Theo Verelst Local Diary Page 64

I've ditched the usual header for the moment, I think it doesn't help much anyhow.
This page is copyrighted by me, and may be read and transfered by any means only as a whole and including the references to me. I guess thats normal, the writer can chose that of course, maybe I´ll make some creative commons stuff one day, of course I have made Free and Open Source software and even hardware designs available!

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Jan, 2009

Of course you don't NEED to use an full HD screen to view this page, but it sure helps...

A scene from Dirty Harry, in The Enforcer, from a officially rented Blu-ray disc.

More Film setup

Wall-E

Ice on Vimeo

Dutch stuff

This is like music from when I grew up from dutch orgin:

The Cats, Sure, He´s a Cat Lets Dance , One Way Wind

Al Steward Year of the cat

Anneke Gronloh, SOERABAJA

On another plane:

Earth & Fire - Weekend

A little fun with translatiom froom a electronics magazine article, the magazine is now exported to the US too, I heared:

Translated with Yahoo Babel Fish

A geliefd construction object for microcontroller
fans are a radio bell. In such a bell is small
recipient with coordinated ferrietantenne
built in, who the indicator of
the reference tijdzender DCF77 in Mainflingen
(d) receive. The received indicators
be possible by the microcontroller become
processes and reflected on a posting.
The reception quality of commercial
DCF77-printjes is proportional with the price.
But under very bad circumstances
to leave even the best recipients knowing.
A small selective preamplifier
outcome frequently offers in such a case.
The original ferrietantenne of the DCFontvangertje
are separately soldered of
recipient and connected on the entrance
of this preamplifier. The entrance has equipped
with source-volger (T1), so that
the coordinated ring hardly subdued
becomes. A bipolar transistor (T2) takes
the strengthening (approximately 5 dB) at its expense.
The termination indicator becomes by means of
transformer ingekoppeld on the original
entrance of the recipient.
secondary winding of these transfor
mator form with C4 and C5 coordinated
ring which on the draaggolffrequentie
afgeregeld must become.
For the afregelen oscilloscoop
are necessary. It is also terrible skilful to having know
concerning a function generator which
sinusvormig indicator of 77.5 kHz can provide.
The indicator becomes with an amplitude
offered of some millivolts on
original antenna entrance. The oscilloscoop
become parallel to coordinated
ring (C4 and C5) connected. With C5 becomes
now afgeregeld on maximum amplitude.
The transformer must be this way chosen
that it is possible to the correct frequency
gear. In the prototype a core
was used FT50-77 of Amidon, on which two
time 57 convolutions was introduced.
It is use also possible of
a reel core with uitdraaibare a core.
Then the ring can be coordinated with that
and the trimmer is not necessary.

Original from Elektuur magazine

Een geliefd bouwobject voor microcontroller-
fans is een radioklok. In zo’n klok is een kleine
ontvanger met afgestemde ferrietantenne
ingebouwd, die het signaal van
de referentie-tijdzender DCF77 in Mainflingen
(D) ontvangt. De ontvangen signalen
kunnen door de microcontroller worden
verwerkt en weergegeven op een display.
De ontvangstkwaliteit van commerciële
DCF77-printjes is evenredig met de prijs.
Maar onder erg slechte omstandigheden
laten zelfs de beste ontvangers het afweten.
Een kleine selectieve voorversterker
biedt in zo’n geval vaak uitkomst.
De originele ferrietantenne van het DCFontvangertje
wordt los gesoldeerd van de
ontvanger en aangesloten op de ingang
van deze voorversterker. De ingang is uitgerust
met een source-volger (T1), zodat
de afgestemde kring nauwelijks gedempt
wordt. Een bipolaire transistor (T2) neemt
de versterking (circa 5 dB) voor zijn rekening.
Het uitgangssignaal wordt via een
transformator ingekoppeld op de oorspronkelijke
ingang van de ontvanger. De
secundaire wikkeling van deze transfor-
mator vormt met C4 en C5 weer een afgestemde
kring die op de draaggolffrequentie
moet worden afgeregeld.
Voor het afregelen is een oscilloscoop
nodig. Het is ook erg handig om te beschik-
ken over een functiegenerator die een
sinusvormig signaal van 77,5 kHz kan leveren.
Het signaal wordt met een amplitude
van enkele millivolts aangeboden op de
oorspronkelijke antenne-ingang. De oscilloscoop
wordt parallel aan de afgestemde
kring (C4 en C5) aangesloten. Met C5 wordt
nu afgeregeld op maximale amplitude.
De transformator moet zo gekozen worden
dat het mogelijk is om op de juiste frequentie
in te stellen. In het prototype werd een kern
FT50-77 van Amidon gebruikt, waarop twee
maal 57 windingen werden aangebracht.
Het is ook mogelijk gebruik te maken van
een spoelkern met een uitdraaibare kern.
Dan kan de kring daarmee afgestemd worden
en is de trimmer niet nodig.

Translated with Google Translate

A popular item for building micro -
fans is a clock radio. In such a small clock
recipient concerted ferry operator enne
built by the signal
the reference time transmitter DCF77 in Mainflingen
(D) receives. The signals received
the microcontroller can be
processed and displayed on a monitor.
The reception quality of commercial
DCF77-prints is proportional to the price.
But under very poor conditions
even the best receivers failed.
A small pre-selective
offers often result in such a case.
The original ferry operator of the DCFontvangertje enne
is independent of the soldered
receiver and connected to the input
of this preamplifier. The entrance is equipped
a source follower (T1), so
the concerted circle barely muted
is. A bipolar transistor (T2) is
strengthening (about 5 dB) on his behalf.
The output is through a
transformer ingekoppeld to the original
from the receiver. The
secondary winding of the trans -
mator with C4 and C5 is a concerted
group on the carrier frequency
should be adjusted.
The setting is an oscilloscope
necessary. It is also very useful to decision -
know about a function generator that
sinusoidal signal of 77.5 kHz can make.
The signal with an amplitude
of a few milliseconds offered on the Volt
original antenna input. The oscilloscope
is parallel to the concerted
circuit (C4 and C5) connected. With C5 is
now tuned to maximum amplitude.
The transformer should be chosen
that it is possible to the correct frequency
it. The prototype was a key
Amidon FT50-77, to which two
windings were made 57 times.
It is also possible to use
a coil core with a print equivalent core.
Then the circle so closely
and the trimmer is not necessary.

It's a part from an article about a DCF receiver one of those radio transmitters of very klow frequency which are received by clocks over large areas to be exactly synchronized with some accurate cesium reference time.

Fun how that idea is made into radio-bell or clock-radio.

More Class Music

Jeff Wayne - War of the worlds (Live) (Eve of the war)

Joni Mitchell-California (BBC)

Roger Whitaker, I Don't Believe In If Anymore

Glen Miller, Moonlight Serenade

Duke Ellington - Take the A Train (Ella Fitzgerald)

I wanted some close harmony examples, and this came up:

The chordettes, Moonlight Bay, Lollypop

The Four Freshmen, I Left My Heart In San Francisco

Singing guitar, almost:

Peter Frampton, show me the way 1976

Sal Bonavita, Show me the way to go home - flamenco style

I wanted to find a in a particular way sinful version of this song, but couldn't find what I was looking for:

Gladys Knight & The Pips - Just A Closer Walk With Thee

Tennesee Ernie Ford - Just A Closer Walk With Thee

Tennessee Ernie Ford - Take My Hand, Precious Lord

Elvis Presley - Take my hand precious lord

Jazz Folks - Just A Closer Walk With Thee (This harp version is good too)

I guess I looked for some barbershop record I remember, but this is a fine example

The Mills Brothers - Sing Barbershop Harmonies

For a lot of people that turned more into:

Aretha Franklin - Chain of Fools.

Ever seen excellent live playing? Check this out:

The Commodores: Machine Gun

There are people slaving away in studios for years, with equipment that didn't even exist yet in 1974 who after half a lifetime can't even get one SOUND of ONE instrument 1/10th as good as these guys can do live !!!!

Believe me I know, I used to be one of them! Well, I didn't slave away but I sure spend 100s of hours in a home studio halfway the 80s with more than a few synthesizers and such and I would have to work hard and practice almost a decade for hours a day to get some sounds and some musical elements of this sort of class, really. In the now if I try hard I probably could do a rendering of such songs on a Yamaha S90 or another good synth, or one of the originals from the time, which would even work and partially even live. Don't believe me ? You might regret that one day! Talking about me there have been people to witness such actions. But these guys I had the privilege of hearing as a young kid already, so I could grow up with great music, and no need to learn pooh or evil (and sh*). And after having heard such music often and long, and studying musical elements and playing long it is much easier to try for instance a cover of a song than it is to COME UP with the (or another!) original !!!!!

Jimi Hendrix did a song by that title, too, but of a totally different nature.

To conclude for now, a pivotal song by Al Jarreau, one of the great artists of the world, which used to be the title song for a TV series of the same name:

Al Jarreau - Moonlighting

Some walk by night,
Some fly by day,
Nothing could change you,
Set and sure of the way.

Charming and bright
Laughing and gay
I'm just a stranger,
Love the blues and the praise

There is the sun and moon,
They sing their own sweet tune,
Watch them when dawn is due,
Sharing one space.

Some walk by night,
Some fly by day,
Something is sweeter,
When you meet 'long the way

Come walk the night
Come fly by day
Something is sweeter,
Cause we met 'long the way

We'll walk by night,
We'll fly by day,
Moonlighting strangers
Who just met on the way.

That was a joy to hear, especially in that time.

What's 1080-24p ?

Uehm that's an attempt on Bluray materials (or other media for high definition video of 1080x1920 pixels, or 1920 wide and less vertical pixels or black upper and lower bands to accomodate for the higher movie aspect ratio than 16:9) to recreate the frame rate of most original motion pictures: 24 frames per second.

Does that work? Well, uehm, yeah but it depends. First of all, you need the material preferably to be *recorded* on the bluray disc in 24 frames per second, and second of course you need a TV, monitor or projector which can handle that framerate, and handle it good.

Then it works? Yeah, but I think most blurays are (in Europe) recorded in 60 fps, which kind of sucks, but then it is possible to pretend it is 24 fps (which probably the original film frames were) and derive the original frames back from that. Not nice, but it sure works and at times great. I can use a beamer (Mitsubishi HD 1000 720HD beamer, 1500 lumen, on a 106 inch big pro grade screen) which does handle the 1080-24p signal over HDMI (it reports it as a deviation from 1080-50) and then films do come to rest and on average look filmish and nice realistic.

For real ?!

Yeah, for real, but I don't say it couldn't be improved, but oh yes, the result is great enough to pass as film, and I've tried that with more than a few hours or titles, I guess over 20 films (bluray of course not DVD...) and hundreds of viewing hours.

And on a TV or monitor? Well, I can't play bluray in HD on a 24 frame capable monitor at the moment, so I don't know. I'm used to a big notebook where I make my own 1080-50i HD recordings visible, which I at times convert with fairly good quality (h264 transcoded with q=0) to 1080-25 (no p or i) which is more restful and more slow of course. When films would be shot with 60 fps, such as some HD TV is, it is of course swifter than 24 fps, which however is a perceptually determined frame rate corresponding with the human visual system, and as such can look very natural when used right, which doesn't happen that great with the 60Hz screen or 60 fps beamer mode. The beamer compensates and interpolates professionally a lot of motion (I ***dont'*** mean stabalizes, I mean interpolates and interprets all kinds of signal data) so that even with 1280x720 actual (but really fast: DLP) pixels on a 2.3 meters wide screen viewing from 2 to 3 meters away the movies really come alive, without ever really erring.

On the fast (3 msec) 60 HZ (It can do 50i too) monitor I can't help but think that the european conversion WOULD BETTER BE QUIT AND FORGOTTEN AT ALL, FROM THE START. Like really. Forget it. Go home and sell the american made originals, guys, seriously. Don't bother. Go Mess up someone else's films. Oh sorry, that's already your job...

I mean I *make* these materials, too, by filming in HD and creating mathematically accurate graphics from 3D, and my recordings can look smashing on the screen and the beamer. Which of course takes some work, depending on the type of scene and motion and desired effect, but really, to mess the materials up like seems to be rule of blurays is a rare (and sick) art form, which must require a lot of work, seriously, I can jack the HDMI of the small handlycam HD recorder straight in the fast 1080 monitor input, yank in ANY tape I recorded in HD from a least like 10 hours of material, most with serious motion of all kinds, and *rarely* things look so idiotic.

I mean seriously, somewhere along the chain of processing these great films in to bluray products somebody or something must try real hard to not get noticed while messing up real good. Just like the ' allowed' settings. I could imagine movie companies could be hesitant to sell movie copies which look really good, and thus prefer the 24, 25, 50 an 60 rates to be used unfitting, to not issue a higher quality than 8 bits (like the pro 10 or 12) per component, and to keep the original sound tracks and mofo them into some DVD mpeg format for the consumer. OH NO!! They made great PCM (albeit often only 16 bit), DolbyTrueHD (thumbs up) and DTS (Wonderful !) surround availble for what is it: a few tens per 50 Gig disc.

So when we behave a bit nice, buy some, rent legal (I guess that's an OK way) they did give out for consumer use surely great enough sound tracks, which I could certainly use for small (home) theater reproductions. And luckily with potent players and in my case a great beamer, the films truly do come alive at a very good standard of image reproduction.

So why all the pixel messing guys, believe in the new age 1984 too much? I think it isn't right.

While we're at it: 16 bits per component and full 4 k frame would be yummy too, of course....

Some quick pictures from the screen, impressions from The Enforcer:

I shot this at a Philips AES lecture recently about characterizing music by computer, well, the terms shift invariant, great Music and wonderful FFT are not directly related to these activities...

Well it was fun seeing some scales as it appeared automatically indicating wether the music played would be sad/joyful aggriesive/friendly an some more dimensions. I wanted to suggest AC/DC or YellowJackets or Oasis, but someone remarked how about Pink Floyd. Yeah. On the other hand who cares if some internet radio station can determine aspects of the mood or certain musical properties of songs, I don't think I want to altogether ditch the as it is regarded old fashioned (I don't think so though) Disc Jockey who listens to promotions and God knows what and by experience can give some good music pointers and replace him or her by an automated program. What the heck for? Next thing a radio station would be led by an automated pope or anything... And the idea of researching a internet radio station is long past research of course, I enjoyed yahoo radio quite well many many years ago, and the characterisations classic rock / 70s hits / fusion and many many more aren't causing me any problems finding much of what I want: there is soo much of the good music, but putting a few adequate labels on a song is quite easy for the makers compared to making the d*mn music! So who cares if my harddisk WITH HOPEFULLY LEGAL MUSIC can be categorized automatically. Seriously.

"I want 70% happy, 21.05%aggressive and 1.7 percent uptemo music please!" Yeah right. Anyhow, nothing against research, but these people get paid serious money, I don't professor them for free.

Anyhow to make me feel good I played the officially bought (Money to the proper artists! Make me make some money guys!) Black Crows at The Filmore Bluray at about -6 dB of the Theo Verelst Official Satisfactory Rock Soundpressure Level, which is like the _Absolute_ _Maximum_ for not seriously trying to disturbe domestic peace and at half the volume required, that's already a mighty amount of rocking going on, believe me. All those 10 amplifier channels with over (probably more than) 600 Watts of actual RMS Sine power and over a kilowatt (1030 (one thousand thirty) to be precise) of rated supply power to help the 'music power' aspect and all 13 loudspeakers and probably about 400 liters of enclosure can rock very loud and deep in a not totally big space, even when limited to 1/4 of the maximum normal power limit. HHhhhAaaaaaaa, I feel better.

Oh, of course thanks to the men and women *making* the music: that's a little detail, too, otherwise what would one do with such a great and powerful audio system, isn't it. So the crowes went to Rock the Filmore, once again (2005 I think it was or 6) esteblished themselves as on of the greatest rock stars of this era, some guys filmed it (in 60 fps HD mostly I think) and made a great DTS audio track, which all ends up on my 28 inch screen and the TOS input of the Lexicon converter I use, and the rear systems input, and then the amps hum and the screen lights up and the sony player blows a little air, and BAM, as if I'm somewhere else.

Magic? Magic!

Another Upgrade to the System

To make the surround which is for most all current Blu-Ray discs limited to 5.1, which in fact I could play 7.1 (or better put 7.0 self filtered to 7.1 because no-on except some pro in a cinema is going to offer me a sub signal which is low pass filtered at 40 Hz) work nicer as lets say a quadro system (which I think I'd prefer over the front-side approach on most Blu-Ray), I let the rear which are actually almost side speakers work indirect, by reflecting their output over a (hard concrete wit normal bit soft wallpaper) wall. So I make the wall at that spot free from damping and as I reported on my precious diary page.

As I said, I'm giving away tips here of course (...), I put the player in Small Speaker Mode for the side speakers, such that the low components coming directly from the sides instead of via reflection would be prevented, becasuse they'd mess up the path length anticipated.

This time I went about tis issue by trying to damp the sounds coming from the back an side of he enclosure, and also a bit of the sound coming directly around the corner of the front panel, by using thick damping panels and pieces of the same.

The result? I think I like it! I need to test a bit more, and work with the sound path length setting limitation of the player, but setting the side speaker size back to Large and adjusting the damping materials to cover most of the unwanted diect sound paths I think the whole sounded better than ever. From the humming sounds in the Dirty Harry movies to the audience in concerts and the music scores in various films, including Clockwork Orange, the indirect sound is nicer and more adaquate, and also quite less listening place insensitive. Give or take some things, probably.

And of course because of the longer virtual sound path, the place sounds a bit bigger by default, too, which is nicer.