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"Real WMV" 2-hour movie, 148.50 Mhz, 1920 x 1080 progerssive scan image, 1-bit file size

G

Gene E. Bloch

Oi! It was /I/ who made the excellent point, it's just that
no-one bloody understood it! Slap-wristies if you needed the
explanation.

Phil

True about one bit ==> two movies; I was remarking on the *size of the
decompressor*, something I should have realized without having to be
coached... [1]

This (and newsgroups in general, of course) is a community effort, and
sometimes it's hard to give credit properly...

Sorry: I'll try to do better in the future,
Gino

[1] I've often remarked on the high degree in redundancy in music. For
instance, on my hearing the first chord, the whole Eroica symphony pops
into my mind (well, tries to, at least). This is an excellent example
of the size needed for the decompressor program.
 
L

Lionel

Oi! It was /I/ who made the excellent point, it's just that
no-one bloody understood it! Slap-wristies if you needed the
explanation.

<grin>
I made my comment mostly to let you know that I'd gotten your joke.
(And to take the piss out of our loonie Mr "who the hell is Shannon?"
Radium.)
 
R

Radium

Lionel said:
Yeah, whatever. Put up a 2 hour, single bit movie on a website
somewhere if you want anyone to take you seriously.

I need software for that. Where can I find such software?
 
R

Radium

Tom said:
Radium said:
Lionel said:
On 22 Oct 2006 18:49:51 -0700, "Radium" <[email protected]> opined:
However, the image-resolution [in pixel X pixel], sample rate, and the
length of the movie -- 2 hours -- remain the same.

No, not possible.

Why not? A 44.1 Khz WMA file can have a bit-rate as low as 20 kbps. In
uncompressed digital formats, you need at least a bit per sample. Not
necessarily so in compressed formats. That is how a WMA file can have a
bit-rate lower than its sample rate.

Why not? Because when you use compression you have to compress
something. You can't use compression and have everything be the same.
Oh, and as for the initial question, it's impossible. You cannot
compress any amount of data smaller than 4 bytes. Look up the wmv
spec. Even if the picture was a blank screen it would take more than 4
bytes.

Does the 4-byte limit also apply to WMA audio?
 
L

Lionel

I need software for that.

Well, duh.
Where can I find such software?

You'll need to write it yourself. Sadly, all the programmers who write
audio or video CODECs for a living believe that it's impossible to
compress randomly selected, high resolution, 2 hour long movies down
to a single bit, & then successfully decompress them back into
something recognisable as the original movie.

BTW, in the unlikely case that you're not actually a troll[0], & are
simply clueless about mathematics & physics, there is an intuitive,
non-mathematical way to understand why it's impossible to compress a
bunch of movies down to files that each contain a single bit, & then
recover the movies from those files:

(1) Imagine that you own DVDs of your 10 favourite movies, & you wish
to compress them down to 10 files, each containing a single bit.

(2) By definition; a single bit can only be '1' or '0'. If it can be
anything else, it's no longer a 'bit', & calling it a bit is simply
mistaken.

(3) Your hypothetical uber-compressor can only generate one of two
possible compressed files: One that contains a '1', or one that
contains
a '0'.

Problem #1: Suppose you uber-compress your favourite DVD ('The
Matrix') down to a single bit: '1'. Next, you want to compress your
next favourite movie ('Capricorn One'). Now here's where things start
to get weird, because no matter what data - or even what movie - is on
that DVD, we know that the new compressed file *must* end up being a
'0', because the compressed version of 'The Matrix' is '1', & if our
uber-compressor outputs a '1' for *both movies*, it is *impossible*
for our uber-decompressor to 'know' which movie to play!
So, it logically follows that 'Capricorn One" *must* compress to file
containing only a '0'. However, the fact that you could've picked *any
movie* (other than 'Matrix') from your shelf, & it *must* compress to
a '0', should tell you that something is seriously wrong with the
logic underlying our uber-compressor.

Now, ignoring that fo the sake of argument, let's pretend that by
some god-like miracle of software engineering, your uber-compressor
manages to play 'The Matrix' for you when you give it the '1', & plays
'Capricorn One' when it is given the '0' file. This leads us to:

Problem #2: What happens when you try to compress a *third* movie (eg;
'Final Fantasy')? The answer is that, by definition, our
uber-compressor *cannot* produce a single-bit file that will
decompress to 'Final Fantasy', because there are only two possible
single-bit files: '0' & '1', & our uber-compressor has already used
both of them! So, no matter what bit it outputs, it'll be identical to
either 'The Matrix' or 'Capricorn One', so the decompressor cannot
possibly play back the correct movie, because it has no way of telling
the difference between the uber-compressed version of 'Final Fantasy'
& the uber-compressed movie file which has the same contents.

And *that* is why there is no such thing as a video
compression/decompression system that can compress more than two
abitrarily-chosen movies down to a single bit.

This same logic can be extended to determine all sorts of useful
things about the limits on storing data efficiently, or how much data
you can squeeze through a communications medium in a given time.

'Information Theory' is the name for this field,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory>
which was pioneered by Claude Shannon
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Elwood_Shannon>

HTH!

[0] And even if this explanation is wasted on you, it may help others
who aren't familiar with information theory, or who (like myself) find
the mathematical explanations & proofs difficult to grasp.
 
D

DanR

Bob said:
You'd have to write it. Best of luck with that, too.

Bob M.

I can just imagine how disappointed Mr. Radium will be when his 1bit movie
must live inside an entire byte. What a waste of bits.
 
F

Frank

"Real WMV" 2-hour movie, 148.50 Mhz, 1920 x 1080
progerssive scan image, 1-bit file size>,
DanR said:
I can just imagine how disappointed Mr. Radium will be when his 1bit movie
must live inside an entire byte. What a waste of bits.


My understanding is that the system uses a five-bit Baudot code, so
there are only four wasted bits. The bandwidth savings are truly
astonishing.
 
J

Jukka Aho

DanR said:
I can just imagine how disappointed Mr. Radium will be when his 1bit
movie must live inside an entire byte. What a waste of bits.

That's called an 8-pack of movies.
 
M

Michael A. Terrell

Frank said:
"Real WMV" 2-hour movie, 148.50 Mhz, 1920 x 1080
progerssive scan image, 1-bit file size>,


My understanding is that the system uses a five-bit Baudot code, so
there are only four wasted bits. The bandwidth savings are truly
astonishing.


Baudot? Are you using TDD or an old news wire TTY?


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
 
M

Michael A. Terrell

DanR said:
I can just imagine how disappointed Mr. Radium will be when his 1bit movie
must live inside an entire byte. What a waste of bits.



It wasn't even a two bit idea, to start with! ;-)


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
 
M

Martin Heffels

It wasn't even a two bit idea, to start with! ;-)

Nah, with a clever decompressor, you can assume that every bit in the byte
is a seperate entity. So you can compress even more. How smart is mr
Radium!

;-)
--
 
F

Frank

"Real WMV" 2-hour movie, 148.50 Mhz, 1920 x 1080
progerssive scan image, 1-bit file size>,
Michael A. Terrell said:
Baudot? Are you using TDD or an old news wire TTY?


Actually, I have used an ASR33 (with paper tape, too). Attached to a
DEC PDP-11 for control purposes.
 
M

Michael A. Terrell

Frank said:
"Real WMV" 2-hour movie, 148.50 Mhz, 1920 x 1080
progerssive scan image, 1-bit file size>,


Actually, I have used an ASR33 (with paper tape, too). Attached to a
DEC PDP-11 for control purposes.


Wasn't that an ASCII machine? I used a KSR33 on a Control Data
computer that was ASCII.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
 
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