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Apple iTunes Upsampling Higher Resolution Videos?
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Sep 30, 2006 06:15 AM
from the technically-that-is-worse-than-nothing dept.
from the technically-that-is-worse-than-nothing dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Engadget has a revealing look at Apple upsampling some of their new 640x480 videos from lower quality 320x240 videos. In fact, their upsampling appears to produce lower quality videos than quickly upsampling yourself with Quicktime. The worst part may be that Apple is charging people to download these new higher resolution videos even if they've already purchased the original, so people are essentially paying for nothing."
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Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, in this case, I believe they are doing the upsampling. Generally, the larger labels really don't care about reencoding what they've already put up there -- they only care about getting the new stuff up there.
I'm not sure why everyone thought that just because there is a new format, everything was going to be magically resubmitted to Apple.
At the same time, a good friend of mine just sent a note stating his lable just got word from Apple that at least the audio components of the iTS (I guess its no longer the iTMS) are going to need uploaded in Apple Lossless Format. Does this mean Apple is looking forward to holding the uncompressed files and transmitting compressed or are they going to do the lossless files to the customer? He didn't know because the note said nothing about it.
Personally, I've never worried about the quality of the videos and all that. The videos are almost always better than I get from my local cable station...whatever that may be. After Battlestar went iTMS last year, I stopped doing the torrent thing and bought them from Apple (I also bought them on DVD, so I was never worried about the torrent stuff...I buy when I have a legal alternative). The iTMS vids were lesser quality than the torrents, *BUT* you never really noticed unless you were either completely anal or had paused a shot. Either way, the content of the show was there and it wasn't like Apple was providing an abridged version of the content. Same with music...as a former professional musician (and by that, I don't mean I've played a few bars) I've never really worried about CD vs. MP3 and I know very few pros that do. I use to get all sorts of promos and prereleases and everything else on CD...now they all send URLs to pick up the MP3s and they are happy with what it is. The last time I got a CD was at a release party and even then it was hinted that since I wasn't a journalist, there were only limited copies available.
This just goes back to content over 'quality'. Bad pop music with a limited lifespan? Yeah, it better be 100% lossless and the video at HD quality -- I'm going to get sick of it with each passing listen, so it needs to be perfect each time or I'll discard it that much faster. True classics? Well, I just transfered some shitty reel to reel studio outtake from an old blues guitarist that had molded up in someones basement to digital...there are dropouts and songs that just end and a general dampness about the sound that distorts it and makes it sound like its playing through wet cardboard...and its PERFECT. I couldn't imagine listening to this in any other format.
I guess this is the difference between consumers and creators. Consumers can't add anything to what they buy...creators will fill in the blanks in their head and be satisfied without whinging endlessly about getting ripped off.
I've ranted too long on this subject...
Parent
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
Nope. Everything you can download from the iTMS today was submitted by the labels.
At the same time, a good friend of mine just sent a note stating his lable just got word from Apple that at least the audio components of the iTS (I guess its no longer the iTMS) are going to need uploaded in Apple Lossless Format. Does this mean Apple is looking forward to holding the uncompressed files and transmitting compressed or are they going to do the lossless files to the customer?
Neither. It means that Apple's getting too many complaints about the labels botching the conversion, so they want to do the compression in-house for quality control.
-jcr
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
-jcr
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Upsampling will not put more information in the picture. It just makes it look better.
Sure it puts information in the picture. Anything that isn't just doubling pixels has to, by definition, put some kind of information in the picture. The question is whether that information is "close to" what the REAL information would have been if the video had originally been shot at a higher resolution.
I've played with neural networks that "upsample" an image to double its original resolution, and the results (fo
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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There is PLENTY of batch support for Quicktime...you are probably talking the Quicktime PLAYER (which purchasing the pro version gives you access to simply the encoding portion).
You need to buy Apple's Cinema Tools (err...I think this is the right one) to do batch encoding pretty easily. Of course, you can only get it as part of Final Cut.
Beyond that, you can use Applescript to do a lot of this -- or use other third party software to batch encode this stuff.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It can also use Qmaster to use multiple machines in Batch.
Kinda like the Acrobat Distiller of movies, and its part of Final Cut Studio.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You want to take an average of every four pixels and use that to generate the new pixel. This results in a much higher quality image because you're using all the information in the original image to generate the final result, instead of only a quarter of it.
-Z
What's the point of paying twice? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
There are some perfectly good reasons to prefer CDs and DVDs the currently available download methods, so why do people insist on instead putting forth rationalizations for their preference based on topics where downloads and physical media have identical limits (i.e. you have to pay if you want another, possibly higher quality, copy)?
In any case, this up-sampling of
Nothing new here (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'd also be interested to see some kind of documentation that reinforces your assertion that some early CDs were mastered from vinyl LPs. *Every* CD I own (and quite a few date back to the early days of CD) was mastered from the original studio tapes or first-gen copies of them, or from digitally remastered versions of t
Re: (Score:2)
And before anyone mentions oversampling - that doesn't give you a better frequency response as the same samples are repeated unless you're interpolating, but the higher sample rate does allow you to digitally filter the signal much more sharply, re
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree. CDs offer some advantages over vinyl, such as track skipping and fewer quality issues such as rumble and warpage. This would be more similar to someone borrowing your vinyl record and converting it to a CD, then selling it back to you. Except that is also a bad analogy as in this example you are at least paying for their time. Upsampling a bunch of videos is a simple hands-off batch script.
Usually when you buy
What are the terms of use for videos on iTMS (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What are the terms of use for videos on iTMS (Score:5, Informative)
This is a restriction imposed on Apple by the video owners, and was pretty much the only way they could get video on the iTunes Store at all. Hopefully they're still negotiating to have that particular block removed.
Parent
And they wonder why torrents are popular. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why restrict your paying customers to less use than non-paying copyright infringers? Chewbacca is a Wookie! It does not make SENSE!
no burning to video DVDs..... (Score:2)
kind of OT
there are some TV shows available free from the TV station as well as iTunes. i read somewhere (possibly here on
moral implications (Score:3, Insightful)
I've personally written software that had undesigned implications.
but...
I've never taken money, a second time, from anyone, knowing that I had already sold them that very same thing.
The difference is incompetance vs. intentional malice driven by greed.
I'll always choose to associate with a fool rather than someone I am certain is out to get me.
Re: (Score:2)
Upsampling (Score:5, Funny)
In other news, Apple was discovered to have upsampled regular commodity PCs into more expensive versions with no real additional benefits. A source at Apple revealed that their upsampling engine, code named "marketing", could turn any piece of crap hardware into something people would buy. Cited as their greatest achievement was the "iPod", a device that had been upsampled and resold over five times, with it's users apparently none the wiser.
Re: (Score:2)
Someone I know, caught up in the whole Apple marketing machine bought an iPod - but she has no means of populating it with music....
Trendwhores (Score:3, Insightful)
iTunes is the best music management software given away with any >1% market share digital audio software. Whine all you want, but that's a fact, even despite Apple's tendancy to release new versions with a few too many bugs.
If she's got no friends and no car and lives in the sticks, then that woman is fucked. How did she get an iPod in this situatio
Message to Apple: (Score:4, Funny)
Not to be an Apple apologist, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Most likely, not Apple is to blame, but the content providers, some of whom were apparently too lazy or stupid or stingy to provide truly higher-res versions.
Re: (Score:2)
If they don't fix this it is going to be very damaging.
Re:Not to be an Apple apologist, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
That is correct. This has been confirmed to me personally on several occasions by iTMS staff.
-jcr
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They're still the ones selling them (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Apple may make it the provider's responsibility, but it remains Apple's responsibility to the customer. Apple is the one who advertises a certain level of quality and Apple is the one who collects money and distributes. If there is a misrepresentation of the quality of the product it is Apple that makes it.
Reminds me of waxless floors (Score:2)
This illustrates my problem with pay for download (Score:2)
True to form (Score:2)
RTFA - It's only some of the viedos... (Score:2)
My guess is that it's the content providers who haven't re-encoded. I don't see Apple as being *that* dumb.
What retailer on earth inspects every item? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Gap is one of the largest clothing retailers in the world, and one out of every three shirts I have purchased from them ends up discoloring badly in the wash in just a few months. Even though the clothing is their own brand, I guarantee you they do not inspect every shirt for quality. I no longer buy shirts from the Gap... Incidentally, I haven't had a problem with the Faconnable or Ralph Lauren polo shirts I paid $40-$70 for... you get what you pay for.
Apple is one of the largest retailers of online music downloads with global load-balanced hosting operations worldwide, and every 50 to 75 downloads I come across a music track that is encoded from a defective source. I guarantee you Apple does not inspect the contents of every item published to its library. Incidentally I've had even fewer problems with purchased physical CD's, or better yet, DVD-Audio, but I find there's a level of quality I'll accept to take advantage of certain conveniences over going out to the store and paying $20-$25 for a DVD-Audio disc.
Now, mind you I'm not defending Apple but I'm saying they're not unique at all in this regard. Obviously if there's a considerably high frequency of upsampled videos, then they've either got a problem they weren't aware of
If the majority doesn't care then the majority doesn't care... and Apple will offer products as they see fit. I don't recall anywhere in Apple documentation that they ever stated that products in the 640x480 library were remastered from the source. So, all the energy expended whining here on slashdot about it should be spent sending complaints to Apple so that they get the picture and do what needs to be done to retain their bottom line. If a large enough percentage of consumers call them on this, they will change their practice and require all 640x480 content to be remastered... but don't expect them to be inspecting the contents of every file submitted to them, as the process to verify whether or not the content is upsampled cannot be derived from looking at the metadata... Each file would have to be inspected manually, at length. The end result is that you'd have to wait a hell of a lot longer for new releases and you'd be paying much more for them to make up the difference in labor expenditures. Then again, if you're willing to pay $10 a single and wait until three weeks after its initial release to obtain it, who am I to question?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"You can't expect companies to actually know what they are selling to consumers at all times."
What the fuck kind of logic is that? You'd make a great spokesperson for the Spinach grower's association.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"The worst part may be that Apple is charging people to download these new higher resolution videos even if they've already purchased the original, so people are essentially paying for nothing."
, which has little to do with Engadget's article.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Whoa! That's very interesting; this is the first reference I've seen to being able to do that. Where'd you hear this?
Re: (Score:2)
"All purchases have been downloaded for this account
Purchases can only be downloaded once. You can burn a CD, DVD,
or use shared folders on your local network to transfer them to
another computer"
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And do you really think Apple is releasing episodes of the Daily Show late on purpose? What possible motivation would they have? Just to piss you off? It's certainly not because they're greedy and looking for profits - this obviously causes them to lose sales. More likely, Comedy Central is slow at actually sending the episodes to Apple.
Re: (Score:2)
That's not Apple's policy. If you want your shows in a more timely manner, write to the networks that own them.
-jcr
Re: (Score:2)
"According to Cringley - Apple has to keep video quality POOPY to please Walmart."
Just because Cringely offers an opinion for sale doesn't mean it's true. Furthermore, he never described the video quality as "POOPY". What he said was:
"Apple deliberately repositioned its movie offerings to be better than broadcast quality but less than DVD quality and quite a bit less than HD-quality."
- http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060914. html [pbs.org]
Better than broa