This creates a paradox as live video, as would be the case with a broadcast/video call, didn’t go through tape. The discerning viewer would pick up on that and think you’re blowing them off by playing back a pre-recorded one-sided interaction.
The effect is more sentimental when applied to older videos, but that’s only because it’s what millennials are used to.
> The effect is based on ntsc-rs, which simulates how analogue video is encoded and recorded: colour bleed, tracking noise and soft detail, not a picture laid on top.
It looks like they just took ntsc-rs, added a bunch of SEO text, and did not link back to it in any way.
I can’t reply to OP because that comment is dead and I don’t see a reply link on it.
It doesn’t look like how I remember VHS but I think that, other than finding a setup that works (crt included), you probably won’t get useful feedback from people who were around at the time.
In any case, this really does look like a digital filter to me and not like how I remember VHS (I watched those in both ntsc and pal n, and with adapters meant for those who snuggled ntsc hardware into pal n countries).
I can’t find the link now but recently there was a post here about a GitHub
Project that takes an audio file as input and gives you as output an audio file as the original would have sounded in some specific cassettes and let me tell you, that one also didn’t sound at all like the originals (I feel more authoritative on this because I still have working hardware).
> It doesn’t look like how I remember VHS but I think that ... you probably won’t get useful feedback from people who were around at the time.
I agree it's quite tricky to assess and provide accurate feedback but for very different reasons, which I cover below. I disagree about "people who were around at the time" for the simple reason I worked in both video production and creating production software/hardware tools from the mid-80s to the late 2000s and still have VHS, S-VHS, 8mm/Hi8, Laserdisc and 3/4" VTR players hooked up in racks here at home and a half a dozen low-hours CRTs ranging from Sony consumer to BVM and industrial analog RGB arcade monitors (yeah, I'm kind of a retro computer, video and gaming nerd). More importantly I still have a good analog test signal generator, waveform monitor and vectorscope.
Why it's hard: It's easy to run synthetic test signals like a zone plate and 8 MHz sweep through a video system and see what's happening quantitatively. The challenge is the target isn't well defined. People's qualitative expectations for "looks like VHS" vary widely, not because of fading memory but because they're using "VHS" to mean more than just the half-inch magnetic tape recording format. Engineering-wise the VHS tape format is largely defined by a fixed bandwidth in megahertz and lines of vertical resolution. But those are theoretical maximums virtually no consumer gear ever achieved. The same tape could look quite a bit different on a really good VHS VCR than the typical Goldstar VCR from Sears. And the tape quality mattered as well as if it was professionally duped or home recorded on a Goldstar and which VHS recording mode was used. It wasn't uncommon that my home recorded VHS tape wouldn't play on my friend's VCR. Tracking was impacted by everything from component quality, calibration, belt wear and temperature. The same professionally mastered VHS tape on my 8-head professional S-VHS deck viewed on a Sony BVM broadcast monitor will look a lot different than it did on your parent's Magnavox VCR and Sylvania TV.
When they say "looks like VHS", most people are including composite video encoding and analog cable cross-talk and how their CRT decoded the signal. And in the analog era, all those things could matter a lot in terms of what you saw on screen. I happen to have a box of individually sealed, unopened VHS tapes here that were duped on a professional duplicator directly from my D2 sub-master in 1991 - and I happened to dump some test signals at the end of the master after the client's program. D2 is a digital composite video format sampled at 14.32 Mhz. My pro-VHS VTR can pull a hair over 5 Mhz from one of those tapes. Your Mom's Goldstar VCR probably never pulled more than around 3 Mhz from any tape it ever played and even from one of my tapes, it wouldn't touch 4 Mhz. So, are we targeting what was theoretically possible in the tape standard, what my tape and VCR actually output right now, or what someone remembers from whatever VCR, cables, tape and CRT combo they had in a given year?
To all the variables you mention, add that most of my VHS viewing hours were on a Panasonic purchased in the US and adapted in Uruguay to 220v (and 50Hz) and pal-n ... :)
It looks like someone that doesn't know how VHS looked thinks it looks; text and any other overlay should also be passed thru filter at the very least, and they are too small (would look like blurry mess at VHS resolution)
As someone who was around in the vhs days and has also written filters to approximate vhs, you are correct this is a very poor imitation of how vhs looked.
It seems like you used my ntsc-rs library for quite a bit of this.
I would like to note that while the ntsc-rs library is permissively licensed, the ntsc-rs-web repository (which implements the web UI) is not.
There appears to be quite a bit of code in this app which has been taken from ntsc-rs-web. Not only does the Rust-side wasm-bindgen wrapper appear to have been copied, but a lot of the architecture seems...heavily inspired by ntsc-rs-web. Can you clarify exactly how much you had Claude look at ntsc-rs-web when designing this?
Can you clarify exactly how much you had Claude look at ntsc-rs-web when designing this?
- Even though that should have not been the case, it is the case. I was wrong. Moved on to other things and didn't double check. Redoing that whole part now. I'm sorry.
Although, regarding ntsc-rs (not web), for the record I do mention that tool relies on ntsc-rs library and link to it at the bottom where the text is, and moved it at the top. If the ntsc-rs licence changes, I will drop the tool.
simonjgreen | 3 hours ago
xattt | 3 hours ago
The effect is more sentimental when applied to older videos, but that’s only because it’s what millennials are used to.
whywhywhywhy | 3 hours ago
valadaptive | 3 hours ago
It looks like they just took ntsc-rs, added a bunch of SEO text, and did not link back to it in any way.
fipar | 3 hours ago
It doesn’t look like how I remember VHS but I think that, other than finding a setup that works (crt included), you probably won’t get useful feedback from people who were around at the time.
In any case, this really does look like a digital filter to me and not like how I remember VHS (I watched those in both ntsc and pal n, and with adapters meant for those who snuggled ntsc hardware into pal n countries).
I can’t find the link now but recently there was a post here about a GitHub Project that takes an audio file as input and gives you as output an audio file as the original would have sounded in some specific cassettes and let me tell you, that one also didn’t sound at all like the originals (I feel more authoritative on this because I still have working hardware).
mrandish | 2 hours ago
I agree it's quite tricky to assess and provide accurate feedback but for very different reasons, which I cover below. I disagree about "people who were around at the time" for the simple reason I worked in both video production and creating production software/hardware tools from the mid-80s to the late 2000s and still have VHS, S-VHS, 8mm/Hi8, Laserdisc and 3/4" VTR players hooked up in racks here at home and a half a dozen low-hours CRTs ranging from Sony consumer to BVM and industrial analog RGB arcade monitors (yeah, I'm kind of a retro computer, video and gaming nerd). More importantly I still have a good analog test signal generator, waveform monitor and vectorscope.
Why it's hard: It's easy to run synthetic test signals like a zone plate and 8 MHz sweep through a video system and see what's happening quantitatively. The challenge is the target isn't well defined. People's qualitative expectations for "looks like VHS" vary widely, not because of fading memory but because they're using "VHS" to mean more than just the half-inch magnetic tape recording format. Engineering-wise the VHS tape format is largely defined by a fixed bandwidth in megahertz and lines of vertical resolution. But those are theoretical maximums virtually no consumer gear ever achieved. The same tape could look quite a bit different on a really good VHS VCR than the typical Goldstar VCR from Sears. And the tape quality mattered as well as if it was professionally duped or home recorded on a Goldstar and which VHS recording mode was used. It wasn't uncommon that my home recorded VHS tape wouldn't play on my friend's VCR. Tracking was impacted by everything from component quality, calibration, belt wear and temperature. The same professionally mastered VHS tape on my 8-head professional S-VHS deck viewed on a Sony BVM broadcast monitor will look a lot different than it did on your parent's Magnavox VCR and Sylvania TV.
When they say "looks like VHS", most people are including composite video encoding and analog cable cross-talk and how their CRT decoded the signal. And in the analog era, all those things could matter a lot in terms of what you saw on screen. I happen to have a box of individually sealed, unopened VHS tapes here that were duped on a professional duplicator directly from my D2 sub-master in 1991 - and I happened to dump some test signals at the end of the master after the client's program. D2 is a digital composite video format sampled at 14.32 Mhz. My pro-VHS VTR can pull a hair over 5 Mhz from one of those tapes. Your Mom's Goldstar VCR probably never pulled more than around 3 Mhz from any tape it ever played and even from one of my tapes, it wouldn't touch 4 Mhz. So, are we targeting what was theoretically possible in the tape standard, what my tape and VCR actually output right now, or what someone remembers from whatever VCR, cables, tape and CRT combo they had in a given year?
fipar | an hour ago
To all the variables you mention, add that most of my VHS viewing hours were on a Panasonic purchased in the US and adapted in Uruguay to 220v (and 50Hz) and pal-n ... :)
joenot443 | 3 hours ago
InsidiousWombat | 3 hours ago
dubbie99 | 3 hours ago
camies | 3 hours ago
valadaptive | 3 hours ago
I would like to note that while the ntsc-rs library is permissively licensed, the ntsc-rs-web repository (which implements the web UI) is not.
There appears to be quite a bit of code in this app which has been taken from ntsc-rs-web. Not only does the Rust-side wasm-bindgen wrapper appear to have been copied, but a lot of the architecture seems...heavily inspired by ntsc-rs-web. Can you clarify exactly how much you had Claude look at ntsc-rs-web when designing this?
[OP] wookashin | 2 hours ago
Although, regarding ntsc-rs (not web), for the record I do mention that tool relies on ntsc-rs library and link to it at the bottom where the text is, and moved it at the top. If the ntsc-rs licence changes, I will drop the tool.