• Christopher Butler – Understanding the Eye-Mind Connection – Vision is a mental process

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    https://www.chrbutler.com/understanding-the-eye-mind-connection

     

    The intricate relationship between the eyes and the brain, often termed the eye-mind connection, reveals that vision is predominantly a cognitive process. This understanding has profound implications for fields such as design, where capturing and maintaining attention is paramount. This essay delves into the nuances of visual perception, the brain’s role in interpreting visual data, and how this knowledge can be applied to effective design strategies.

     

    This cognitive aspect of vision is evident in phenomena such as optical illusions, where the brain interprets visual information in a way that contradicts physical reality. These illusions underscore that what we “see” is not merely a direct recording of the external world but a constructed experience shaped by cognitive processes.

     

    Understanding the cognitive nature of vision is crucial for effective design. Designers must consider how the brain processes visual information to create compelling and engaging visuals. This involves several key principles:

    1. Attention and Engagement
    2. Visual Hierarchy
    3. Cognitive Load Management
    4. Context and Meaning

     

     

  • Embedding frame ranges into Quicktime movies with FFmpeg

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    QuickTime (.mov) files are fundamentally time-based, not frame-based, and so don’t have a built-in, uniform “first frame/last frame” field you can set as numeric frame IDs. Instead, tools like Shotgun Create rely on the timecode track and the movie’s duration to infer frame numbers. If you want Shotgun to pick up a non-default frame range (e.g. start at 1001, end at 1064), you must bake in an SMPTE timecode that corresponds to your desired start frame, and ensure the movie’s duration matches your clip length.

    How Shotgun Reads Frame Ranges

    • Default start frame is 1. If no timecode metadata is present, Shotgun assumes the movie begins at frame 1.
    • Timecode ⇒ frame number. Shotgun Create “honors the timecodes of media sources,” mapping the embedded TC to frame IDs. For example, a 24 fps QuickTime tagged with a start timecode of 00:00:41:17 will be interpreted as beginning on frame 1001 (1001 ÷ 24 fps ≈ 41.71 s).

    Embedding a Start Timecode

    QuickTime uses a tmcd (timecode) track. You can bake in an SMPTE track via FFmpeg’s -timecode flag or via Compressor/encoder settings:

    1. Compute your start TC.
      • Desired start frame = 1001
      • Frame 1001 at 24 fps ⇒ 1001 ÷ 24 ≈ 41.708 s ⇒ TC 00:00:41:17
    2. FFmpeg example:
    ffmpeg -i input.mov \
      -c copy \
      -timecode 00:00:41:17 \
      output.mov
    

    This adds a timecode track beginning at 00:00:41:17, which Shotgun maps to frame 1001.

    Ensuring the Correct End Frame

    Shotgun infers the last frame from the movie’s duration. To end on frame 1064:

    • Frame count = 1064 – 1001 + 1 = 64 frames
    • Duration = 64 ÷ 24 fps ≈ 2.667 s

    FFmpeg trim example:

    ffmpeg -i input.mov \
      -c copy \
      -timecode 00:00:41:17 \
      -t 00:00:02.667 \
      output_trimmed.mov
    

    This results in a 64-frame clip (1001→1064) at 24 fps.

  • Rec-2020 – TVs new color gamut standard used by Dolby Vision?

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    https://www.hdrsoft.com/resources/dri.html#bit-depth

     

    The dynamic range is a ratio between the maximum and minimum values of a physical measurement. Its definition depends on what the dynamic range refers to.

    For a scene: Dynamic range is the ratio between the brightest and darkest parts of the scene.

    For a camera: Dynamic range is the ratio of saturation to noise. More specifically, the ratio of the intensity that just saturates the camera to the intensity that just lifts the camera response one standard deviation above camera noise.

    For a display: Dynamic range is the ratio between the maximum and minimum intensities emitted from the screen.

    The Dynamic Range of real-world scenes can be quite high — ratios of 100,000:1 are common in the natural world. An HDR (High Dynamic Range) image stores pixel values that span the whole tonal range of real-world scenes. Therefore, an HDR image is encoded in a format that allows the largest range of values, e.g. floating-point values stored with 32 bits per color channel. Another characteristics of an HDR image is that it stores linear values. This means that the value of a pixel from an HDR image is proportional to the amount of light measured by the camera.

    For TVs HDR is great, but it’s not the only new TV feature worth discussing.

    (more…)