In a stunning turn of events that if true would take the Associated Press phone records scandal to an entirely new level, Congressman Devin Nunes has claimed that the Department of Justice wiretapped the House of Representatives Cloak Room during their so called investigation. … Read More
Congressman Devin Nunes Claims Department of Justice Wiretapped House of Representative’s Cloak Room
Pirates Debut Super-Smooth Video Torrents
Frame rate is a term used to describe the frequency that a device is able to capture or replay consecutive images required for the creation of moving video.
If each image was played back, say, once per second, the viewer would see a series of static images, but by presenting more frames in a shorter period an illusion of movement is created. As the FPS (frames per second) increase, the smoother the video appears to the viewer.
In TV and cinema there are three broad standards – 24p, 25p, and 30p – producing 24, 25 and 30 FPS respectively, but last year there was a step up when Peter Jackson’s Hobbit was shot in 48FPS.
However, for quite a while now video has been turning up on BitTorrent networks marked as 60FPS, so are these coming from official sources or is there some other explanation?
“Full HFR [high frame rate] movies are not available online via official channels,” Michael Stat of the HFRMovies blog told TorrentFreak.
“I have heard that 60 fps torrents of Star Trek (2009) and Avatar are both circulating, and maybe others. This is indeed significant because as of now the Blu-ray spec is not capable of handling 60 fps at 1080p. There is no ‘legitimate’ way to get HFR (High Frame Rate) versions of movies as of now.”
So, we had a trawl around the BitTorrent scene looking for 60FPS torrents to see what we could find. Movies do indeed seem rare to non-existent, but the same cannot be said about TV shows. TorrentFreak found dozens of releases, mainly for sporting events (combat sports, NBA, NHL) that boast this superior frame rate.
One Pirate Bay focused releaser, known as Secludedly, is dedicated to releasing UFC/MMA, boxing events and other TV shows. He has dozens to his name and many of them are uploaded at 60FPS. Starting to feel a little out of our depth with some of the technical wizardry involved, TorrentFreak caught up with Secludedly for the lowdown on his sources and processes.
“I live in an area, as well as subscribe to a service, that uses a modified MPEG-4 container to stream broadcasts to my home using AVC @ 60FPS. There are several companies out there making the switch from MPEG-2 to this modified MPEG-4/AVC due to better compression with higher quality, though it is not highly used yet,” he explains.
“I actually needed to get a special capture device to catch an emulation of the original broadcast since, as far as I know, none of your average capture cards support anything above 29.970 in the stream.”
Since the human eye cannot process as many as 60FPS directly (although the actual process is much more complex than that), we asked about the attraction to these higher frame rates.
“These 60 frames each second basically make the transition from one frame to the next seem smooth and effortless. Think of it this way. If I am capturing a show on TV with the full 60FPS it was being streamed at, you’re getting the full motion of the video itself, especially in high-paced scenes where the viewer’s eye benefits from the frame-rate,” Secludedly explains.
“Take for example the 720p rips of The Ultimate Fighter that I do. Someone in the cage throws a punch at their opponent. Now, you see them punching, but it’s as if all you saw was a mere blur, and you can’t completely decipher where that punch landed because of the deduction of the frames in 24FPS or 30FPS. Why? Because the frames are pruned to a point where fast action like a punch cannot keep up in a lesser frame-rate.”
With double the frame-rate, however, things begin to develop.
“Change it to 60fps and your eye basically has double the visual capacity to capture that motion being performed as the punch is thrown, and it comes to look more realistic because you’re getting every bit of movement in the original capture of the video, making it seem more life-like.”
But of course, not all subjects are fast-paced and to some higher frame rates aren’t necessarily a good thing. When the Hobbit previewed last year in 48FPS Jackson said the movie felt “more real” and was “much more gentle on the eyes.” Some journalists, however, weren’t so keen and didn’t feel at home with this new level of smoothness.
“60FPS isn’t a globally accepted standard right now, so there are a lot of things out there, when streamed by the broadcast company, that are pushed to 60FPS even if the video framerate itself is too slow to benefit from it,” says Secludedly.
“From what I’ve personally observed, sports and fast action movies benefit GREATLY from the 60FPS variant. It’s smooth as butter, and I swear it can look better than many of the BluRays I own, and since I’m mostly just an MMA/Boxing provider, that’s fine with me anyway. I’ll cap TV shows sometimes as well, and it’s basically a draw of luck how it’ll turn out, but I’m fine with that,” he concludes.
Time will tell whether the interest in higher frame rates increase, but in the meantime we’re interested in discovering what’s out there. If you’ve found an interesting 60FPS non-TV torrent, particularly of a movie in 1080p, we’d love to learn of the details via the usual address (please don’t post links in the comments section)
Source: Pirates Debut Super-Smooth Video Torrents
Are You Some Sort of Pervert?
When a single dad signed his daughter up for females-only swim
lessons at Toronto’s Dennis R. Timbrell Recreation Centre, he
didn’t realize just how seriously staff took that “females only”
stuff. Chris, whose last name wasn’t reported by local media, said
that when the two arrived at the center he was informed he
wouldnot
be allowed to watch ;the lessons. He said that nothing on
the city’s website, where he’d signed up for the lessons, mentioned
that. City aquatics director Anne Jackson said the females-only
classes are designed to accomodate the “cultural and religious
practices and requirements” of some residents. Don’t worry, the
city also offers males-only classes, and the mothers of boys who
take them aren’t allowed to watch. … Read More
Brickbat: Are You Some Sort of Pervert?
When a single dad signed his
daughter up for females-only swim lessons at Toronto’s Dennis R.
Timbrell Recreation Centre, he didn’t realize just how seriously
staff took that “females only” stuff. Chris, whose last name wasn’t
reported by local media, said that when the two arrived at the
center he was informed he would
not be allowed to watch the lessons. He said that nothing on
the city’s website, where he’d signed up for the lessons, mentioned
that. City aquatics director Anne Jackson said the females-only
classes are designed to accomodate the “cultural and religious
practices and requirements” of some residents. Don’t worry, the
city also offers males-only classes, and the mothers of boys who
take them aren’t allowed to watch. … Read More
Pre-Order The United States of Paranoia
I’ve mentioned this in passing a couple of times already, but
now that it has a proper
Amazon page—and because it seems especially timely this
week—I’m going to give it a full post: ;In August,
HarperCollins will be publishing my book The United States of
Paranoia. Here’s what they’re planning to put on the jacket
flap:
* 1693: Cotton Mather suggests that the spirits
attacking Salem are allied with the colony’s human enemies. At
“their Cheef Witch-meetings,” he writes, “there has been present
some French canadians, and some Indian Sagamores, to concert the
methods of ruining New England.”
* 1835: A gunman tries to kill Andrew Jackson. The president
accuses a senator of plotting the assassination. Jackson’s critics
counter that the shooting was a false-flag attack arranged by the
president himself to gain public support.
* 1868: An article in The New-York Tribune declares that
the Democrats have engineered the capital’s malaria outbreaks,
pumping “the air, and the water, and the whisky of Washington full
of poison.”
* 1967: President Lyndon Johnson asks his cabinet if the Communists
are behind the country’s urban riots. When the attorney general
tells him the evidence isn’t there, Johnson isn’t convinced.
Conspiracy theories aren’t just a feature of the fringe. They’ve
been a potent force across the political spectrum, in the center as
well as the extremes, from the colonial era to the present. In
The United States of Paranoia, Jesse Walker explores this
rich history, arguing that conspiracy stories need to be read not
just as claims to be either believed or debunked but as folklore.
When a tale takes hold, it says something true about the anxieties
and experiences of the people who believe and repeat the yarn, even
if it says nothing true about the objects of the theory
itself.
The first half of the book lays out five conspiracy narratives that
keep recurring in American history, zeroing in on examples from the
17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. The second half looks at how those
primal stories have played out in the politics and popular culture
of the last half-century, from Watergate to Waco to the War on
Terror. With intensive research and a deadpan sense of humor,
The United States of Paranoia combines the rigor of real
history with the punch of pulp fiction.
And here’s the cover:
You can pre-order it from
Amazon, you can pre-order it from
Barnes & Noble, or you can march into your local bookstore,
slam your fist on the counter, and demand that they call you the
second they have it in stock. … Read More
Top diplomat warns US against meddling with Russian internal affairs
“The present complications in the Russia-US relations are connected with the fact that the American side took a number of unfriendly steps, causing an acute reaction in the Russian community and inflicting damage to our cooperation in various fields,” Sergey Ryabkov said at Thursday’s session of the Council for People’s Diplomacy, part of the Russian Public Chamber.He elaborated that he meant first of all “attempts of democratization lectures” from Washington, as well as the attempts to influence Russia’s internal political processes, in particular, elections at all levels.Ryabkov also reminded about the “swapping” of the old anti-Soviet Jackson-Vanik amendment for the new, anti-Russian Magnitsky Act.The official pointed out that Russia’s response to the Magnitsky Act, dubbed the Dima Yakovlev Law, reflects Russia’s official appraisal of the US adoption system and noted that it was not limited to the travel restrictions and the adoptions ban.“Apart from the ban on adoptions, this law introduces a number sanctioning measures against US citizens who are involved in Human Rights abuses, including the abductions and illegal arrests of Russian citizens in third countries, and also introduces restrictions to foreign citizens’ participation in Russian political NGO management,” Ryabkov stated.Russian officials have repeatedly noted that the current cooling of the relations with the United States was caused only by unfriendly actions of the US administration. As Washington attempted to mend ties, Moscow said that such steps were welcome. However it also noted that it was perplexing that the United States was simultaneously calling for reconciliation and taking new unfriendly steps, such as publishing the names of Russian citizens included in the Magnitsky List. … Read More
