VinylVideo - Playing video from a 45rpm record
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ก.ย. 2018
- With a VinylVideo convertor you can play video from a vinyl record played on a standard record player. Curiosity, tech-demo or art?
LINKS BELOW (expand this text box to view):
New VinylVideo Website - vinylvideo.supersense.com
(You can order a set from here)
Early Mechanical TV & Baird Phonovision - www.tvdawn.com
Holgar Czukay Cinema Box Set (includes a VinylVideo disc: amzn.to/2CyshKI (Affiliated Link)
Original 1990s VinylVideo Website: www.vinylvideo.com
Supersense Vienna - Main site: the.supersense.com
Files/Source code etc: supersense.com/downloads/Viny...
Special thanks to record collector Randy Riddle who made me aware of VinylVideo - here is his youtube video on the subject • Randy Collects - Vinyl...
If you want to learn more about the vertical Sony turntable - here's a video • Sony PS-F9 Flamingo Re...
UPDATE
Seen lots of odd comments from people who think this is somehow a fake. They should WATCH THIS • VinylVideo Fake Conspi...
You can now get CUSTOM VINYL VIDEO DISCS - see this video for more: • Custom VinylVideo disc...
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---------Outro Music----------
Over Time - Vibe Tracks • Over Time - Vibe Track...
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I subscribed to your channel long time ago. I really do like your videos especially those with cassettes and i was just wondering if you could make a video with a technics m205 tape deck because i heard it's a nice one. Thank you for reading my message!
@@BilisNegra I don't think i said something bad. He's making videos with cassette players as well because this channel is based on these things.
I don't think you said anything bad either. I wont be getting that tape deck though because I've already got better ones that are working fine. However you can see a similar motor mechanism to that deck used inside the Co-Deck th-cam.com/video/-QVKfWSSM5o/w-d-xo.html
Yes you're absolutely right - each thing I reviewed has to have something that I find interesting or different about it. If the M205 did something that no other tape deck did, I might well add it to the list...but it doesn't.
@@Techmoan I saw that video many times and that's why i asked you to make that video and i know you have better ones. I have better ones too ( technics RS-D190W and technics RS-TR212) but unfortunately those are broken. However my father bought that model and next month when he will get home, he will bring it with him. But anyway sorry for asking you this.
Holy hell, the Baird phonovision image was nightmarish.
Terrifying!
This is probably a lot better than the baird recordings, it is certainly higher resolution.
It scared me too.
To be fair, that's what you get, when you use a clown's head. That would be just as terrifying in modern HD.
It's not that much better than over the air or modern recorded nbtv. Framerate of both Baird and NBTVA systems is 12,5fps.
Examples: www.nbtv.wyenet.co.uk/jeremy.jpg
Screencap of an actual mechanical Nipkow-disk television: bs.cyty.com/menschen/e-etzold/archiv/TV/mechanical/img/disk_light_pic.jpg
If you search on 'narrow bandwith television' or NBTVA 32 line you'll also find some video.
If there's some kind of a alternate steampunk universe, that's probably what they use for video entertainment :p
In an infinite universe, it exists.
Or Edison's cylinders, not that they're that far removed.
Can confirm, life is terrible there
it will at least last for centurys if trested well... ;) analog is better :))
By the way: The concept of a vinyl video respectively photographs reaches back to the Voyager 1 mission. The golden record the scientists developed to be included on the Voyager 1 (just in case aliens found it) includes a number of photographs which could be opened by using a certain mathematical method which was included on the record.
Excellent observation. Can we get Techmoan to review the Voyager 1 Golden Record??
Somebody did it: th-cam.com/video/ibByF9XPAPg/w-d-xo.html
They recorded mechanical TV broadcasts on vynil in the 1920s and 30s
someone didn’t watch the video
"I'll leave things like smartphone reviews to the other guys."
I just wanted to thank you for continuing to put out interesting, intelligent tech content on your channel. The type of subject matter is right up my alley and I don't nor can't find it anywhere else. Please keep doing what you are doing. I, for one, appreciate it very much. I tip my hat to you good sir.
I fully agree Chris this is one of the finest vlog sites on TH-cam.
Word! Brilliant level of nerdiness, presentation style and reference base (of someone my age)
Get a PXL2000!
Yea he kills it i binged watch him at first
Maybe check out Technology Connections, it's not the same style in many regards but it IS a channel focused mostly on old tech, however it's less explorative and more educative, it goes into some level of technical details and history. He's got videos on LaserDisc, Cassette, VHS, Beta, CD, and even a 5 video series covering the history of the CED video vynils and what happened at RCA during the LONG development of the format. However you'll miss the british charm featured in this channel...
Sorry for a plug that isn't even for me, I just want the vintage and obscure/niche tech youtube community to be a thing and I'm doing my small part.
Great video - thanks for the shout-out to my channel. I knew you would do a much more in-depth look at Vinyl Video than I could. I'm really curious how to record original material in the format now to make some more Vinyl Video records.
You'd need to convert the video file to the correct specifications (color depth, resolution, audio bitrate, number of channels, encoding format, ...). After that, the resulting file needs to be modulated into an audio signal that can be recorded to tape, pressed to vinyl, or if you wanna go really perverse: encoded as a digital audio file. In both cases you're looking at a collection of unknown parameters that you'd need to figure out somehow.
Your best bet: contact the makers, and ask them if they'd be willing to share the details. Reverse engineering is also possible, but not easy at all, so expect to pay through the nose if you're lucky enough to find someone who's up to the task. Realistically, the only option is to contact the makers and hope they're the sharing type.
I recently asked TH-cam for copies of Techmoan videos posted to me on DV tape, but I never heard back from them...
Maybe you sent your telegram to the wrong address!
Perhaps they didn't get your carrier pigeon?
TH-cam STOP
PLEASE SEND TECHMOAN VIDEOS ON DV TAPE STOP
PS HOPE HE WILL NEVER STOP STOP
KRAFTWERK2K6: MiniDV tape is 25 Mbit/second, and some early HD cameras used MPEG to record high quality 1440x1080 ("HDV") on MiniDV cassettes. It's not difficult at all to get reasonably good 4K video into 25 Mbit/sec. Not good enough for camera masters or theater projection, but good enough for home viewing on a 6' screen.
KRAFTWERK2K6: I wish I knew if you were joking - if so, just ignore the rest of this. You had me until "interlaced". Interlaced was a good workaround WAAAAY back, when it was barely possible to get an acceptable picture into an acceptable bandwidth. It made sense when we had CRT TVs with long enough persistence to make it useful. Now, with displays that always scan progressive no matter the source, there is no excuse for interlacing. It's just a way of overcomplicating things, that just forces the player software to do some kind of interpolation, provides another way to get it wrong in the edit.
But even then, I don't miss a THING about videotape. I would never go beyond napkin calculations in a bar, when it comes to taking a giant step backward into either tape or vinyl recording.
I recall seeing this at FACT in Liverpool and it really lingered with me. At the time I was working within media doing Internet and video encoding and this thing just blow my mind. But I think it is really those dial-up modem problems that likely gave birth to such a crazy idea. As back then the whole internet experience was about compression which led to much innovation in getting a thumbnail sized video to be something that was usable. The odd thing is that these videos seem to pay little attention to the rules I would constantly be telling content producers; don't move the camera, try to keep movement to a small part of the frame, don't cut too often, colour rules... anything like this would just pulls the image apart. But I guess the encoding it is part of the aesthetic of this format. It reminds me a bit of the PXL-2000 compact cassette format , a blurred version. And a B&W version of the recent colour compact cassette experiment that was done recently. I'd love to play with the encoding tech of this, I am sure with my years of encoding and media production for dial-up modems, an amazing subset of skills that is now useless. I could get a brilliant image on this format, and maybe have more data for better audio at the same time - but I imagine this is limited. As I don't know if people recall early dial-up video but it didn't encode like this thing does, like when someone talks and the mouth becomes a glitch of burnt in pixels. I love all these experiments in getting video into odd formats, just so useless today. As the odd paradox with encoding is that as the encoding technology and maths gets better the bandwidth is getting amazingly high. I can't think of a modern real purpose for good low bandwidth video encoding. Even before we are all into 4k we are at a point where 80%+ of our current internet's bandwidth is video. Imagine what will happen when 8k becomes a thing? We could really give everyone free Internet and just charge for HD & HD+ video streaming, could be doing that already - as TH-cam, Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV and a few others are 80% of our bandwidth already. The internet has become one big continuous video stream. I hate myself for watching and showing people the same video I don't retain or hold. It is all a constant flux of new video data nano-second by nano-second, crazy. On to the next vid...
You are very, very desperate to sound intelligent. Didn't need a massive run on paragraph to tell us that.
"80% of the internet's current bandwidth is video"
No, just.....no. That's not how bandwidth works. Please stop.
@@omgrapist k
Not reading that
This would be awsome to outhipster the hipsters..
Imagine a group of hipsters sitting in front of a coffeeshop, listing to their phonographs and 8 tracks while writing their novels on typewriters.
Then you come along with a 1940's television, hook it up to your gramaphone and start watching videoclips in 4:3 black and white..
That would be awesome haha.
And writing your Codex with feathers and ink on vellum.
I didn't survive into the 21st century so hipsters can try to convince me I need to buy all my old shit back.
Next level hispter shit
Some kind of Super Hipster !
They’d just look at you weirdly and say you’re crazy because you’re not doing what everyone else is doing.
One of craziest video formats I've ever seen.
If it would be invented in 50s-60s it would be extremely popular.
Yes indeed. Problem with this format and the CED was that we did not have the computing power for encoding video into such small bandwidth. And not even for decoding, which is much easier. This became only sort of available in the 90s with MPEG. But even the first iterations of that would not have gotten down to 225kbit/s. Remember REAL video...? That was more in that domain and looked... horrible!
The TED video disc player from the german company Telefunken in 1975 was very similar and was commercially available for a couple of years and unlike the video recorders from around the same time period had a reasonable catalogue of programs available for it.The big drawback was that each disc held only 10 minutes of playing time.
th-cam.com/video/_Xe-Jw4N7wQ/w-d-xo.html
Arne Schmitz I'd love to see a modern upgrade to this with H.265! I wonder how long it could play with the quality set the same or keep the same duration, but bump up the quality.
i don't think so. this is very underground/grunge which means it is geared more towards the 70's/80's, it would have been too ahead of it'self in the 50's or 60's and would not suit the ideologies or aesthetic of the time. this is a lovely little gimmick but for what it can do and for who it will do it for there isn't much of a chance it would do anything other than flop that far back XD
Never. 50-60 were Technicolor era. Great colours and good quality. But this product is piece of useless shit.
MÖTORHEAD is so badass, they even have the music on VinylVideo!
The are the MÖTORHEAD, and their vinylvideo plays on a machine which has a motor and a head (stylus).
Logie Baird couldn't have used a more creepy subject to film on his primitive video technology.
Yeah, it looks like some creepy deepweb shit...
If you record the signal to a cassette, can you play the cassette into the decoder and get video?
Good question. I'd be very interested in that. As we all know audio tape was a very versatile medium back in the day, and even included computer data storage for a lot of 8-bit computers.
You probably could. Tape has more bandwith then vinyl so it should fit on it without problem.
For the decoder it shouldn't matter where the datastream comes from.
You probably could do it from a mp3 player as well. But what's the fun in that right :)
You mean like a video cassette recorder?
But the decoder is also a pre-amp so maybe the video signal is low level like the audio?
There is a difference between trying to record a VCR signal straight to the audiocassette tape and using first the encoder of video signal making it extremely low frquency demanding like we saw in this video. In the 80s there was a handy cameras writing the analog video signal straight to the audiocassette tape, but a very high speed of tape drive was used. And as we see here, the vynil playing speed stays as usual, but the frame rate and resolution is reduced first.
So yes, if we take such encoder that used to write the signal to the vynil, we probably coud use the audiocassette tape as well.
Good thing Techmoan buys all those overpriced hipster products so we don't have to.
When he dies (not that I'm wishing it!!!) they should open up a Techmoan Interactive Museum for people to come in and play with all this stuff for themselves. I, personally would love to have a hands-on experience with a Tefifon player.
I thought you were going a different direction with the "Hands-On Techmoan Experience"
This one's not all that expensive, TBH. Sure, more than most sane folks would spend on something with such a limited appeal, but still. If you're into this sort of weird thing, then this is definitely a very affordable addition to your collection.
Will they turn him into an animatronic?
@@lezzman
I just saw a tefifon in a flea market here in germany a few months ago. I thought about buying it, but then again, what would ibneed it for :D
From the 90s when this was introduced, to 2018, there was a tremendous progress to compression quality video codecs. So with a machine built today with a codec like h.265 you could probably fit a lot better quality in the same reduced bandwidth on analog media.
You might even find some digitally archived old "VinylVideos" on the internet. I'd like to see them recorded on 8-track and then run though the decoder. "8-track video!"
Or an Endless loop tape!
That would be phenomenal.
I was going to say the same thing, only with cassette. The videos are reminiscent of the PXL 2000, but I’m curious if what is being played from the vinyl record can be done from the cassette playing at its regular speed, instead of super fast like the PXL 2000 did.
Looping GIF on an 8-track! It should work if you can find out the format these things are encoded in. The website seems to indicate it's a closed source codec so probably not a common format.
Exactly.. Would be interesting to see him experiment with copying these disc to various analogue magnetic formats to see if it would work.
It's kind of a delightful thing. I'm guessing this could not have existed back in the day since the decoder would have been prohibitively expensive with 70s computer technology.
I'm surprised Jack White hasn't released a single on this format yet, he's all about quirky vinyl.
Give him time! But his version might be a wax cylinder version of this!!
I think it would have been impossible in the 70s, it is a frequency modulated digital signal and decoding it in real time and outputting it as video even today takes quite some power.
With analog technology, this is impossible. I think in the 80s it would have been feasible.
One could adapt the encoding to the available decoding hardware, so some tricks to need less computation power would surely have been found. Like the Apple 1 which used some glitches in NTSC to display color with no computational overhead.
Nope, it even says in one of the example sleeves that it's amplitude modulated. Same as monochrome baseband TV, or a CCTV format like RS343. Very simple, your main complications are a/ separating and keeping time with the sync (which might wobble a bit, much like a very old tape - you'd want a timebase corrector or something), b/ separating and playing the audio at a correct, varying rate, c/ most particularly, feeding the video into a suitably large framebuffer that it could then be replayed from at normal speed.
The first two are actually not that difficult, regular TV/video recorder equipment has to manage it inherently, or at least maintain a correct line and frame rate even if the actual scanning speed is free-running (generally the rate at which the rate the content is delivered at changes very gradually and only by a small amount, so it may cause a small amount of bending or wobble in the image but no major desync). More sophisticated models could vary the actual spot-scanning speed horizontally and vertically (essentially, the H/V "hold") to compensate for varying sync frequency which implied a varying spot scan rate at the camera end, or the equivalent of such caused by a warped tape.
The second is essentially a function of the first. You have to sample the audio at moderate to high speed (perhaps 80 to 100kHz equivalent) and plunk _that_ into some kind of relatively small buffer - maybe 2kb equivalent, in the case of VV - whilst remaining in sync with the incoming signal, then play it out at a fixed fraction of whatever the _current_ synched speed is, with some method of chase-play (either have just that single small buffer and loop around it, with just enough space for the fresh high-speed input to dart ahead of the low speed output, for a tiny fraction of a second every 1/4.16th of a second or so, or have it tied to a double video buffer so a whole chunk of data is written into a backbuffer whilst the previous one is being more slowly read out, with audio being part of the total stream, and essentially being the driving force behind when the bank is switched - when the audio runs out, you immediately switch to the other bank, even if it's not full up yet, and reduce/increase the play rate to compensate for any under/overflow)...
The third is the true sticking point for any notional historical version of the device. Essentially, you can't easily do it in any way I can see without microchip grade memory, preferably DRAM, which puts a certain date limit on things (because it came slightly later than SRAM, IIRC). Even using the earliest chips means you're going to have quite a stack of electronics, easily desktop PC sized if not later rackmount minicomputer (PDP11 etc), and investing both a lot of money into buying plus quite a bit of electrical power running the thing. If we take the pioneering Altair 8800 as an example, the first micro available in any numbers and with a useful spec list, and purchaseable not only as a kit but fully built for people who were unable/unwilling to solder... its bare form, with about the most minimal useful CPU (i8080 at 2MHz) and only 256 bytes of memory, plus no useful I/O never mind a video interface, cost $439 in the early 70s... in kit form. If you wanted to add an 8KB memory board to that (the largest offered at first, and the company soon fell back to only offering them in the 1 to 4KB range because of the sheer number of tightly-packed chips that entailed, as well as a general lack of demand for those vs the clamour for lower-end parts), that would easily double the total system price, possibly more so. I forget the exact price, but let's say a ready-built system cost $500 and if you wanted it to come with 8KB, that was $1000, a nice round number for a starter computer (equal to $4000~5000 today), so long as you could provide your own terminal and data storage hardware.
Thing is, that's not very much memory when it comes to video. A simple 64x16 text screen occupies 1KB, the more common 80x25 needs almost 2KB, and that's in flat monochrome, no character attributes, and using a separate character ROM. The same memory could get you a 160x102 bitmap, again in black and white only, no greyscales. Our video here is probably somewhere closer to 160x204 as a minimum (though the actual framebuffer used is probably at least twice the width if not four times, to avoid overlaying excessive quantisation onto the blurry analogue signal), with 8 bits per pixel to provide a smooth greyscale display. If you economised somewhat you could get away with somewhere between 4 and 6 bits, separated into boards each holding a separate bitplane (a good way to increase bandwidth even if you're still using 8bpp) instead of discrete bytes. So we're already looking at anywhere from 8 to 16KB for our framebuffer. But, the way this format works is to read in two new frames simultaneously with displaying a third. Even if we arrange it so one of those overwrites the old one "live", in a "tearing" fashion over fully six output field times, we still need to store the second one somewhere temporarily. And the frames don't look like they're tearing much (a little might be unavoidable, towards the bottom of the image, to compensate for sync drift, but generally it's not a problem), so it's likely triple buffered. Thus we actually need anywhere from 24 to 48KB, even without considering the true resolution could be larger still (e.g. 256x240, which would be roughly doubled once again - and by that point threatening to exceed the available address space of the system). It's getting expensive... even before we consider the decidedly pricey input ADC board and its various discriminators and gates that would be the actual things under CPU control (there'd have to be an awful lot of DMA to work around the i8080's extremely slow inherent data transfer speed, it'd be relegated purely to system controller status), and the video output board that would be quite fancy stuff for even the end of the 1970s (well, arguably the system in the Atari 8-bits would come close...), we're looking at a minimum system cost of $2000, and possibly more like $3500+. In early 1970s dollars.
In other words, the decoder system for this thing would cost you as much as a half decent car, or even - thanks to the low property prices of the time - a small house. With the vast majority of the cost going into the output buffer. There's a reason most early computers had truly awful displays, either plaintext only or very chunky graphics that makes even the VV look sophisticated ... it's because that shit eats memory, and memory was dead expensive at the time. Same reason the ZX81 came with only 1KB on board... even the better part of a decade later it wasn't particularly cheap. For £100 in 1981 you could get a kit computer that was just about good enough to show a small amount of text on screen and let you type in some very short BASIC programs. And prices had tumbled in-between.
And, well... compared to any other previous technology, microchip memory was _stupidly cheap,_ and unbelievably compact and energy-efficient. You might have seen the famous image of an 8GB microSD card perched on top of an 8 _byte_ core memory array. That intricate looking thing? Hand woven. Later versions of the same managed as much as 1 kilobit (128 bytes) or even 4 kilobits, still made by hand by skilled ex-seamstresses. That kind of work _costs._ Ideally, our video system would need the equivalent of 192 of those later boards, but we could probably get away with 48. And bear in mind how big they are; even the smaller ones used ferrite doughnuts about half the size of an entire SD card.
The signal discrimination, switching and control systems? Myeh, they're child's play. Any decent television, even in the vacuum tube period, had sufficient electronic power to deal with that. But it didn't have a suitable data storage mechanism.
I suppose maybe you could have used a trio of continually circulating high-grade magnetic tapes, or small drums even, to store the picture information, but they'd have to continually change speed, and do so extremely accurately and in tight sync, to an arbitrary timing signal (derived from the audio input), in order to convert two simultaneous low speed input streams into two high speed ones that play out sequentially, and repeatedly, at 6x the speed, 6x over. But, wait, no, that's wrong, isn't it. You'd actually need four tapes (and indeed four memory banks - so the estimate is now anywhere from 32KB to a full 64KB, maxing out the bus, or even 128KB (we're bank switching anyway, so, no big problem, it's just even pricier)... you'd have to lose at least a couple of lines, then, just to have space to store the operating program, though it's entirely possible that you'd put the memory on a separate bus to the CPU, have it only able to store/access information about the control side of things, and never the twain shall meet), as two would be occupied recording the incoming video data (and audio) at 1/12th effective playback speed per tape (four and a bit blocks per second, for 50 field/sec output), whilst the other two were accelerated near-instantly to full 12x speed, one reading out 6x then the other 6x. At least it would mean they could share a common drive axle per pair.... and of course if you had (extremely low inertia...) drums, that'd just be two heads per drum instead of one. Or maybe eight to sixteen, recording a lower frequency stream of bits (plus two or four more for the sync pulses) instead of a single high frequency analogue one.
Hmm, I wonder. That last bit means, if you could engineer the physical side of things to a sufficiently crazy-precise degree, it might yet be doable with pre-transistor technology. Just.
Even so, really, 8mm film doesn't seem like a particularly bad format in comparison to this, especially Super 8 with magnetic soundtrack. It's at least as high resolution, can be had in colour, etc.
"Hipster's Paradise" Now I want to sing that to the tune of "Gangster's Paradise."
With a backing of duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh
Well, when you think about it, this isn't a million miles away from "Amish Paradise". Which does exist.
Hipsters thinking now: "Now I have to carry a black and white vacuum tube TV together with my typewriter and turnable when I go to Starbucks."
I'm glad they do that now. So laptop owners are now off the hook from blame.
Hipsters in Starbucks, ain't gonna happen
Peter Donov I want a smartphone with a CRT
I'm impressed that it's even possible to store enough data on a vinyl format to have video playback. Granted the quality is less than ideal. But I'd never have guessed such a thing existed.
I'm really impressed with the packaging and build quality. They've clearly put some time and attention into this. A labour of love.
Nothing like getting stuck in a TH-cam hole in the middle of the night /early morning(it's 4:30am where I am hahah) and then getting a notification for a new techmoan masterpiece.
You have no idea how stupidly huge the smile on my face is, seeing a Raspberry Pi inside there.
Alright, Electronics Technician for Devices and Systems (Elektroniker für Geräte und Systeme) here
I've worked in the optoelectronics industry for quite a bit now and this is my type of stuff. I might even know what's going on here, so I'll attempt my best to explain the situation.
**DISCLAIMER**: this might be completely wrong and is somewhat of a blind guess and me trying to make sense of this. If you have actual knowledge on the topic or want to add something, feel more than free to do so.
Alright. Let's start and address the encoding by looking at the screenshot at 11:41:
You can hear beeps of sounds and small pauses inbetween.
1. The first thing I want to point out is that both the sound and video seem to be modulated onto both sides. It's a bit hard to explain, but you can imagine it like two people talking at the same time: one has a high voice, the other has a deep voice. They are talking over each other, but you can easily distinguish between the two if you know what to listen to. The "deep voice" is the audio and the "high voice" is the video. Higher frequenciens can hold more information, hence why they're in that order.
2. The "gaps" inbetween the loud pulses are the so called "sync" pulses. This is commonly known as V-Sync. It just tells the box, that this is where the image ends. They're the seperators between video frames. Note that the signal doesn't completely flatline during these pauses. That's because the audio is still running independently between the pulses.
3. The rate of beeps is roughly 4 Hz, half the video frequency. This is an indicator that the channels used are being alternated between. It's like getting two postcards every two days: if you put up just one every day, you effectively get a new postcard every day.
Now considering the Raspberry Pi:
4. The RPi allows for rapid coding. There's many free and good librariers (and if you check the manual you can which ones), so you barely need to write anything from scratch. It also allows for the code to be updated easily through an SD-card.
5. The RPi features an HDMI output. HDMI ICs are hard to come by, since they require you to be an "HDMI Adopter", which is essentially their license. Their cheapest plan is at least $5k a year. That's a very big issue for small-scale companies.
6. The file "patch(dot)sh" is the most interesting part. It can be found on their website and it's used to update the RPi. Interestingly enough it contains roughly 1000 lines of what seems to be the entire source code (most likely C). I could technically read through the entire thing and try to make sense of it, but I'm too lazy to read through the entire thing and figure out where the actual magic happens. Especially since I'm a bit rusty in C or any of its derivatives. I'll leave that to someone else.
Other things:
7. The board in the front is just a dummy board and doesn't do much. The RPi takes care of the video part.
8. The last board is being used to prepare the signal for use with the RPi. Signals from a record player are incredibly weak, so this is both a small amplifier and a "de-modulator". I guess this is also where they split audio and video up. It's a fine-tuned piece of work and where all the analog magic happens.
9. The USB-connecter inside has two purposes: It provides the RPi with power, but it also transmits the (now recovered) audio signal to the RPi so it can be further passed to HDMI and/or A/V out. The digitization of the audio signal is done by the small chip (Texas Instruments PCM2904) near the USB-connector.
Thank you man, at this point the most ridicolous thing is that they made all this convoluted work and at the end they delivered a stupid lo-fi DIGITAL media player.
I was able to count roughly 24 scan lines. Since the aspect ration of the video is 4:3, this indicates a resolution of roughly 36 by 24 at 8 FPS.
This amounts to a frequency of 6912 Hz (give it a bit more for V-sync) that would (at the very least) be needed for this. It actually seems to be possible from a technical perspective. The only way to really find out is by purposefully messing with the system (e.g. slowing the disk down, purposefully scratching parts of it, attaching a small resistor to one of the Phono Ins) and see how the system reacts and adapts to these changes. Their description at 10:49 actually makes sense and is not some sort of technical gibberish thrown around to confuse people. As thus the video should be VERY prone to even the slightest disturbances.
If Techmoan were to post the captured audio file here, one could even try to process it digitally to try and recover the video themselves (even though that would likely be breaking the copyright law). It would certainly make for a fun side-project to people with more time at hand than me.
Other than that: the meticulous attention to detail in the VinylVideo (both hardware- and software-wise) indicate that this is actually a genuine thing. It would be way too much effort for a fake. Their source code can be viewed. They could have covered their tracks by pre-compiling their code, obfuscating it or even worse: both at the same time.
The only real way to know for sure is by thoroughly checking the memory card. The files should be on it somewhere. I haven't had an RPi myself, but the files shown by Techmoan seem to be just a part. The entire operating system (Linux-based Raspbian or similar) is missing. Video could also be contained on one of the other two circuit boards, so these should not have a NAND storage IC (essentially a USB "thumbdrive") or similar on them.
You be the judge, but to my eyes this seems to be very possible.
There is one section where he zooms in on the audio plot close enough to count actual number of waveforms in each 'frame'. There are ~42 wave cycles, so the audio appears to be around 200 Hz. It looks like a triangle wave. It actually sounds very similar to if you go to www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/ and pick a 200 Hz triangle wave.
Unless they are comparing the amplitude at many points point within the triangle to some baseline value and using the difference to determine the corresponding amplitude.... I don't see how this could really work. Color me extremely skeptical. I'd love to have some time with that SD card and a hex editor, although that's probably not an option due to copyright concerns.
NKN1396 Wow! Thanks for the explanation. I’ve never heard of video vinyl disks. I was wondering about all that electronic noise. It kind of reminded me of the noise produced by one of those cassettes from the eighties that contained basic Atari games. I think they work in a similar fashion. You would connect the cassette player to your gaming system with... some sort of patch cord, play the tape which produced all this electronic mayhem for somewhere around three or four minutes, and then stopped the tape and- if all went well- you played the game on your system. Amazingly interesting stuff!.
Looking at the pulses, given the low bandwidth available, and the low quality audio/video to be delivered, the way I would attempt a project like this would be as follows:
For the audio, since it's low fidelity mono, I would encode it as an amplitude difference between the left and right channels. With dynamic range compression, you wouldn't need a whole lot of delta between left and right to get the bad AM radio/telephone quality being delivered.
For the video, I would alternate frames (i.e. 1-3-5-7 on the left and 2-4-6-8 on the right) and encode the low resolution video by modulating the frequency of the tone. The number of available scan lines per frame would be limited by how finely you can divide each audio pulse, and the number of brightness changes on each scan line would be limited by the frequency and how quickly you can shift it. So, if you want a faster frame rate, you have to give up scan lines because you have shorter pulses, and if you want a higher horizontal resolution, you have to use higher frequency tones. Since it's a vinyl record, you are pretty limited. The "chirp" sound at the beginning of each pulse would be the signal retraining the oscillator.
Or at least that's how I'd attempt it in the purely analog realm.
For digital packaging, pick or make a compressed video format that would work and encode each A/V frame as a digital QAM encoded audio pulse (think dial-up modems from back when the internet made noise). Looking at the writeup from the company in the video at 10:37, it appears that this is exactly what they've done.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrature_amplitude_modulation
I made a similar slow scan TV system for low power radio. It also "works" on audio cassette. It's not as clear as that but it does have colour and 12.5 fps :-)
i was thinking that same thing with the Fisherprice Pixelvision cam
For a half a second I thought.... "Wow that would be cool to send a TV signal over airwav.... Ohhhh"
12.5 f/s is pretty fast. What resolution, and what encoding/modulation?
40 lines, 36 of which are active video. The horizontal resolution depends on the media but in ideal conditions it's ~36 pixels. So not that great :-)
The colour is transmitted on each line before the luminance, it's based loosely on the old TV standard MAC: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplexed_Analogue_Components
I've an example of it being transmitted over radio here: th-cam.com/video/svcqkk4zdMw/w-d-xo.html
I'll upload the cassette version soon, but it's pretty horrible. I'd love to see how it would look on vinyl.
Yo that's cool ar
Here's your new production workflow in this UHD world: Take a Fisher Price vs2000 camcorder shoot some stuff, capture the two sided reversed audio from the tape edit it reverted in Sound forge, play the audio back tru a fake cassette adapter in the camera (got to see the image to edit), find out how to multiplex the audio in this vinyl format, send the file to those independent vinyl maker (they usually do dj plate) and finallyplay it in this artsy contraption for maximum hipster effects. I'll call it B&W LD format for those creative minds who always make there own mental image either way.
Genius :D
...does LD stand for LoserDisc?
@@gwenynorisu6883 haha good one no just low definition oviously. ND (radio), LD, SD, HD and UHD.
Awesome. In my early curiosities, I plugged the video output of my VCR into the audio input of my cassette deck. Played back the VHS and hit record on the cassette deck.
Then I plugged the TV into the cassette audio output and hit play on the cassette.
Nothing. Just gobbledeegook on the screen.
I knew it wouldn't work, but it was still very fun to try and it set me off to learn exactly why it didn't work.
The point of my story is that while it didn't work, it wasn't a waste of time. Exploration is never a waste. The exploration IS the fun.
The picture that Vinylvideo gives reminds me of those early television broadcasts from the 1920s and 1930s.
The "Courettes" one looks like a 405-line kinescope recording from the 1960s.
You never cease to amaze me by the obscure recording formats you find! The video of these reminds me of the effect used on the telescreens in the movie _1984_
This is one of the best channels, informative, well edited, no misleading titles plus you put a lot of time into this (not to mention the money). Great job
I think some old, old, old-style blues would sound (and look) pretty awesome on that format.
I don't think looking and sounding awesome really relates to the feeble capabilities of this product. 8fps? This would be mediocre in the 1920's.
Well, a lot of early movie film and even later home-recording film formats ran at just 16fps, so it's not a million miles away. Just run it at double speed, or maybe have a synchronised needle on both sides of a vertically-played disc, and you're there.
Subterranean Homesick Blues would probably be a perfect match for the medium, btw. And maybe a bit of Caravan Palace, especially any of their vids in B/W with classic style animation.
Looks like Neil Armstrongs first moon step broadcast.
LOL at the TH-cam auto-generated subtitles at 5:19
"I'm going to start off by connecting this up to a CR C and I'm going to use my trusty Sony ps9"
😆
Well, he does have a time machine...
PS9... there was a fake ad for that thingy during the PS2 era.
*_BY SONY THEMSELVES,_* no less...
@@NormanRDolan I remember that. It was some kind of virtual reality orb thingy.
Thank you Mat, for providing me with hours and hours of amazing content. Not only is every video extremely entertaining, but the production quality is superb. And what makes your videos so enjoyable for me is the excellent narration and your sense of humor, which is very subtle and always cheers me up.
Basically PXL-2000 quality. This is super cool.
As Austrian I approve this product.
As a Nigerian I approve of you, sweet baby.
Deliverytimes now will be multiple months for sure... I bet they never had as much order as they will be getting in the comming couple of days
The Techmoan Effect?
@@piusg yes indeed lol..
Great, great job as always. Superbly scripted, produced, and edited. Truly great work. I never knew something like this existed.
A huge, Massive thank you for your ongoing commitment to providing these excellent videos. Your care, attention, technical accuracy, modesty and the quality of the videos, narration, lighting and audio are all second-to-none. Possibly dusting could do with some work ;) Both me and my 10 year old son think you are, frankly, bloomin' awesome, and TH-cam is not a place of many thank-yous.
I believe the SD card contents you listed are only of the FAT32 boot partition. There is also a Linux EXT(x) partition containing files
Maybe that is where the video files are hiding
you believe in conspiracies eh
you're crazy if you don't
lol Classic80sStuff:)
Step 1 *Watch this video* th-cam.com/video/Okdh7I06jFM/w-d-xo.html
Step 2 Remove egg from face
Welp I never should have watched this now I have to have one because that is the coolest thing I have ever heard of. I find watching this channel to be so expensive but satisfying.
The red mage seeks the legend of the vinyl vision disk to fight the encroaching chaos? I heard it was last seen in a weathered sandstone tower, deep in the northern desert, beneath the ruins of an ancient floating city. It is rumored to have been destroyed, crushed under the violent breath of Tiamat.
That is fantastically hilarious and I approve.
@@Gun4Freedom and keep an eye out for warmech
I can never get tired of watching your videos. Very interesting and informative. Keep up the good work!
Your video presentations are, without doubt, all highly professional and very watchable and informative.
Part of me was hoping for the decoding to be purely analog.
It could be done, but the decoder would be enormous, power-hungry, & expensive. Particularly the line- & frame-rate interpolation. You'd be looking at a rack of equipment 70 cm square & 2 meters tall, sucking down at least a kilowatt continuous, & costing probably a hundred thousand US dollars.
The recording appears to be digital encoded as audio anyway, so not likely to be decoded with analog circuitry
Could only really be purely analog if film stock was exposed, developed and then viewed via a projector. In essence, this is as analog as such a medium gets. The signal mat displayed would likely be analog in nature. However, having not seen the waveform of a vhs video signal, can't say for certain.
@@HiVisionary1125 It can be done a lot easier than that, look up 'NBTV', which is a hybrid system, based on the original Baird mechanical TV, using computers with sound cards to convert the recorded analogue signal to and from normal TV, all-analogue 'televisors' can also be used to directly pickup and view pictures.
Lunchtime at work and a fresh Techmoan Video. This lunch is going to be good. ^^
At home, after 2 hours driving from work , watching Techmoan's new video is such a bliss for me😁
Kind of amazing when this came out. Even more amazing that it is still being produced. Great vid!
Tvery time I watch you videos I think - wow, this is the top, but with every new one you manage to raise the bar even higher! Thank you for your work!
This is so awesome, thanks for sharing it!
This is the type of tech i personally really enjoy :D thanks for sharing. Also i love the image quality it feels right for the time frame. It would be really cool to see a steampunk version of that maybe.
Seriously man, do NOT stop making videos. I love your channel. Great stuff 👍🏻
I didn’t know I needed this until now.
GameHammer Classic Gaming I didn't know that I in no way needed this until now.
Lunatic Cringe More for me, then. :)
For love of everything cool and hipster, someone NEEDs to get Macintosh Plus on one of these video records.
Yes!
They do custom presses, although they are pricey
Very cool to see VinylVideo. I remember seeing it back in the 90's and thinking it was a fun art experiment. Thanks for showing it off!
That's what makes your Channel interesting!! Covering old and different kind of tech!!!!
\m/ Motörhead!
RIP.
That was awesome 😀
Rip Lenny
\m/ 😢 \m/
\m/ Rock on brother!!!
@@ReinventingTheSteve whether it's in heaven or hell, Lemmy is partying with Philthy Animal and the Ramones atm. Only difference is, if they're in hell the musics probably better.
glad I'm not a collector any more this would break my bank
So, I'm willing to admit that I overreacted in my other comments/replies on this thread, and I've spent some time thinking about this since I'm genuinely curious as to how it might work.
What I think is going on is they are taking a sawtooth wave and superimposing the video signal onto it. Each 1/2 of the sawtooth is a scan line, every time the wave crosses 0 with the sharp edge is a horizontal sync. So there are ~85 scanlines of information in each frame, based on the audacity view at 11:30 in this video.
Calculate the difference between a perfect sawtooth and what is there, and you get the video signal back. In the analog world this would be done with a PLL generating the perfect wave and an analog subtraction, then an amplifier. The calibration signal at the beginning is likely a representation of that perfect wave at the maximum intensity level. Easy to do with code on the Pi, given the digital samples from the analog->USB chip on the PCB.
The sawtooth wave does have a ton of high frequency content to it that would tend to degrade quickly over multiple analog copies. That would explain why the cassette is so bad. Not a problem for any digital recorder to reproduce. Actually kind of like an analog copy protection really.
I think with a little more information (a snippet of the calibration tone and one or two of the frames as a .wav file?) it would be possible to write some code which would encode arbitrary frames. Or at least try. That would be kind of neat.
I love your channel. That’s a format I’d never heard of.
that's much higher quality than i was expecting , i could actually watch all those records
I am slowly warming up to enjoy your English humour as well. An excellent video as always.
A very slippery slope my friend. Next thing you'll be downloading classic BBC comedy from the 70s.
Techmoan...the John Peel of old tech
Fascinating. Really quite remarkable that a signal that good is being produced by such a relatively slow RPM. Quite a lot of information being transmitted after all.
So interesting, and when you click into the links in the description its absolutely fascinating.. recording 'TV, transatlantic broadcasting in 1928, recording BBC programme broadcast at home in early 1930's... I thought I knew a but about tech history but I didn't know that.. thanks..
You keep finding the outer edge of the envelope. I would say a run of 10 units has to be about as niche as it gets while not being a prototype.
Aaaaaah, ouch, that CRT flyback whine. Always amazed how well that comes through TH-cam and out of a phone! :D
Yeah its funny I can never hear it in real life and I'm somewhat of a CRT enthusiast...so this is what people can hear?
Must be nice to.be young and have fresh ears.
I didn't know it was actually the flyback transformer that made the noise, always thought it was the tube.
These days whenever someone cuts one of those on it takes me forever to get use to it. I used to never notice it. I'm 28 and hear that squeal very loudly since not being around it in so long.
Ahh grow up ya sissy, and stop your yapping!!
Love your channel, you showcase all unique products with good content!
Once again thanks for a professionally crafted video bringing fascinating content. Loved it!
That was so cool. Thanks mate.
I know this isn't much about quality of playback but the video looks like someone printed a flipbook containing all the frames on a printer that's running out of ink
A very accurate description.
True, but consider just how big a stack of paper that would end up requiring, and how much toner/ink it would use... Even if you reduced the images to a size that gave them a similar resolution and brightness-level range as is exhibited by the video. It's still a heck of a job compressing all that into a single groove in a 7-inch piece of plastic. You could probably achieve similar results with a reel of Super 8 film that's about the same diameter, but that would still be several times *thicker*.
PurpleVidaar I actually developed a program to print color photographs on a BW laser printer using elaborate modulation. And my printer was running out of ink. And the quality was still pretty good.
Wow! I live in Vienna and didn't know about Supersense. Going to a concert there tonight. Thanks!
Love your channel. As Miles Davis was a great musical explorer you are the king of device exploration!
VHS was always the bottom feeder when it came to picture quality, but here is something which takes us to a new depth. However it seems to do so with a certain charm.
There are relatively many people who have equipment that works with the 12,5fps 30 line Baird or 32 line NBTVA (Narrow Bandwidth Television Association) standards.
I wonder why they didn't go for those standards. Quality of the NBTVA material is quite a bit better than this. But maybe the existing standards won't hold up to recording it on vinyl.
This is the very definition of a passion project! Beautifully executed, but with no point except to exist as an amusing curiosity. A drunken conversation with friends, made manifest.
Holger Czukay!!! Perfect music for this format.
isn't this similar technology used on those gold discs on the Voyager Space craft??
those gold discs should be reissued on this format i reckon
I really could have watched the skeletons for a bit longer.
Awesome band ! the Courettes th-cam.com/video/l5C9ITtHKto/w-d-xo.html
This is, to say the least, incredibly special.
The attention to details and execution of this thing is amazing! I find myself really wanting one... which is silly...
Sounds like a good format for raw black metal haha
They should use a 12" record and play it at 45 rpm where the higher linear velocity of the needle would give better quality on the outside - or even 78 rpm!
Every time I hear "78rpm" it takes me back to the one 78rpm record my Mum had. The Happy Wanderer on one side and "Polly Wally Doodle" on the other.
Fun watch as always. Love the oddball ways people find to cram video onto things.
man, i love to watch your videos. seeing Motorhead on this vinyl video added that old school vibe of Lemmy. great.
This has tremendous appeal as video art. I've been a fan of Gebhard Sengmüller, one of the developers, ever since I discovered his 'Parallel Image' art installation. This explores an alternate, very early method of television (unlike Baird's) in which an array of light sensors and corresponding light bulbs are wired directly together. Lots of wires!
Not saying that it is.. But, depending on how this reacts when noise or bad spots on the record, it would be incredibly easy to fake actually feeding the video from the vinyl. With such a limited amount of releases all you would need is the initialization part to tell the pi what you are playing, then a watchdog pulse from the record to tell the pi the record is still playing. You could have all the actual recordings on the sd card. Again, I'm not saying this is happening, but it sure would be possible.
Sneaky thinking, but good point
Techmoan should test this!
If you figured out the format it should be possible to encode a novel source material to test this. Wouldn't even have to be anything complicated, maybe even a single scan line that's a checkerboard. And you don't need to cut it on a record either, just feed the audio in.
out here killin the magic, but I would definitely like to see this tested because if it’s true then that’s seriously messed up.
wolvenar makes a good point that all the video content of those 4 vinyl records *could* conceivably just be stored on the SD card in the Raspberry Pi, and triggered to be displayed as the record is playing. (insert asterisk here) One way to test that, might be to use one of the original records from the 1990's/2000's (assuming those 10 records hadn't also been added to the Pi SD card). Alternatively someone could deliberately temporarily impair said vinyl record, by deliberately fouling it up, however I cannot think of a way of doing that temporarily that would not cause lasting harm to the stylis needle or the record itself (eg blutack or sellotape would be no-noes !). But this is certainly an interesting technology and the new decoder unit certainly looks neatly made inside. (Asteriskal insertion follows... it is my understanding there have been a number of cases over the years, some involving many millions of dollars worth of technology and government contracts (for "explosive sniffers'), where for several years, nobody EVER, not even once, did an independent test and evaluation of the equipment, they simply took the manufacturer's word that it worked as stated in the adverts ! Note I am NOT saying that is happening in this case ! Just that wolvenar made a good point.
A perfect gift for someone who has everything!
I love vinyl video - there's just something about it that makes it better than digital video we have these days.
And for once I feel like my first generation Betamax produces an absolutely acceptable picture
Well the Beta should be better than a VHS, but that's not saying much.
@@video99couk that's just wrong.
You can't say Beta is better at image quality than VHS.
In the early days this might have been true but as VHS established itself it was improved so much.
If I look at a regular VHS recording on one of my high end machines (like the Panasonic NV-FS200 and the NV-HS1000) it looks like HD compared to early Beta.
I was talking about my first generation machine.
I have never seen SuperBeta or ED-Beta. So I can't say anything about that.
Of a given vintage, comparing like with like, Beta (certainly PAL Beta) has higher luma and chroma resolution and lower noise than VHS. Compare a Sony SL-C30 to a Panasonic NV-333. I have had both an FS200 and HS1000, they are certainly fine machines.
@@video99couk Sure, I never said otherwise.
I just wanted to state that you cannot say VHS < Beta. This is too unspecified.
The future of home video has come!!!! Bluray? DEAD!!!! THE FUTURE IS NOW!!!!
Also, I had no idea you could even fit video of any description onto a 45 at all. That's really cool! I wonder how much time they could fit onto an LP...
Very interesting! Thanks for sharing the VinylVideo decoder with us!
As always , amazing research and review !
I wonder if better video quality could be achieved with a 78 RPM record, albeit with more required disk space.
For example, with a Pathè-like 20 inch disc.
I would imagine playing a copy of the vinyl from cassette would also work?
Rob Bennett I’m now curious about this as well.
Fisher price PXL-2000 :)
Fivos Sakellis - Not quite the same. The PXL2000 ran the tape at about double speed to get better bandwidth. I suspect, however, this would work on a normal cassette tape with the low resolution and frame rate.
I think the PXL ran rather more than double speed - closer to 5 times. It didn't even fit a full ten minutes on a C90. And it used the full width of the tape, so no turning over to get additional recording on the other side. Basically it used the audio cassette as a low quality, linear scan form of VHS, and IIRC it didn't drop the framerate or vertical rez, just the horizontal, so it would have had to keep the same scan/sync structure etc, requiring a lot more bandwidth than the VV probably does (as it reduces resolution both ways AND reduces framerate).
TM demonstrated in a follow-up video to this that you can copy the audio onto cassette and successfully play it back... for a small value of success. A recognisable image came out, but it looked far worse than even the original. The blurb bangs on about pushing the limits of what can be stored on Vinyl ... for a 7" at 45rpm, that's probably bandwidth somewhere in the 30 to 50kHz range, if you heavily emphasise the ultrasonic treble range and go for resolution at the expense of noise (as you're pulling the sharpest details out of the signal very close to the noise floor, far closer than audio would normally allow and only getting away with it because the eye is far more forgiving of noise than the ear, whilst the reserve is true for all-out resolution). Copy that to a cassette and you pretty much instantly lose at least half if not two thirds of the headroom, and thus the horizontal resolution. It also seemed to have a lot of the picture disappear into noise, which is as you'd expect given the higher noise floor of even the best cassettes vs typical vinyl.
Great video! Amazing, and fascinating. Thank you
Awesome demonstration. The B&W video output reminds me a lot of the Fisher-Price PXL 2000 video camera.
Did anyone else see those marionette puppets in the video and think about TechMoan's "silly and unfunny" puppets?
Didn't make the connection.
This will polish Austria‘s image, after the EEVblog Fontus video.
When I heard that the Innovator was an "Kunststudent" (Art Student) I was like "My goodness, this thing will look nice and fancy, but is so far away from a real working thing as I am from be the King of England".
300.000 dollars for a simple "fancy pancy looking" dehumidifier. Job well done I would say :D
We normal people are very judgmental toward Austria because of some crazy wannabe "inventor" and his obscure "invention." We should write the petition to US Senate and try to ban Austria from existence. I think that is very reasonable. Playing VinylVideo card to rescue Austria from its doom is utterly pointless.
Some of the worst people ever are Austrian artists.
Doxxius Yeah, we totally should do that...wait, I live in Austria.
Austrians also invented the shipscrew without even be connected to the seas, the typewriter and thousands good things more, and even bad things i wanna talk about. At least we try and have a well trained culture of failure... pls love us, or at least respect us. Im Austrian and kind of inventor too...
Thank you for pulling the box apart. I was sitting on the edge of my chair screaming "OPEN IT!" at the screen :)
Does anyone else have this thing where Techmoan is like the only channel that speaks fast enough to not get bored and have to take breaks from the video? Thank you so much techmoan for being one of the only people who speaks at the same speed that my brain processes language.
Psh.. you could do this with a Raspberry Pi. :-D
For real, it's very cool to see a Raspberry Pi in one of these. I'd like to see more oddball tech down the line that uses them in weird ways
I was scrolling through the comments looking to see who would say it!
Actually probably a justifiable use of the inherent power, too, other than for an emulator box. There's so many Pi projects that you can essentially implement with a much simpler microcontroller... or a 555 and a couple of additional flip-flops.... or a simple switch and a latch... whereas this at least involves some kind of signal processing (...after the point where the signal is digitised and presented via USB, anyway)