start lookng at some print. NO, no and NO!!!! a single point of print cannot represent more colour range than a screen dot. I have no idea how the patterning is done and I bet no one writing the software will tell you about their proprietary software that uses ingenious tricks to make it work.

80gsm paper is probably what I was used to calling natural paper. It has texture and it absorbs ink like mad. You would not use it for printing pictures as it has what is effectively a low dynamic range. There is what is called matt paper whichh is very smooth and does a better job and then there is gloss paper that is a pain in the ass to handle in 50x70cm sheets if you are not used to it and that is what you use for photo.

Screen dots are fairly distinct, as I keet telling my employer that still expects me to use a crappy HD 27" screen, I can count the pixels out for you with a needle.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on August 05, 2019, 07:39:53 am
a single point of print cannot represent more colour range than a screen dot.
Dye sublimation printing yields continuous tones between the dyes used, as the sublimation process causes the dyes to bond and mix at the molecular level.  So, the color range of each "point" on a dye sublimation print is only limited by the number and type of dyes used.  (And to observe those colors, you need light that includes all wavelengths not absorbed by the dyes.)  It is not even limited to the human visual range; dyes well outside can be used as well.  Of course, dye sublimation printing is so costly, it is limited to photographs and such.

(Technically, you do not have "points" in dye sublimation prints, because the dyes diffuse spatially as well; it is more of a measure how well the sublimation process can be spatially controlled.)

Display technology is limited by the spectrum of emitted light components. We currently typically use three components, because that is the smallest number that yields acceptable results.  There are also technologies that allow diffusing the light emitted for each display pixel without mixing light from neighboring pixels (an additional "droplet" layer), but due to the manufacturing costs and the reduction in emitted light intensity, do not have any viable use cases.

So, neither are actually limited to the human visual range, so stating that one has wider range than the other is, well, meaningless.

There is a big difference in what technologies exist, and what are widely used or commercially viable.  Just sayin'  :-+
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 05, 2019, 11:45:19 am
Dye sublimation is hardly what your PC's printer uses. But yes there will be specific technologies that are different. My main point was that 1200DPI is not 1200PPI and therefore to state that a screen should be 1200PPI because at least 1200DPI is needed in print is just silly.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on August 05, 2019, 12:01:55 pm
Dye sublimation is hardly what your PC's printer uses. But yes there will be specific technologies that are different. My main point was that 1200DPI is not 1200PPI and therefore to state that a screen should be 1200PPI because at least 1200DPI is needed in print is just silly.
That I agree with wholeheartedly.  (And dye sublimation is a pretty expensive technology, even though somebody might have one on their desktop.  I don't, but dexters_lab got one (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/what-did-you-buy-today-post-your-latest-purchase!/msg2526144/#msg2526144) recently, and I'm jelly.)

At one point I helped a couple of graphics design students look at rasterization technology, but the state of the art was then (1999 or 2000) definitely proprietary and not peer-reviewed.  The best printer we had available for student use was a 6-ink inkjet; pretty good results on photo paper, but no sublimation dye!
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Mr. Scram on August 05, 2019, 04:15:51 pm
What do you do at the movies with 24fps? get some sort of visual sickness and have to leave?  :-//

On frame rate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM16aiSSpFk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM16aiSSpFk)
Movies make use of a lot of blurring, effectively reducing resolution. Games try to emulate this but it's computationally expensive so people would just rather have a higher frame rate instead. It's also why people were complaining that movies shot at higher frame rates felt unnatural and looked like games.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: technix on August 05, 2019, 04:39:00 pm
Movies make use of a lot of blurring, effectively reducing resolution. Games try to emulate this but it's computationally expensive so people would just rather have a higher frame rate instead. It's also why people were complaining that movies shot at higher frame rates felt unnatural and looked like games.
OTOH some game developers now actually implement proper motion blur in their code, often considered one of the more advanced eye candies available and requires a lot of GPU power to render. My RX 580 can play some game without motion blur just fine at 1080p, but once that is turned on suddenly I need at least a GTX 1080.

My main point was that 1200DPI is not 1200PPI and therefore to state that a screen should be 1200PPI because at least 1200DPI is needed in print is just silly.
Isn't it that it is usually a better idea to provide vector fonts and graphics to print instead of raster images, so that full resolution can be utilized? (That is also likely why PDF is fundamentally a vector graphics format.) As of the whole DPI vs PPI thing I think the marketing departments are to blame here.

Quote
A 4K display still seems completely absurd on a mobile phone to many people (and it kind of is given the typical use), but you can definitely see the difference compared to a Full HD display even on such small screens. That's already pretty high DPI.
No you can't see the difference. I run my phone at HD and I cannot tell the difference, 720p yes I can see the difference but 1080p is fine and 2160p is a waste of battery. I suspect the higher resolution maybe to support things like 3D technology in the future.
Somehow I think this has boiled down to a personal capability problem. Some people just have better vision, so they have more headroom when it comes to appreciating display technology, and thus can perceive certain minute changes. How is your vision? I have 20/20 vision.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 05, 2019, 05:20:57 pm
Just work out what PPI you have with 4K on a 7" screen, it's just silly.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: technix on August 05, 2019, 06:00:20 pm
Just work out what PPI you have with 4K on a 7" screen, it's just silly.
630ppi.

An better argument would be angular pixel density at a given typical use distance. Assuming a typical viewing distance of 10" for a phone, this means 110px per degree, a close call from 90px per degree of an Apple iPad Mini 5 tablet at 15" viewing distance.

Even a 4K screen at 1.5" can make sense given use case, for example used as part of a retina projection display a la Google Glasses, since that use case has an effective viewing distance of a mere inch giving 51px per degree, something worse than Apple iPhone 4s.

The upper bound of human eye angular resolution is 60px per degree. However since "pixels" or vision cells of human eyes and pixels of a display are unlikely to align perfectly, the Shannon-Nyquist Sampling Theorem extended to a 2D plane comes into play. That upper bound of perception poses a band limit here, so in order to perfectly reproduce an image in a human eye from a screen to the point no human however trained can tell it being a raster image, it need to have no less than 120px per degree. Even that 7" 4K display at phone distance isn't reaching it.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 05, 2019, 08:38:19 pm
No not really. You are still grossly overstating the resolution that your eyes can appreciate. I have always refered to "angle" by explaning the distance. I cannot see the pixels at 100ppi at 1m distance. You are saying that a phone is used at 250mm, it's more like 300mm, so we are talking 300-400ppi needed to have a display that you really can't see a pixel on. 630ppi is over twice the density (1.5*1.5 it's a square area when you look at density).

I'll give you a mad theory, maybe if you watch video at 4K it is less power intensive to display at 4K than have to use precessing power to downsample. Conversly it takes mare power to generate graphics at 4K than 1080p.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: technix on August 06, 2019, 03:31:38 am
No not really. You are still grossly overstating the resolution that your eyes can appreciate. I have always refered to "angle" by explaning the distance. I cannot see the pixels at 100ppi at 1m distance. You are saying that a phone is used at 250mm, it's more like 300mm, so we are talking 300-400ppi needed to have a display that you really can't see a pixel on. 630ppi is over twice the density (1.5*1.5 it's a square area when you look at density).
The resolution ones eye can appreciate is called visual acuity. With my 20/15 vision (I had to look up Wikipedia to translate my own vision acuity report to American notation - it is 20/15 not 20/20) I can see a lot more minute details than someone with, for example, 20/30 vision.

Say the same 326ppi iPhone 4s at phone distances, I can actually still see the pixels, if a bit tiresome. If a phone display actually have 630ppi, since it went beyond the Sampling Theorem threshold, I really won't be able to see the pixels even if I tried.

I am genuinely a bit worried about your health here. It seem to me that your Sampling Theorem threshold has dropped a lot, implying a bad vision. You may want to have it checked out, as there can be some blindness-causing disease going on.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 06, 2019, 06:44:03 am
My vision is not terrible, I use light reading glasses (+0.5 - +0.7) for long periods of screen use or I get "tiered". I'm due an eye test soon. Last time i was tested the optician claimed i did not need glasses but as I have a +0.5 mimatch between my eyes which meant one wold work harder than the other I opted to start wearing light glasses.

As i explained it is expected that a person with good sight can distinguish two dots 1mm apart at 1m my displays are 4pixels per mm so 4 times what a "good eye" can see. I think the resolution of my screen is quite good enough for anyones sight and with video playback more than enough.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 06, 2019, 09:35:11 am
Quote
a person with good sight can distinguish two dots 1mm apart at 1m

That's a target, not a limit (as they tend not to say in speed awareness courses). And having just checked, it's a very easy to reach target too.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Sparky49 on August 06, 2019, 11:45:25 am
At this point I am worrying that Simon is not _actually_ trolling people....
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on August 06, 2019, 12:41:53 pm
Yes, Sparky49, anyone disagreeing with you and the holy knowledge you have, must be a troll.

It never ceases to surprise me how stupid human beings can be, no matter how knowledgeable or thoughtful otherwise.

Please, do look up the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Sparky49 on August 06, 2019, 01:44:33 pm
Quote
Yes, Sparky49, anyone disagreeing with you and the holy knowledge you have, must be a troll.

What makes you think this? There have been multiple times where I have acknowledged flaws or lack of depth in my knowledge, unclear writing, etc. What makes you think I think my knowledge is 'holy'? I have even thanked you for your input during this thread, when you posted the link for a comparison which Simon was suggesting. He had said that if one were to fill a 43" 4k display with alternating black/white pixels, one could not observe them at 1m. After your helpful link, I rebutted saying that whilst I have no 4k display, I could very easily see the dots on a 1080p, 22" (much smaller) monitor and that effects such as aliasing were noticeable. I then suggested that it is therefore not "totally pointless" to consider people may want to invest in higher resolution displays, especially for a large monitor.  Since then, having tested the same on a 4k monitor in my lab, I can still distinguish details. Who is to say that people may not want a higher resolution in the future? Just because one person, cannot notice a difference does not mean that other people can't, especially as how we consume and interact with information has/is/will change. Coming up with more hyperbole like "We live in a brain dead society", or talking about people posting political rants online, or looking down on people who are blinking an LED with an arduino seems to be dragging the thread around wildly rather than discussing how this youtube channel may use its staff for video production...

Quote
Please, do look up the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I am well aware of this, hence why I try to reflect on what is being said to during a debate. To try to avoid such traps I always consider that others may have a difference perspective, view or feeling to my own. It is interesting to consider that freely utilising quotes like "bread and circuses" to put down other people because of a particular style of show they watch, might well be an indication of Dunning-Kruger. Some of the smartest professors I have worked for, enjoy consuming 'simple' media.

I am genuinely sorry, and apologise if I've frustrated you.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on August 06, 2019, 02:05:40 pm
Quote
Yes, Sparky49, anyone disagreeing with you and the holy knowledge you have, must be a troll.

What makes you think this?

You implying that him disagreeing or making unexpected arguments or observations, makes him a troll.  I am not saying he is right, because I do not know whether he is right or wrong, and am interested in arguments either way -- well, not the arguments themselves, but the basis, the observations, that people back their opinions with.

What effect do you think a comment calling one party a troll has on the discussion?  Not positive, that's for sure.  (It is a sensitive point for me, because I don't mind posing as the devil's advocate just to see the basis for the arguments, as those are what I find interesting.  Instead, I've gotten ridiculed for even entertaining some positions -- including in physics; the mechanism of how hot water freezes faster than cold water being a particular sore point.  I got laughed at about a decade ago for that; but now, current best understanding shows I was not that far off with my opinion.)

For what it is worth, I do not know the truth of the matter here, and do not consider myself any kind of an expert, even though I have read a few dozen peer-reviewed articles on psychovisual modeling, human perception, and so on.  My own fault is, I have very little practical experience.  When I've experimented on other people, they've been either friends or colleagues, so may have provided artificially positive feedback.  So, aside from my own experience, my opinions are based on theories, not tested in practice.  And practice trumps theory.

Now, if the comment was made in a joking manner (say, to highlight the fact that even though he is a moderator here, he occasionally gets corkscrewed into the topic just like everyone else), it completely escaped me, and I apologize.  Me fail English often.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Sparky49 on August 06, 2019, 02:14:09 pm
Quote
You implying that him disagreeing or making unexpected arguments or observations, makes him a troll.

Sorry, I was more frustrated by what I thought were ignoring arguments, diverting topic, ridiculous hyperbole, etc.

Quote
Now, if the comment was made in a joking manner

In all honesty, it was not. But I agree it's hardly conducive to properly discussing the topic of the thread. My bad, I normally try to restrain myself but snapped here. Apologies.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on August 06, 2019, 04:04:41 pm
IMHO, anyone who can admit personal fault/error/miscommunication, is okay in my book.  So I withdraw my accusation above, and replace it with something like "well, the matter at hand is complicated, and not at all clear-cut as far as I can see; so, a certain amount of bifurcation of the topic is par for the course, and not trolling."
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: rs20 on August 06, 2019, 11:11:21 pm
As (mostly) engineers, I think we have a tendency to want to ascribe digital-camera-like specifications to our eyes; as if there's some sort of Nyquist cutoff style criterion we can express about the "resolution" of our eyes or a hard "frame rate" limit. I think it's interesting to look at frame rate as an analogy. Consider videos playing at different frame rates:

10 fps: Looks obviously choppy to any viewer
24 or 30 fps: "This doesn't look choppy any more. This seems fine."
60 fps: "Woah, OK this actually looks like real life now rather than just a video"

I remember way back in the day when 60 fps was just a dream (at least as far as consumer hardware was concerned) that people got trapped in the fallacy that 30 fps doesn't look choppy, therefore we've already passed our human nyquist threshold or whatever (this part could be explicitly stated or just implicitly assumed), therefore there's no point in 60 fps. Such advice was, as is obvious in hindsight, profoundly wrong. And even at 144 fps, moving images on the screen look blurrier than they could, leading to the introduction of (optional) backlight strobing (https://pcmonitors.info/reviews/gigabyte-aorus-ad27qd/#Responsiveness). I'm not saying the latter is a good idea or a sensible compromise, but my point is this: in some regards, the "frame rate" of the eye is less than 25 Hz. In other regards, even 144 Hz is insufficient for a completely lifelike experience. I know we're not talking about framerate in this discussion, but my only point is that y'all better have a damn good reason for equating "I can't explicitly distinguish the pixels" to "this screen is utterly perfect"; because analogous logic proved woefully ridiculous in the case of frame rates.

My 2 cents: The only other thing I'd mention is that for many applications (PCB design being a leading candidate), the fact that I can move my head back and forth is relevant. Having a single screen that I can get in close and peer at details using my head + eye movements rather than using a mouse is a very attractive prospect. Any argument which presupposes that the viewers' heads are bolted at a precise distance from the screen seem absurd from the start for that reason. Arguing that you should always be able to see the entire screen in your field of view is less absurd-sounding, but equally unjustified. Especially for computer monitors, which are used in a much more dynamic and interactive way than an TV screen displaying a movie.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: technix on August 07, 2019, 02:18:22 am
Consider videos playing at different frame rates:

10 fps: Looks obviously choppy to any viewer
24 or 30 fps: "This doesn't look choppy any more. This seems fine."
60 fps: "Woah, OK this actually looks like real life now rather than just a video"
If the Linus Tech Tips video validating this has any merit, for an untrained eye 60fps and 120fps in games can be differentiated. If you throw in some trained eyes they can see 144fps and in some cases even 240fps.

As i explained it is expected that a person with good sight can distinguish two dots 1mm apart at 1m
That is an angular resolution of no more than 35 pixels per degree, a far cry from, for example 59 pixels per degree for iPhone 4s at typical phone distances.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: wraper on August 07, 2019, 02:21:48 am
If the Linus Tech Tips video validating this has any merit, for an untrained eye 60fps and 120fps in games can be differentiated. If you throw in some trained eyes they can see 144fps and in some cases even 240fps.
IMHO it's more noticeable because of lower lag in games as a consequence of higher FPS rather than because of FPS at such.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 07, 2019, 08:02:05 am
Quote
lower lag in games as a consequence of higher FPS

If I might diverge this thead a little, I wonder how significant that is. I am a game player (used to be pretty OK in UT) so kind of automatically didn't care to refute it, but thinking about this now, how significant is it?

The issue would seem to me two-fold. First, games used to 'tick' on vsync, so clearly having a faster refresh would make the game run faster. However, that surely doesn't apply nowadays and the screen is merely a snapshot window into where the game is at. So I would assume that with modern games and computers, we are talking pure reaction times - you see something on-screen and react to it, so the faster the screen can show something, the sooner you can react.

OK, so worst case, lets say we have a 60Hz refresh - that is up to 16ms before we could react to something. How bad is that? Fortunately, the interwebs lets us find out :)

https://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime (https://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime)

Seems the best we can hope for is 150ms, nearly an order of magnitude more than the 60Hz monitor might add. I wonder if 'gaming needs fast refresh' is a case of a workman blaming his tools.

 
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on August 07, 2019, 09:24:19 am
So I would assume that with modern games and computers, we are talking pure reaction times
No; that applies only to jump scares.

It has much more to do with rhythm, jitter, and anticipation.  A much better test is to have an animation, similar to a shooting track with moving targets, and then add jitter or glitches.  It is surprising how small changes are noticeable (and actually cause frustration).
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 07, 2019, 12:27:31 pm
Quote
It has much more to do with rhythm, jitter

I can see the potential for that, but wonder if it is actually significant. I think the amount of jitter, assuming the frame is completely free-running from the action code, would be a maximum of half the refresh rate, so 8ms or so.

Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 07, 2019, 12:43:06 pm
Quote
here is a interesting study done using starcraft

It's an interesting study, but I'm not sure how it is relevant - please quote the appropriate part (there are no page numbers on the link destination). What it does show, though, is that the game tick is more or less 10ms, and that players can compensate for loss of skills (thus, presumably, also reduced feedback from the game).

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so what provides a better perception of an object on screen?

I think that might be going down the wrong tunnel. For me, increased resolution of a screen doesn't mean I can see, say, a photo in higher quality but that I can fit more windows and stuff onto it (and still be able to read the text). I would love an 8K screen just so I can replicate my three-monitor layout without having bezels get in the way. I accept that this is another way of saying 'more detail' but I think the end desire is important - a widescreen monitor, for instance, would be fab for seeing individual nose hairs in a movie but shit for multi-windowed code editing.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on August 07, 2019, 01:33:21 pm
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It has much more to do with rhythm, jitter

I can see the potential for that, but wonder if it is actually significant. I think the amount of jitter, assuming the frame is completely free-running from the action code, would be a maximum of half the refresh rate, so 8ms or so.

Assuming there is enough processing power to do that, and no external causes for jitter, sure.  (But the emerging theme in this thread is, IMHO, that maximizing any single feature like resolution, or examining any single facet out-of-context, is not realistic; we need to examine the entire situation before we can make any sensible inferences.)
In practice, the kind of jitter we experience, is an occasional, say 50ms or longer delay or missing frame, because the machine was busy doing something else; often I/O.

You might find Player Perception of Delays and Jitter in Character Responsiveness (https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~sjoerg/docs/Normoyle14_DelayAndJitter.pdf) (PDF) by Normie Normoyle, Guerrero, Jörg interesting.  (It's the first interesting PDF paper that seems to be completely open access that I found after quick DuckDuckGoing.) Although their sample was small (just ten victims test players per scenario), I kinda agree on their conclusion on player performance: "... higher latencies affect path following while jitter does not. Conversely, jitter interferes with the player’s ability to time jumps or avoid lasers resulting in more deaths and health loss." with the latencies they tested in the 0 to 500 ms range, and jitter in the 0 to 150 ms range.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 07, 2019, 03:50:36 pm
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Assuming there is enough processing power to do that

No, that's the worst case - 60Hz refresh and unstressed CPU. If the CPU is struggling then the jitter caused by the screen refresh - which this is all about -  would be less since there would be a higher number of refreshes per game tick.

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the latencies they tested in the 0 to 500 ms range, and jitter in the 0 to 150 ms range

Order of magnitude greater than what we are looking at here. I think it's important to realise that when they discuss how jitter affects things, that's with jitter bad enough TO affect things. Do they say how bad it has to be before it has a measurable impact? Our theorised 8ms is barely off the bottom of their scale.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: thm_w on August 07, 2019, 08:52:37 pm
If I might diverge this thead a little, I wonder how significant that is. I am a game player (used to be pretty OK in UT) so kind of automatically didn't care to refute it, but thinking about this now, how significant is it?

The issue would seem to me two-fold. First, games used to 'tick' on vsync, so clearly having a faster refresh would make the game run faster. However, that surely doesn't apply nowadays and the screen is merely a snapshot window into where the game is at. So I would assume that with modern games and computers, we are talking pure reaction times - you see something on-screen and react to it, so the faster the screen can show something, the sooner you can react.

OK, so worst case, lets say we have a 60Hz refresh - that is up to 16ms before we could react to something. How bad is that? Fortunately, the interwebs lets us find out :)

https://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime (https://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime)

Seems the best we can hope for is 150ms, nearly an order of magnitude more than the 60Hz monitor might add. I wonder if 'gaming needs fast refresh' is a case of a workman blaming his tools.

Doesn't matter what our reaction time is, lower input lag (via monitor, mouse, kb, etc.) will always be better. Its just a question of how much. Linus' small test showed significance, but was not terribly scientific, I'm sure other tests exist.
Think about two people see each other, they both have the same 150ms reaction time then click their mouse, but one mouse has a 20ms input lag. Its obvious who will have the advantage.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 07, 2019, 09:33:10 pm
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but one mouse has a 20ms input lag

We're not talking input lag (and I chopped some discussion of why not from here - happy to post it if you're bored :D ). But if we were, I think you've missed that these would be separate machines and, hence, not synced to each other. As we saw from the previously posted paper, a typically useful (for testing) game has a 10ms tick, and a 60Hz refresh gives less jitter than that (I assume - anyone disagree?). That's ignoring stuff like propagation delay and round-trip times, etc.

I am talking here as someone who accepts that a higher monitor refresh can be noticed, by the way. I just can't get my experience to agree! I can remember when CRT with TV-rate refresh was pretty terrible, but my 60Hz monitors seem perfectly OK. I don't feel the need to splash the cash on changing them just for higher refresh. Maybe I am insensitive, but I've already mentioned my loathing of non-high refresh LED displays/indicators.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: KL27x on August 08, 2019, 02:09:45 am
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The resolution ones eye can appreciate is called visual acuity. With my 20/15 vision (I had to look up Wikipedia to translate my own vision acuity report to American notation - it is 20/15 not 20/20) I can see a lot more minute details than someone with, for example, 20/30 vision.

No, this is totally false and in the vein of what you are saying is actually backwards. You may or may not have better clarity of vision than average. That is a different measure. Having 20/15 vision just denotes that you are a bit farsighted. This makes you worse at appreciating the resolution of a cell phone or computer screen than someone with 20/20 vision.

Someone who is moderately near-sighted will have advantage viewing a monitor. They will be able to position the monitor closer to their eyes while remaining in focus. And they will be able to appreciate more detail by using a greater area of their retinas to view the same area of monitor. You would need reading glasses to achieve the same view.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on August 08, 2019, 06:07:37 am
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Assuming there is enough processing power to do that
No, that's the worst case - 60Hz refresh and unstressed CPU. If the CPU is struggling then the jitter caused by the screen refresh - which this is all about -  would be less since there would be a higher number of refreshes per game tick.
No, you're thinking of latency there (roughly constant overload).  Jitter is the random component; in this case, say an unrelated sudden task that delays the game by a couple of dozen ms or so.  It can be repeated, but at random intervals.

Our theorised 8ms is barely off the bottom of their scale.
I was only pointing out that it is not about human reaction time; much smaller jitter affects performance.  Even the smallest jitter they tried in that study, 50ms (1/20th of a second), is much faster than human reaction times (about a quarter of the typical reaction time to visual stimuli, 190ms or so), and shows pretty clear performance degradation in games.

I'm not claiming anything about 8ms jitter, because I don't know; I do know that it depends on the situation.  The most sensitive case, I think, is when anticipating the movement of a target moving at a constant speed.  If there is jitter, even at the ten millisecond range, I believe it affects the accuracy of the human tracking it.  I do not know for sure, though, and have not yet seen any research into that particular case.

(Perception-wise, it is similar to testing how accurately you can distinguish the frequency of two tones.  The interval between the two tones affects the sensitivity to their frequency difference; the easiest case being when they are played continuously.  The sudden change in frequency is easier to detect than the difference in frequency of two separate tones.)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 08, 2019, 11:01:10 am
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No, you're thinking of latency there (roughly constant overload).  Jitter is the random component; in this case, say an unrelated sudden task that delays the game by a couple of dozen ms or so.  It can be repeated, but at random intervals.

Whilst what you say is correct, it's the wrong context for what we are discussing (effects of monitor refresh). So, to clarify my comments, monitor refresh rate is constant - it doesn't vary with load. Scene generation is the thing that loads the CPU, so if there is too much to do and the CPU can't keep up, the game scene rate will lower (that's game frame rate, which is NOT monitor refresh rate).

OK, now jitter, for us, is caused by the monitor refresh occurring non-coincident with scene change, so something changes in the game but we don't see it until the next monitor refresh. That time could be 8ms @60Hz and that's our range of jitter in when the scene change will be apparent to us due to monitor refresh.

BUT... I've made assumptions here  and would appreciate someone in the know putting me right (or applauding my insight, of course!). I've assumed that the game scene updates are NOT tied to monitor refresh. Once upon a time I believe they were, using the vsync interrupt as the game tick (which also prevented screen 'tearing' when a change was made mid-refresh).
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 08, 2019, 11:21:34 am
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Even the smallest jitter they tried in that study, 50ms (1/20th of a second), is much faster than human reaction times (about a quarter of the typical reaction time to visual stimuli, 190ms or so), and shows pretty clear performance degradation in games.

I agree that things small enough not to matter do, often, have an effect (but  homeopathy is still bollocks  :D ), and I keep mentioning that I suffer from seeing refresh rates that shouldn't be seen (apparently).

Reaction times are not important here since the player uses prediction, and it's that prediction that is thrown off by jitter. Did the paper give an actual range at which jitter had an effect, rather than the range they tested? 50ms is big, and if that's the low point at which it shows up then I don't see the 8ms of monitor-induced jitter being an issue (and, indeed, they wouldn't if they quote 50ms).
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on August 08, 2019, 11:50:28 am
So, to clarify my comments, monitor refresh rate is constant - it doesn't vary with load. Scene generation is the thing that loads the CPU, so if there is too much to do and the CPU can't keep up, the game scene rate will lower (that's game frame rate, which is NOT monitor refresh rate).

OK, now jitter, for us, is caused by the monitor refresh occurring non-coincident with scene change, so something changes in the game but we don't see it until the next monitor refresh. That time could be 8ms @60Hz and that's our range of jitter in when the scene change will be apparent to us due to monitor refresh.
In practice, jitter is caused by unexpected delay in scene generation, typically because of storage I/O.  That scene will be eventually displayed, but much delayed from the point in time it was supposed to represent.  The study I linked to shows that even at 50ms (one twentieth of a second), the smallest jitter they tested, such a jitter affects the player results.

(Why didn't they test smaller jitter?  I'd say because it would have been very hard, because they used a game for the study.  If zero-jitter games were possible, that's what we'd have, right?)

If we look at the rendering pipeline, each scene represents the game state at some time in the past, unless the physics engine uses a predictor/estimator to estimate the real-world duration from the moment the previous frame became visible, to the moment the frame being drawn becomes visible; I do not believe any widely-used physics engines do this, since they tend to rely on fixed-duration game time steps for simplicity.  If there are no unexpected delays and the scene can be rendered within one frame, the expected jitter from the frame update along is about half a frame, so about 8 ms at 60 Hz update rate.  Almost all games use double or triple buffering, where the scene is rendered to an unseen canvas, and the displayed canvas switched at the next refresh interval.  This is also used when playing video without tearing.  This adds latency, but not jitter.

Current computers and gaming consoles are complex machines, and completely predictable timing is no longer possible. Although individual events are so short their effects to timing are insignificant, they often cause cascades that can lead to unexpected delays in scene generation.  I'm most familiar with Linux system, and there, storage I/O (disks, network) tends to be the main cause for these.  These random events cause any measured timing to have so much noise, that it is very hard for a predictor/estimator engine to yield a reliable estimate, probably explaining why such are not used in practice.

In games, scene changes (like rounding a corner that reveals new scenery) are also a cause for additional jitter, although there are various ways to mitigate that -- basically, preloading things in staggered order, so that there are no sudden scene changes, only incremental ones.

It is, in my opinion, silly to worry about that 8 ms, when there are larger factors in play.  Just like I claim that when creating videos, maximizing the camera resolution is not sensible, and that one needs to consider the whole situation and the effects each choice can have; including the content to be videoed.

I agree that things small enough not to matter do, often, have an effect
No, my point is completely different:  I'm saying you are concentrating on the wrong issues; that in reality, other things have larger effects.
First, that human reaction time is not involved, because this is about a different part of the visual perception part of the brain; something in the brain architecture, if you will.
Second, that issues with jitter in practice are not due to the display frame rate, but due to unexpected delays in scene generation.

If we were to look at why some players prefer high frame rates, I'd say that it has more to do with that motion anticipation part of the human brain working better with more frames per second, and nothing to do with how many frames per second they can perceive. Perhaps the extra information mitigates the effects of the unavoidable jitter?  Or perhaps it is completely psychological, a placebo effect?  I don't know.  I do know that motion anticipation and tracking occurs in a separate part of the brain than reaction, so I'd say it is plausible, but I'm definitely not sure.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 08, 2019, 01:47:41 pm
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this article
http://news.mit.edu/2014/in-the-blink-of-an-eye-0116 (http://news.mit.edu/2014/in-the-blink-of-an-eye-0116)
talks about something along the lines of image recognition speed

This can be fascinating stuff indeed.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 08, 2019, 01:57:14 pm
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a typically useful (for testing) game has a 10ms tick, and a 60Hz refresh gives less jitter than that (I assume - anyone disagree?)

Yes, I disagree  :palm:

On the one hand I say that 8ms is less than 10ms so the jitter is hidden within the tick period. But another way of looking at it is that 8ms is very nearly 10ms and could be interpreted as missing a complete tick. I doubt if that would happen because things would drift gradually rather than jump from one extreme to the other, but the possibility is there.

There is also an assumption that a monitor refresh is dead accurate, but nothing is. I can't recall ever seeing an error range stated, though.

OK, back to Simon for a new rant, I think :)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 08, 2019, 02:03:39 pm
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a person with good sight can distinguish two dots 1mm apart at 1m

That's a target, not a limit (as they tend not to say in speed awareness courses). And having just checked, it's a very easy to reach target too.


Whoa, I stopped getting notifications for some reason.

No it's not a limit, it's average vision. It was something I was told a long time ago and it was about the ability to distinguish the dots not neccessarily focus on the dots. I suppose the other way of expressing it is the shortest break in a line that one can clearly see. so at 4 PPmm I think we are fairly safe to say that that is a good resolution and much more is just an overuse of technology.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: technix on August 08, 2019, 05:12:33 pm
No, this is totally false and in the vein of what you are saying is actually backwards. You may or may not have better clarity of vision than average. That is a different measure. Having 20/15 vision just denotes that you are a bit farsighted. This makes you worse at appreciating the resolution of a cell phone or computer screen than someone with 20/20 vision.
I have never took the American-style test, and maybe I made a wrong translation. The Chinese standard visual acuity tests are designed to test angular resolution directly, and a higher angular resolution corresponds directly to a higher score on the test. My raw score is 1.5 on both eyes, and for reference the usual "good" being 0.8-1.2, and 1.5+ being considered "excellent."

In practice, jitter is caused by unexpected delay in scene generation, typically because of storage I/O.  That scene will be eventually displayed, but much delayed from the point in time it was supposed to represent.  The study I linked to shows that even at 50ms (one twentieth of a second), the smallest jitter they tested, such a jitter affects the player results.
Some game developer actually do handle that, but by eating system memory. When I load up a scene in Cities:Skylines on my workstation, I usually expect ~80GB memory usage out of my 128 since the game is programmed to use up to a certain percentage of system memory, and since I have that much memory it just dumps a whole bunch of decompressed stuff into the main memory to combat jitter. Too bad most games are built to allow running on 16GB or even 8GB system memory, and jitter became unavoidable when storage can not catch up.

This can be tested though by comparing a slightly loaded mechanical hard drive (a lot of seek and load time) versus an idle NVMe SSD (virtually no seek time and extremely fast load,) which can be carried out on the same computer even.

No it's not a limit, it's average vision. It was something I was told a long time ago and it was about the ability to distinguish the dots not neccessarily focus on the dots. I suppose the other way of expressing it is the shortest break in a line that one can clearly see. so at 4 PPmm I think we are fairly safe to say that that is a good resolution and much more is just an overuse of technology.
Then explain to me why I can tell two dots 0.08mm apart from 15cm away, with perfect focus and all? If focus is not needed the dots can be even tighter?

I used to develop iOS apps, and it was common for me to work at a pixel level on a Retina screen. Even in those conditions I can still see the pixels perfectly. Call me a trained eye if you want to, but since the cutting edge display technologies are for trained eyes anyway, there is a reason to go above and beyond. You may say that type of monitor is excessive, but for me it can be something bare minimum to work with so I can see the app UI 100% pixel perfect and still get about the same physical size.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 08, 2019, 05:17:13 pm
Yes you can gawp at a single pixel if you like. But if you are reading text 4K is plenty to make up enough smoothness to trick your eye as you are not dwelling on individual pixels but the overall image. For moving imagery you stand no chance of pinpointing a single pixes even at full HD.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: technix on August 08, 2019, 05:32:59 pm
Yes you can gawp at a single pixel if you like. But if you are reading text 4K is plenty to make up enough smoothness to trick your eye as you are not dwelling on individual pixels but the overall image. For moving imagery you stand no chance of pinpointing a single pixes even at full HD.
Both the claims here implies a regular non-professional consumer.

* For people that is in the digital publication and mobile app development business it is necessary to be able to pick out single-pixel errors even at Retina density.
* For game developers and CG artists they even need to pick out single pixel errors in high resolution fluid animations.
* As of pro gamers being able to pick out single pixel differences can immediately turn into an advantage in a tight competition.
Those above are the kind of trained eyes consumer grade display technology just won't cut it for them. While for you it can take a while before you start taking up 8K 144Hz panels, those people are already reaching for things like 12K 240Hz.

Even my own daily driver monitor, a Dell P2415Q, a 4K monitor at 24 inch, is prosumer grade gear, since I still occasionally do iOS. Oh I can still pick out pixels on that from 50cm away, and that pixel that DOA'd still irks me.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 08, 2019, 05:47:42 pm
What are you on about? what pixel errors? so you go through every possible frame of a video game to check for "bad pixels", give it a rest.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: technix on August 08, 2019, 06:39:08 pm
What are you on about? what pixel errors? so you go through every possible frame of a video game to check for "bad pixels", give it a rest.
For game developers it is mainly picking out texture and hitbox errors. Play through the game, and check if every texture is applied correctly, and if collisions make sense. Both errors can be just a few pixels off in a single playthrough, but it uncovers underlying issues that can lead to jarring frames given certain gameplay.

As of CG artists every frame is supposed to be pixel perfect to begin with.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on August 08, 2019, 06:57:14 pm
Dead or always lit pixels on a display are noticeable/irksome because they cause a continuity error, something that the perception part of our brain is wired to auto-highlight.

Similarly, it is a different thing to be able to detect single-pixel continuity errors, than actually perceive things at that resolution.  Different parts of the brain involved.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: SiliconWizard on August 08, 2019, 07:05:47 pm
Dead or always lit pixels on a display are noticeable/irksome because they cause a continuity error, something that the perception part of our brain is wired to auto-highlight.

Similarly, it is a different thing to be able to detect single-pixel continuity errors, than actually perceive things at that resolution.  Different parts of the brain involved.

Yes. That seems hard to grasp for some though.

The fact that we're dealing with a discrete canvas can yield a variety of artefacts that we're able to perceive even though we are unable to "see" each "pixel" individually at high enough a resolution. Our ability to discriminate each pixel individually is ony a small part of the story - even a rather minor one at high resolutions.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: thm_w on August 08, 2019, 08:58:10 pm
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but one mouse has a 20ms input lag

We're not talking input lag (and I chopped some discussion of why not from here - happy to post it if you're bored :D ). But if we were, I think you've missed that these would be separate machines and, hence, not synced to each other. As we saw from the previously posted paper, a typically useful (for testing) game has a 10ms tick, and a 60Hz refresh gives less jitter than that (I assume - anyone disagree?). That's ignoring stuff like propagation delay and round-trip times, etc.

Its effectively similar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_lag
"In video games, input lag is either the delay between the television or monitor receiving a signal and it being displayed on the screen (see display lag below), or the delay between pressing a button and seeing the game react."

I'm trying to make the comparison as simple as possible. A 10Hz display, on average, will take longer to display the appropriate action on screen compared to a 100Hz display, no?
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 08, 2019, 11:20:42 pm
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A 10Hz display, on average, will take longer to display the appropriate action on screen compared to a 100Hz display, no?

Of course.

Probably :)

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I'm trying to make the comparison as simple as possible.

Don't make it so simple that important factors are left out. For instance, the action tick is assumed to be much faster than the display refresh, but that's not necessarily the case. If you can use a silly 10Hz value for display refresh, we can have a silly 100ms value for action tick to match. In that case, the 100Hz monitor doesn't give you much (kind of - action at the start of a scan might appear to occur sooner than a parallel action at the end, but that also assumes a linear display scan that lasts for the refresh period).
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: thm_w on August 08, 2019, 11:57:13 pm
Don't make it so simple that important factors are left out. For instance, the action tick is assumed to be much faster than the display refresh, but that's not necessarily the case. If you can use a silly 10Hz value for display refresh, we can have a silly 100ms value for action tick to match. In that case, the 100Hz monitor doesn't give you much (kind of - action at the start of a scan might appear to occur sooner than a parallel action at the end, but that also assumes a linear display scan that lasts for the refresh period).

But even with 100ms tick rate, the action will on average still show up faster on the 100Hz monitor (on average 50ms earlier right? assuming display refresh and tick rate are not synchronized to the same clock). Lets stick with vsync, gsync or freesync being on.
Whether it is not much or a lot is not the concern, the question is just, will you see something faster.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: BrianHG on August 09, 2019, 02:30:46 am
How did this thread on Linus Tech Tips Video Production youtube quality turn into a thread on monitor refresh rates and delays?
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 09, 2019, 06:25:18 am
How did this thread on Linus Tech Tips Video Production youtube quality turn into a thread on monitor refresh rates and delays?


Because some people would not admit that HD was plenty for youtube videos and that 4K really is luxury and to justify 8K started banging on about games which as you point out is not the original topic.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: EEVblog on August 09, 2019, 09:19:44 am
How did this thread on Linus Tech Tips Video Production youtube quality turn into a thread on monitor refresh rates and delays?

You must be new to forums  ;D
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 09, 2019, 09:44:25 am
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will on average still show up faster on the 100Hz monitor

Sure.

And even faster on a 1000Hz monitor, so why are we not all lusting after those? There is a point where it doesn't actually matter any more. Clearly, the silly 10Hz is not there and presumably your 100Hz is. Where is the point between those  two markers where the gain isn't worth better kit?
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: BrianHG on August 09, 2019, 03:20:40 pm
How did this thread on Linus Tech Tips Video Production youtube quality turn into a thread on monitor refresh rates and delays?

the writing/management for production is an art/social-science (and maybe psychology)
the equiping is tech and science
the viewing is biology and psychology (I tried a bit of this part)
the business and marketing ...
how youtube processes the video is another pot of ...

plenty to go around
 :-DD
All and everything said above in the past few posts, ok.  But, when some of the commenters get around to discussing monitor pixel speed refresh rates, latencies pros and cons in a video production thread, (especially when there is a monitor thread about all this running in parallel in the 'General Computing' subforum)  just escapes the fundamentals of this thread.
But, ok, it wont kill me...
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on August 09, 2019, 03:49:09 pm
For what it is worth, BrianHG, I've read every message in this thread from the "what is significant in video/display" angle.  Everything seems to flow pretty well if considering each message from that viewpoint, even if there has been considerable disagreement.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 09, 2019, 08:27:34 pm
For what it is worth, BrianHG, I've read every message in this thread from the "what is significant in video/display" angle.  Everything seems to flow pretty well if considering each message from that viewpoint, even if there has been considerable disagreement.

And that is what most of this has been about. View angle, that is why no matter haw big your screen there is a maximum resolution required to look at the whole screen.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: thm_w on August 09, 2019, 09:15:14 pm
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will on average still show up faster on the 100Hz monitor

Sure.

And even faster on a 1000Hz monitor, so why are we not all lusting after those? There is a point where it doesn't actually matter any more. Clearly, the silly 10Hz is not there and presumably your 100Hz is. Where is the point between those  two markers where the gain isn't worth better kit?

Because 1000Hz monitors don't commercially exist yet.
When they do at a reasonable price, people will buy them: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/1khz-refereshrate-for-the-microled-screen/ (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/1khz-refereshrate-for-the-microled-screen/)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 09, 2019, 11:18:38 pm
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When they do at a reasonable price, people will buy them

Undoubtedly. People will buy anything if it had a bigger number than the old model. But are you seriously saying that a 1000Hz monitor will improve your experience over, let's say, a 500Hz monitor?
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: BrianHG on August 10, 2019, 12:07:49 am
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When they do at a reasonable price, people will buy them

Undoubtedly. People will buy anything if it had a bigger number than the old model. But are you seriously saying that a 1000Hz monitor will improve your experience over, let's say, a 500Hz monitor?
Maybe not in a frame rate sense, but, it the display has a limited number of shades, or if it is only 4-6 bit per color, at 1000hz, a frame to frame dithering pattern will allow a reproduction of any missing luminance values.  This is particularly useful with superbright LED displays as the darker shades are just too huge a step since the output is a linear step while our eyes work logarithmically.  This is usually needed for huge LED wall type displays where you want an above 240Hz refresh so that outdoor signs don't flutter in direct sunlight as people drive by, but, that refresh speed lowers the amount of available PWM shades.

Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 10, 2019, 12:22:26 am
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at 1000hz, a frame to frame dithering pattern

That's an interesting (not to say legitimate) take on it. Kind of sidesteps the point being argued, though :)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: BrianHG on August 10, 2019, 12:59:47 am
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at 1000hz, a frame to frame dithering pattern

That's an interesting (not to say legitimate) take on it. Kind of sidesteps the point being argued, though :)
To get so many nits of luminance on such a small chip without generating too much heat means the display's pixels are probably driven by 1 bit PWM similar to their video wall counterparts.  And with no phosphor whatsoever, even 180hz flutters to the eye like the first generation DLP projectors.  When I used to work on such large video walls, the refresh rate went from 150hz to 4000hz.  At 150hz, I got 16 million colors, but with a nasty flutter in daylight.  At 4000hz, I got a steady picture, but only 512 colors.  Through some Z-dithering trickery, I manages to get a beautiful 240Hz or 360Hz with close to a billion colors allowing the screens to be run indoors at 1/4 brightness without faces being shown with ugly red saturated contours since the colors were being drawn in the first 16 to 25 shades for each RGB color.

With such a bright microdisplay, with 0 phosphor, they need at least a good Z-dithering pattern faster than the video source for when they drive the display at lower humane contrast levels.

Otherwise, that device operates in the linear domain and will junk a lot of wasted light due to resistance and aging of the display's active matrix will become apparent fast as well as with temperature.  (My educated guess if their chip is a huge set of linear operating fets at each pixel)

The really old linear drive LED walls had pixel consistency problems and weren't too bright due to the heat each 32x16 module would generate.  The newer PWM designs got just as hot, however, they were 4x brighter and pixel consistency became as good as a normal LCD display.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 10, 2019, 06:11:48 am
Quote
When they do at a reasonable price, people will buy them

Undoubtedly. People will buy anything if it had a bigger number than the old model. But are you seriously saying that a 1000Hz monitor will improve your experience over, let's say, a 500Hz monitor?
Maybe not in a frame rate sense, but, it the display has a limited number of shades, or if it is only 4-6 bit per color, at 1000hz, a frame to frame dithering pattern will allow a reproduction of any missing luminance values.  This is particularly useful with superbright LED displays as the darker shades are just too huge a step since the output is a linear step while our eyes work logarithmically.  This is usually needed for huge LED wall type displays where you want an above 240Hz refresh so that outdoor signs don't flutter in direct sunlight as people drive by, but, that refresh speed lowers the amount of available PWM shades.



You should be a politician.

So we already have monitors that do 8 bit per colour, as I have already explained my 4K IPS monitor is like looking at photopaper prints. So why would a monitor have less colour ranges? if it's a limitation imposed by your theoretical 1000Hz technology and requires "over sampling" to fix you have just lost the effective frame rate. So what was gained? other than being ablo to claim a higher frame rate.

What does direct sunlight or driving have to do with the refresh rate? :palm:
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: KL27x on August 10, 2019, 06:55:26 am
Linus uses these things because that's what his channel is about. The latest and greatest and most expensive stuff that money can buy. His channel is sponsored by people selling this stuff and this idea.

Linus uses it. Linus is successful. If you want to have a successful Youtube channel, you should use this stuff, too.

How you gonna sell $5,000 video cards, if you get by just fine with a $100.00 one? How would you come off as genuinely excited about the latest and greatest [w/e], when you don't use the latest and greatest, yourself?
 
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 10, 2019, 07:00:00 am
who said anything about expensive video cards?
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: KL27x on August 10, 2019, 07:13:42 am
 :palm:
Somewhere this thread started, and it was about Linus Tech Tips Video Production having 8 guys editing 8K video or somesuch. And why.

If you have a show that is aimed at 14-yr-olds pro-gamer wannabe's and their parents' credit cards, you have to walk the walk with your own computers.

Sorry for interrupting the neverending thread about the analog retina and the ability to apprciate 1000 Hz video.

And if I have said something that reveals my ignorance... what else is new?  :-//
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Nominal Animal on August 10, 2019, 09:53:19 am
Linus uses these things because that's what his channel is about. The latest and greatest and most expensive stuff that money can buy. His channel is sponsored by people selling this stuff and this idea.
Yes, exactly.  (I think others might have missed the implicit <sarcasm> tags in the rest of your post, though.)

Linus is not using 8K cameras because 4K or even 1080p video resolution is the bottleneck; he is using them because they are part of the business of his channel.  What he uses is not a good argument why anyone else with a different use case should use the same bottleneck, even if his business plan relies on people making exactly that argument.

Graphics artists are not using pixel-perfect high-resolution IPS panel displays because their eyesight is so much better than average that they can perceive every single pixel, but because such displays don't have artist performance degrading discontinuities, and are therefore better tools for the job.

Sound and audio people use studio monitors and carefully sound-decorated rooms/booths to do their work, for exactly the same reason: to allow them to focus on the work, without being misled/distracted by discontinuities or environmental audio effects, and to allow them to work on the material with maximum fidelity the human can operate on.

All of that indicates that resolution, color depth, dynamic range, compression and bitrate, and other similar details, cannot be compared out of context.  To make any sense, we need to look at the situation as a whole, including the content to be reproduced.

Simon is arguing that there is an upper limit to the number of pixels that are useful to a human in a display, because of the limitations of the human eye.  Technically that is correct, but it makes assumptions I am not totally comfortable with: mainly, that it assumes specific use patterns, and that the entire display is perceived at once.  I am not sure if that will be true in the future.  For example, if I have a wall-sized display, when watching video on it from a few meters away, a pretty low resolution will work absolutely fine.  But, if I'm working on something from a foot off the wall, I want that region to have much higher resolution.  Yet, is this even a fair analogy to monitors?  I don't know, and that's the exact reason I don't want to go as far as state an upper limit based on typical human vision; it is not pertinent yet, so why assert a decision before it is relevant?

Others have argued that thus far, we've been increasing resolution (pixel size) steadily for the last fifty years at least.  (Maybe excepting the betamax/VHS hiccup; but that was due to business reasons.)  And, therefore, it stands to reason that one should use as high resolution for their work as possible, to ensure its fidelity in the future.
I disagree with that as well, because resolution has had very little to no impact on the popularity of classic content.  Sure, the most popular ones are being remastered all the time, but I claim that that has much more to do with removing the discontinuities (noise and errors incurred when duplicating the content from the masters), than any resolution issue.  Cases where the content has only digital masters (as opposed to analog film), say the Babylon 5 series, that resolution does not seem to be any kind of a barrier to enjoyment; it's the content (not that realistic CGI animation) that one notices.

My own nitpicks are much simpler.  I'd want to be able to select audio and video quality separately when watching Youtube videos.  I want my displays to have very good color gamut (range of colors they can reproduce), maximum viewing angles (I don't want head movement to change how I perceive the display), and intensity ranges reaching black (I typically use very low brightness, and want black to be black, not dark gray); resolution is quite secondary consideration.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 10, 2019, 10:11:33 am
We were talking video resolution. Yes Linus can use whatever he wants and if people think his videos are better at 4K because they are shot at 8K well that is up to them. The discussion has wandered all over the place as different use cases have been pulled out to justify certain claims. Sure i would use an 8K monitor if it was good quality - right now I am considering switching my monitors around and going back to the 27" purely because of it's outstanding quality which I cannot say of my 43" monitor despite them both being 4K IPS.

If you are using a monitor for reading text or editing images sure 8K may even be a benefit although personally I find 4K fine. but we were talking video recording, production and streaming. You can view it on whatever monitor you like and upscaling providing the viewing monitor is the same or a multiple resolution there is nothing to be lost. Yes for youtube HD is fine although yes i can perceive a slight difference to 4K but the question is do i care? not really. Is whatching in HD degrading? not really and i only see a diferrence in talking head stuff where i can look at the still parts of the video. Fast moving scenes are probably going to be hard to get any more detail out of at 4K than is needed at HD.

For video viewing one usually watches the whole screen at once. This is where the angle of resolution is the defining factor. Sure if I am going to work up close on a still image on a lorge screen and not look at all of the screen 4K is a minimum and 8K may be nice but this is no longer video consumption we are talking about and as i said there is no problem putting HD onto 4K or HD/4K onto 8K they are all multiples of each other.

Now if you are going to have some giant screen on the wall well that is an entirely different technology and use case.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: BrianHG on August 10, 2019, 10:17:27 am
Quote
When they do at a reasonable price, people will buy them

Undoubtedly. People will buy anything if it had a bigger number than the old model. But are you seriously saying that a 1000Hz monitor will improve your experience over, let's say, a 500Hz monitor?
Maybe not in a frame rate sense, but, it the display has a limited number of shades, or if it is only 4-6 bit per color, at 1000hz, a frame to frame dithering pattern will allow a reproduction of any missing luminance values.  This is particularly useful with superbright LED displays as the darker shades are just too huge a step since the output is a linear step while our eyes work logarithmically.  This is usually needed for huge LED wall type displays where you want an above 240Hz refresh so that outdoor signs don't flutter in direct sunlight as people drive by, but, that refresh speed lowers the amount of available PWM shades.



You should be a politician.

So we already have monitors that do 8 bit per colour, as I have already explained my 4K IPS monitor is like looking at photopaper prints. So why would a monitor have less colour ranges? if it's a limitation imposed by your theoretical 1000Hz technology and requires "over sampling" to fix you have just lost the effective frame rate. So what was gained? other than being ablo to claim a higher frame rate.

What does direct sunlight or driving have to do with the refresh rate? :palm:

To compete with direct sunlight, the large outdoor LED display need to be driven a good 10x to 20x brighter than a home monitor, otherwise they would be invisible like trying to see an LDC screen in direct sunlight outdoors.
The BRIGHTER and SHARPER ON-OFF-ON time the light source, the more sensitive your eyes are to the flicker.  In low light, your eye themselves have a natural smoothing out action of fluttering light sources.  Make a flustering light source as bright and large as the sun such as a 20 foot wide LED wall display, which pulses on and off with absolutely 0 phosphor glow, any motion on the screen begins to strobe to a viewer.

The higher the brightness, the more sensitive you eye is to flutter and these video walls operate in a harsh PWM output, with only on periods around 20% over many areas  over the screen over different colors.

Do not misunderstand me, the PC feeding the controller is still a 60hz image.  The controller board feeding the video wall tiles operate at any selectable refresh rates beginning at 150hz and up.

Now Simon, I know that home LCD panels have linear shades with no flutter, but they are not 20 foot displays outdoors with luminances which compete against direct sun light with 3 bit RGB pwm colors.  I've worked in the industry between 2010 and 2015.  Ive had display modules and control boards in my office and tuned them for the best display.  In this case I have experience and I know what I'm talking about.  To prove this, here are screen shots:

1.  Example display module just to show you a small section of what I'm talking about:
[attach=1]
2. Shenzhen Linsn Technology LED wall controller board manual (a) showing 10hz to 3000Hz support (2011 version) (Even the cheap Chinese agree that you need high refresh rates otherwise why offer beyond 60hz):
[attach=2]
3. Shenzhen Linsn Technology LED wall controller board manual (b) showing default 240hz since any slower flickers like mad to the eye when you turn up the contrast):
[attach=3]
4. My office photograph of the first 29 shades of grey coming out of a PC feeding at 60hz when the Shenzhen Linsn controller board set to 240Hz:
[attach=4]
5. My office photograph of the first 29 shades of grey coming out of a PC feeding at 60hz when the Shenzhen Linsn controller board set to 240Hz with my adapted Z dithering algorithm in video scaler technology for video walls:
[attach=5]
6. A prototype video scaler of mine which preps any video source, crops and centers the image on any video wall size as their pixels are mapped 1:1 with a DVI video source:
[attach=6]
[attach=7]
I've worked on this for a few years and these displays are not like desktop monitors.  They need special attention to tame them and make them comfortable for viewing under multiple indoor and outdoor circumstances.  As an example, in outdoor daytime, we drive these screens around 70% to 100% contrast.
In indoor use, we drive these screens at around ONLY 20% contrast in luminated areas and only at 10% in dark venues.  10% means only 10% of the available shade available and the shading is linear.  This is why I was paid to develop my Z dithering shading technology which as show above re-claims those lower shades needed to get red of the contours around video images.

Today, high end faster video wall drivers with much faster PWM clocks with built in Z dithering has made this technology obsolete.

I'm not just some gamer just begging for absurd frame rates.  I've been in the business and in the case of video walls, the 240hz to even 500hz is the normal minimum expected situation.  (These wall video interface usually still receive only 60hz or 50hz from PCs or third party scalers, or whatever their video source may be, but the driver which pulses the LEDs on the walls operate starting at 240hz, sometimes as low as 180hz on indoor screens.  Any slower and the strobe effect begins to become visible to many viewers beginning with moving objects on the screen.  Slower yet, the display begins to look like a strobe light)
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 10, 2019, 10:28:05 am


Do not misunderstand me, the PC feeding the controller is still a 60hz image.  The controller board feeding the video wall tiles operate at any selectable refresh rates beginning at 150hz and up.......................................

I've worked on this for a few years and these displays are not like desktop monitors.  They need special attention to tame them and make them comfortable for viewing under multiple indoor and outdoor circumstances.  As an example, in outdoor daytime, we drive these screens around 70% to 100% contrast.
In indoor use, we drive these screens at around ONLY 20% contrast in luminated areas and only at 10% in dark venues.  10% means only 10% of the available shade available and the shading is linear.  This is why I was paid to develop my Z dithering shading technology which as show above re-claims those lower shades needed to get red of the contours around video images.

Today, faster video wall drivers with much faster PWM clocks with built in Z dithering has made this technology obsolete.



So you have just busted your own argument and now explained that you are the umpteinth person to start talking about completely different technology and or use case in order to throw bigger numbers in there.

Yes you can't PWM LED's at 50Hz, I worked on my own little LED controller once. All i did was flash LED strips on and aff in sequence, it was great until my boss decided they were too bright so i had to not only sequence the lights on and off but PWM them as well and funny enough I had to use a little over 100Hz to get rid of the flicker and sure 1KHz would have been nice but not really neccessary. All you are talking about is a more sophisticated version of this and all you are talking about is how to control LED's NOT LCD's! As you stated you are using data tranfer rates of a common desktop monitor but you beskote display technology just happens to PWM lights at 1KHz, what is so extraordinary?
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: BrianHG on August 10, 2019, 11:00:36 am
It was your comment about how sunlight would have no effect on visual flutter with PWM frequencies above your 100hz.

Take your 100Hz PWM LEDs, remove the fixture's diffusion lens, choose LED around 2x brighter than the sun, place a bunch of fixtures outdoors partially blocking the sun as a billboard display and pulse the LED on at 25% duty cycle with an animated pattern.  Looking directly into your LEDs, you will see a strobe effect with the motion.

Just by adding a diffusion lens in front of the LEDs, without those pin point pixels, a 100hz PWM driving LEDs at 25% wont have a strobe effect to almost most humans on earth.  Looking at LED walls, the 25% drive seemed to create the most noticeable flicker when observing a scrolling animation.  Driving the wall at 100% contrast had less flutter as well as driving the wall at 5% contrast in darker scenarios.  Our eyes seem to have a sweet spot when it comes to the total amount of light entering our eyes and sunny daylight with 0 fluttering whatsoever as a backdrop against a pulsing moving outdoor sharp pixel video display just makes the difference stand out.  This is why I said against the sun, the slower PWM frequency rate video walls appear to flicker where are indoors, they are a little more forgiving.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 10, 2019, 11:04:10 am
But the actual frame rate of images is still at 60Hz not 1000Hz. You are PWM driving LED's not controlling the position of a liquid crystal.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: PlainName on August 10, 2019, 11:12:17 am
Are we talking the same thing here? I appreciate that LED refresh rates need to be high, and if you're using those to induce undisplayable colours then 'very high' may be appropriate. But that's a sub-display implementation detail and not the same as monitor frame rate.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: BrianHG on August 10, 2019, 11:21:03 am
But the actual frame rate of images is still at 60Hz not 1000Hz. You are PWM driving LED's not controlling the position of a liquid crystal.
Video LED walls have no liquid crystal panel in front.  For each pixel, you are staring directly into the die of an RGB led itself.  No diffusion whatsoever.  These displays have a 8mm, 6mm or 4mm pitch for the high end outdoor ones.  These displays may be over 10 meters wide taking up a good portion of your viewing area.

I'm curious if you have ever seen one of the old original 1x speed 1chip DLP video projectors.  They refreshed at 180hz with on-off speed like a wideo wall.  Many who watched complained about shutter and rainbow effects on moving images.  Today, the 2x speed, or DDR 1chip DLP projectors run at 360hz to get rid of the strobing problem which was similar (not exact) to the effect on the video walls operating at around the same speed.  There would still exist the old 180Hz units if the problem wasn't visible.

Now if you are talking about the back light of an LCD desktop screen, the situation is different.  I don't know how they are PWMed and what their duty cycle time is.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: BrianHG on August 10, 2019, 11:37:54 am
Are we talking the same thing here? I appreciate that LED refresh rates need to be high, and if you're using those to induce undisplayable colours then 'very high' may be appropriate. But that's a sub-display implementation detail and not the same as monitor frame rate.
Ok, all this nonsense began with the 1000hz superbright microled display listed by 'thm_w' a bunch of posts back.
All I said that that display has most likely digital PWM pixels and that multiple frames in that 1000hz refresh rate was needed to construct all the possible shades of grey using a Z dithering algorithm.  I also said that the brighter the display, the more likely slower PWM rates like operating at 100hz may generate strobe or flicker when viewing moving images as my experience with LED video walls, a PWM per pixel brightness technology requires at least 240hz to make the flicker invisible to everyone under almost every circumstance.  Even my experience with the old original 180hz DLP video projectors (60hz X 3 for that RGB color wheel) made color strobing effects on moving black and white images and Texas Instruments thought the problem was wide spread enough to their consumers that they discontinued that old speed technology in favor for the DDR style DLP chips which spin the color wheel at 3x120hz, or 360hz even though the picture coming into the projector is still 60hz.  Now Texas Instruments have the QDR DLPs,.  360 is fast enough for me, but others wanted better.  I think we are at the point of diminishing returns here.

So, for the micro led operating at 1000hz guarantees no visible flicker to anyone, but that display still will probably be fed a picture down at 60hz.  Maybe 120hz under special circumstances.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 10, 2019, 11:38:34 am


Now if you are talking about the back light of an LCD desktop screen, the situation is different.  I don't know how they are PWMed and what their duty cycle time is.


As it happens and for the avoidance of doubt, NO we are not!
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: Simon on August 10, 2019, 11:39:28 am
Are we talking the same thing here? I appreciate that LED refresh rates need to be high, and if you're using those to induce undisplayable colours then 'very high' may be appropriate. But that's a sub-display implementation detail and not the same as monitor frame rate.


No we are not, someone had to justify 1000Hz having thromn it in as a number. It's totally different.
Title: Re: Linus Tech Tips Video Production
Post by: technix on August 10, 2019, 02:49:21 pm
Because some people would not admit that HD was plenty for youtube videos and that 4K really is luxury and to justify 8K started banging on about games which as you point out is not the original topic.
This is sink-side driven development. It is from CG, video games and Apple of all places thanks to the Retina concept, where things like 4K and 120fps displays become mainstream enough to generate that kind of demand on YouTube and content creators. YouTube and content creators are not spearheading it, they are being dragged into it.

So we already have monitors that do 8 bit per colour, as I have already explained my 4K IPS monitor is like looking at photopaper prints. So why would a monitor have less colour ranges? if it's a limitation imposed by your theoretical 1000Hz technology and requires "over sampling" to fix you have just lost the effective frame rate. So what was gained? other than being ablo to claim a higher frame rate.
I think it is the other way around. Pixels in those large format screens can not do full 8 bits per color natively due to (likely thermal) restrictions and instead they have what seem like 3 bits per color to me, and as a compensation it has to run at a higher refresh rate to permit a dithering pattern to be applied so the actual visible color resolution is not compromised.

What does direct sunlight or driving have to do with the refresh rate? :palm:
It has to do with color reproduction though. Just try to read your phone under direct summer sunlight. When thermal throttling kicks in and limits you to a low screen brightness, you will get why sun affects displays.

Now if you are talking about the back light of an LCD desktop screen, the situation is different.  I don't know how they are PWMed and what their duty cycle time is.
High quality LED-backlit LCD screens, at least ones used in Apple Macs, actually no longer use PWM to drive LEDs directly. Instead an adjustable boost converter is used to change the average current through the LEDs.