Oireachtas Report - spot the difference

Zaphod

Someone here might be able to come up with an explanation for this, but there seems to be a marked difference in the picture quality for Oireachtas Report this week versus last week. The current images appear much closer to that you'd normally see on a documentary - grainier, more photorealistic I guess.

Last week:



This week:


I don't think it's an upgrade of cameras in Leinster House, as the bits outside the Dáil with the presenters show the same difference in image quality. Different recording medium maybe?

DMC

I saw "Drunks and Insomniacs"* Report the other night, and I cant help but think that they have done something. You've confirmed it wasn't mine eyes!

The Oireachtas Channel has started on the DTT trial, using MPEG4, and the web version on the Oireachtas site is down. But I dunno if all these events are connected or not.









* Thank you Pat Rabbitte.

egan007

Do i win?

L1011

I thought it was Diddly D Higgins that used that term first, DMC?

http://www.irlgov.ie/debates-98/2apr98/sect1.htm

DMC

MYOB wrote: »

I thought it was Diddly D Higgins that used that term first, DMC?

http://www.irlgov.ie/debates-98/2apr98/sect1.htm

I'd read that piece again, dude, its not Michael D, its the former Mayo TD (now MEP) Jim Higgins and he quotes Pat Rabbitte.

L1011

Damn and blast you Google.... and me early in the mornings!

Zaphod

Oireachtas Report back to normal last night.

egan007 wrote: »

Do i win?

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watty

Looks overcompressed to me. An evil MPEG4 recompression from broadcast MPEG2 instead of compressing a higher feed quality directly.

zilog_jones

I'd say they've upgraded the cameras or the setup somewhere along the line. The poorer quality screenshot looks like a 4:3 picture cropped and resized to 16:9, and the better picture is using a proper anamorphic 16:9 setup.

A lot of news stuff on RTÉ looks like this - some of them look like analogue sources too (noticeable colour shimmering, dot crawl etc.). I guess they still have some Betacam SP camcorders still doing the rounds? Any pre-widescreen archive footage is also resized like this (sometimes with slight pillarboxing).

In the attached picture, I cropped the better looking picture to 4:3, crapified it a bit, then cropped to 16:9 and resized back to 576 lines - looks similar to the blurry original, no? Actually I prob made it too blurry (hard to do it right without the original interlaced source)...

watty

The Oireachtas looked poor and over compressed on the SD test channel yesterday.
(Lyngbox as receiver off Three Rock).

Deflector

For the past few years since the introduction of widescreen the Oireachtas facilites have been framing for 16:9 using the existing 4:3 cameras and then cropping on output. I don't think they even have guide bars as the headroom allowance has often be way over-estimated (though that could by typical sloppy Irish production standards).

I too have noticed the cinematic sheen of late on Oireachtas Report - appearing in the past couple of months - suggesting that the Dáil facilities are/have finally being updated to 16:9 but aren't fine-tuned yet. If the case, it's certainly not before time - the cropped output has been appalling during continuous Budget events and of course Dáil coverage generally.