
A Mental Model for Video - robbschiller
https://tjkrusinski.com/articles/general/mental_model
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kimburgess
Nice article and as others have commented, love the simple and clear aesthetic
of the gifs within!

This is just the entrance to that rabbit hole though; for anyone interested in
continuing the journey all the way down I'd highly recommend:
[https://github.com/leandromoreira/digital_video_introduction](https://github.com/leandromoreira/digital_video_introduction).

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cjensen
The image that tries to illustrate how frames per seconds affects motion is
wrong. At least in my browser, it is crossfading between images in the 30 and
15Hz illustrations. That's not how video works: you show individual images
sequentially with no mixing. Simplistic attempts to "improve" motion are
universally worse than leaving it alone.

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hnzix
_> That's not how video works: you show individual images sequentially with no
mixing_

In the DVD era, PAL/NTSC used to interlace frames, which is a ghetto
crossfade. I have no idea how this works in the Bluray era.

~~~
cjensen
Interlace does not crossfade either :-)

The purpose of interlace is to double the frames per second and capture motion
better. The downside is some vertical resolution loss and some odd, but rarely
seen, visual artifacts.

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hnzix
Doesn't interlacing alternate even lines from one frame with the odd lines
from the next, thus showing 50% of each image? Which would make it a ghetto
crossfade as described.

~~~
cjensen
Not really. On a CRT monitor, the odd lines fade before the even lines begin
lighting up, and they are on different physical locations on the monitor.
Recombination of the two images to improve resolution occurs entirely in the
human vision processing system.

It's worth noting that this takes advantage of the human vision system's
features. When an object moves quickly across your vision (for example, when
turning your eyes quickly down a field), there is resolution loss that your
brain makes up for, And when focusing on a still object, vision allows you to
see more resolution.

So when a player runs across the camera view, your brain correctly processes
the lower resolution and higher motion resolution. And when a player is still,
your brain correctly processes the improved resolution.

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debt
Amazing gifs! Just scanning it is enough to understand it.

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stallmanite
Came here to make the same comment. Really love the aesthetics of this page.

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sushisource
This is great article but the contrast on the body text is horrible on the
eyes (ironically)

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chrisseaton
It's 92% contrast, and passes Web Content Accessibility Guidelines at the
highest AAA standard for contrast. What more do you want?

[https://contrast-ratio.com/#black-on-
rgb%28246%2C%20246%2C%2...](https://contrast-ratio.com/#black-on-
rgb%28246%2C%20246%2C%20246%29)

~~~
a_t48
Not OP, but at default zoom level, the text is too thin - most of the pixels
aren't actually black - they are subpixels smeared across two columns.

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pjc50
Yup - for me, each ascender of an "h" is a line of red pixels next to a line
of blue, no actual black at any point.

Removing the unnecessary font-weight CSS makes it better. Personally I also
find it more readable if I remove the font specification and let it fall back
to Serif, and it also takes up less vertical space, but that's a matter of
personal taste. Not tried it on mobile.

~~~
chrisseaton
> Yup - for me, each ascender of an "h" is a line of red pixels next to a line
> of blue, no actual black at any point.

Each of your pixels is made of a tiny red, green, and blue pixels. The 'black
pixel' is the gap between the red and blue sub-pixels (the green being off is
black.)

