Category: music & film

Hey Bulldog

1/9/2005 /

Child-like — No one understands,
Jack knife — In your sweaty hands,
Some kind of innocence is measured out in years
You don’t know what it’s like to listen to your fears
Lennon/McCartney 1968

This relatively obscure track “Hey Bulldog” from the Beatles album “Yellow Submarine” is a cult classic. Perhaps this bulldog will become a cult classic too. In his own somewhat contradictory profile, the Bulldog is “slower than your average mutt” and just wants “[…] a peaceful home, something good to eat, an occasional hump (any leg will do!), and somebody to pay attention to us”. I think he wants a bit more than that, like a liberal and free America. The American Dream is moving further from liberty and economic freedom (land of the free indeed) with every cent added to the price of petrol (gas) at the pump. Judging by this recent post on the “great divide”, the division of wealth is getting worse in America. Well worth a read.

Like the quoted song verse suggests, being childlike and innocent is not easy as you grow up. Some people clearly don’t understand, and are hiding in their safe place. You know, that place where politicians are honest, work for the common man and towards a better world. Unfortunately they are much more likely to be pushing for increasing foreign exports and better sales for the businesses they ultimately are working for. The common man works for these businesses, but he’s getting less and less of a share of the profits. Shareholders benefit from your work, not you. Less Americans have health insurance. You’re more likely to be living with less buying power and more credit than ever before : US consumer credit is at $17,490 per household at present, with over 2 trillion US$ total consumer credit for the population as a whole.

Rising US consumer debt, July 2001 – July 2005

Graph showing rising US consumer debt both in absolute and per household terms

Maybe you should listen to your fears. Avoiding your fears doesn’t mean that people who are courageous enough to confront theirs are wrong. The statistics are plotted in my graph above – my sources are the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Census Bureau. The economy is firmly based on consumer credit. At least you can be thankful unemployment is stable at around 5%. However if it starts to rise again, what happens to all that credit left to pay off?

I’m a British guy living in France, a casual observer of world politics. Unemployment here is at 9.9% – original source (French). The social system is far from perfect. People cannot get jobs out of university mostly because the employee is over-protected by the state, and the unions are too strong to bring in much needed reform. Strikes are a big issue. But at least most people seem to be better addressing their fears and have a more natural tendency to criticise their leaders. Don’t be afraid to question the US administration.

Vinyl Nostalgia

9/8/2005 /

You could say I have quite a record collection. I mean real records, 7″ and 12″ pieces of vinyl that require cleaning before you play them, and perhaps a “dust bug” to clean off excess dust as the record spins. Some people take their record cleaning very seriously even today. I have all the Beatles’ albums on vinyl, a lot of eighties rubbish, and a few records I’ve picked up in jumble sales, boot sales, and even in stores sometimes.

The thing is, with CDs and MP3s now, it’s hard to find the time to put a record on, and the thought of having to flip sides over and/or change record once every 20 minutes seems such hard work – even though I enjoyed this so much before as part of the music listening experience. Making it even more unlikely that I’ll listen to records, my player now lives in the garage, and is only kept in case I ever feel inspired enough to transfer more of my precious vinyl onto CD. I already digitised “Rubber Soul” and “Revolver” but it took a long time, since I cleaned all the pops and clicks afterwards. I probably don’t even have a good enough turntable and initial record cleaning method any more. But I should do the “White Album” sometime, the sound is so different compared to the CDs which were remastered before transfer. Maybe it’s because the sound is slightly duff and it makes me nostalgic.

If you’re completely nuts, you could take things really far, and shell out over $10,000 for a laser turntable. It reads your records with light, so cannot make them any worse than they already are. It may even make them sound perfect. Beware though, as I surfed a little more I stumbled upon this ex-supplier of laser turntables and I now feel a lot better about my digital transfer of old LPs to CD format with a regular diamond stylus.

How about a Saw Doctors lyric (The Music I Love) to finish :

The day of the vinyl long player is gone
It’s all cassettes and CDs from now on
In this world of my own I can travel afar
I don’t need a bus, plane a bike or a car

I’ll just sit in my room with all the lights off
My mother and father think I’m gone daft
I stay home with the music I love
I stay home with you

Cinema to go Digital

1/8/2005 /

It’s time to say goodbye to celluloid. Major blockbusters like Revenge of the Sith and Farenheit 9/11 have already been shot in digital and transferred to film for cinematic showing. As reported by the BBC, Hollywood studios are backing a new digital standard right through to the cinema screen, after making a deal on how digital projectors should be standardised. Digital Cinema Initiatives, a joint venture between most of the majors : Disney, Fox, MGM, Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Warner Bros. Studios, released their final version of the specification on the 27th of July.

The specification

There are two levels of quality dubbed 2K and 4K : smaller cinemas with lower budgets may not have a 4K projector to begin with, but then some films may only be released at the 2K standard since the 4K standard would likely have much higher production costs. No doubt a lot of celluloid to digital transfers will happen initially before directors all make the switch to filming direct to digital.

2K means 2048 x 1080 JPEG 2000 @ 24 or 48 FPS (but at the same maximum bitrate) with 12 bits per subpixel for a total of 36 bpp. 4K is the same except the resolution is 4 times better : 4096 x 2160 and can only be encoded at 24 FPS. The standard provides for 16 channel uncompressed audio, 24 bits per sample at 48 or 96kHz. Subtitles use PNG images and an XML reference file for timing information.

These image sizes equate to a minimum 2.2 megapixel (2K) and 8.8 megapixel (4K) camera format respectively. The aspect ratio is 1.896:1, so widescreen presentations like the aforementioned Star Wars film, at 2.35:1, would in fact be projected at 4096 x 1743. At the theatre, they will need 1TB of storage per screen, as a film will be about 300GB and they need to be able to store a minimum of three full movies. The equipment will be required to sustain 307Mb/s and therefore have at least gigabit networking. Basically the bitrate will be around 250-300Mb/s.

What does this all mean?

Theatres will be able to receive “media” directly over an encrypted high speed network, and store it for showing during the film run. This will make for easy widespread releases of films into theatres across the world with little physical transport costs. The only cost will be bandwidth, but given the size of files they’ll be transmitting – and securely – the infrastructure will not be cheap to begin with. Or else they’ll have to send large hard drives to the theatres but their size will of course reduce transport costs compared to reels and reels of film.

There are a lot of security features in the standard which make it difficult or impossible for cinema staff to downsample the format to a DVD format for example. However, when the studios come to release to DVD, the quality should be at least as good if not better than film conversion is currently as the source itself is digital. Since they’ll be using a digital format for cinematic showing, the DVD conversion process should be easier to manage and therefore cheaper. No doubt DVDs themselves won’t come down in price.

Quality of the projected image may not match a perfect reel of high quality 35mm film, but there will be no degradation over time. It would seem that the key aim of the standard is to ensure a level of quality for image and sound in all theatres, and to allow the cinema experience to outclass all but the best theatres with the best prints in all theatres which meet the standard.

I’m really looking forward to seeing a cinema with this setup, the quality is likely to be superb. I’m going to miss film grain though. Just as digital photography (and especially digital photo manipulation) has led to a world of unreal images and a perfection in certain shots which is too pure, cinema too will follow and lose that grainy, imperfect quality. If you prefer vinyl over CD for similar reasons, today is a day to lament the passing of celluloid.