Eighty years of entertainment video

Let us begin the post with a piece of information. In the Internet more than 50 percentage of traffic is due to video transmission. Colour movies emerged in early 1930s and it was the only source of video at that time. TV emerged in 1950s and added huge collection video to the world. The evolution of video from 1934 to 2014 (80 years) is to be discussed in this post. 

Video Classification

For a general public, a movie stored in video cassette or Video Compact Disc (VCD) is considered as a video. But a graduate in electronics engineering will quantify video as “sequence of still pictures (frames) that are displayed on screen in a very small time interval.” Video can be classified into three major categories namely; entertainment video, Industrial video and Surveillance video. As name implies entertainment video encompasses movies and TV programmes. As per the definition Black and White (B&W) silent movies come under the category of video.  But in this post it is restricted to colour talkies (colour movie with soundtrack). In manufacturing industries video cameras are extensively used to capture the production processes. Videos are analysed and features are extracted. These features are used as feedback in production processes. Machines fitted with camera replace human beings. They work 24x7, seven days a week without a holiday. As they don't require any pay rise, there is no strike in factories. The video content generated by machine vision systems can be branded as Industrial video. Most of the public places are monitored by a surveillance system. This cost effective method reduces the requirement of Beat Officers (police who are on patrol), aftermath of crime recorded video acts as clues to nail the culprits and acts as prosecution evidence in the court of law. Video content is increasing leaps and bounds. 

Gigapixel Images

A 1.8 gigapixel video surveillance camera named ARGUS was built jointly by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and the US Army. It is capable to pick out a sleeping dog in the Earth from the altitude of 20,000 feet (6 km).  In other words, it can resolve details as close to six inches. Quite amazing! The ARGUS can be attached to drone (unmanned aeroplane remotely controlled) and taken to a height of 20,000 feet to observe 25 square kilometres at any instant. Thus entire New York City can be brought into surveillance by two ARGUS attached drones to hover over the city.  The entire Manhattan is under observation 24x7.  

Like ARGUS, AWARE-2 is another gigapixel camera. It was used to study the behaviour of tundra swans present in Pungo Lake, USA [1]. With AWARE-2 camera gigapixel snapshot was taken [1] and found 656 swans swimming in the lake and 27 flying above the lake at that instant. Scientists can use the snapshot to track individual swan or study the swans' flock (group) behaviour.  Existing scanning panoramic camera cannot achieve this feat. Use of gigapixel is not confined to ecology alone. It can be applied in fields like urban planning, traffic control, forestry, archaeology and so on.

Gigapixel snapshot of Budapest city, Hungary. Inset: two landmarks building in the city. Zooming operation  on gigapixel image helps us find the buildings. Image courtesy www.photographyblog.com [7]

Digital Society

Today we are living in digital society.  Due to rise of digital technology basic fabric of society is almost changed.  For example, in India twenty years back, cellular phones were bulky and were a status symbol. Users seldom revealed their cell phone numbers, as incoming calls were also metered or charged. Now sleek cell phones are the norm and each Indian possesses a cell phone. The word “Privacy” is unknown to Indians earlier, now they practice it. Thus digital technology has started shaping the society. Earlier posts like tribal, agrarian and industrial society discussed length and breadth of technology-society association. In this post emphasis will on the digital technology.

Technology has so advanced that by click of a button we get any information we want. Is this means we are far superior than our ancestors? The answer is Yes and No. Internet has become giant virtual library. Internet contains lot of text information and videos which are structured, static and suited for one way communication (author to reader or viewers). We have honed our skills to surf and sift information from Internet. By this reason, yes is the answer.  We lack the ability to communicate, leave alone extracting information from fellow humans. This is because human to human interaction is much unstructured, dynamic and two way (author to listener, and listener to author). Communication is complex and lot of training is required to excel [1].  We had fishermen, who observed the cloud and predicted the weather and other vital information required for fishing. In agrarian society humans acted as an information repository.  

Today society banks more on man-machine interaction rather than human-human interaction. This may result in assorted individuals (Man, woman, boy and girl) instead of a family (Father, mother, son and daughter) staying in a house. Thus our challenge is to make the digital devices to assist us in improving human-human interaction.

Digital Devices

We come across devices like digital clock, mp3 player, audio compact disc player, Video Compact Disc (VCD) player, Digital Video Disc (DVD) player, computer, cellular phone, Tablet and so on. These diverse devices can be brought under umbrella of digital devices. Analog devices operate on analog signals which are continuous in time as well as in value. Digital signals are discrete in time and can hold only two values i.e. ones and zeros. Dominance of digital devices over analog counter parts is due to the axis of IC fabrication, Computer and Internet.

Figure 1. Digital Clock | Image courtesy Wikipedia

Pre-Digital Society

In earlier posts tribal, agrarian and industrial society were discussed. In this post, post-industrial society will be discussed.  One may wonder about the title and they may have an urge rename it as “information society.” Lot of definitions exists for information society [1]. Industrialization of a nation is gauged by amount of petroleum or energy usage. Likewise two metrics can be used for information society. First is extent of information usage. Next is economy of a country should hang on information production (for example movies, music videos, books, information equipments etc). So it is better to leave the discussion on information society to economists and social scientists. The present digital society may lead us to information society. 

       This is one part of series of articles dealing with evolution of societies. In the present society we encounter lot of displays. These articles try to find out the answer for “rise of display and smart devices.” I firmly believe engineering, technology, economics and end user behaviour has to be studied as a whole and not in isolation.  That is why article like this appear in this blog which is dedicated to Digital Image Processing. 

The post-industrial society can be broadly classified into pre-digital and digital society. In Industrial society electricity was used a form energy like coal and petroleum. In digital society, electricity is used to transport information. In digital society, information production, distribution and consumption happens in binary form i.e. ones and zeros. In pre-digital society analog signals were used and optional use of electronic components.

Smart devices and Learning - Part II

In the earlier post we tried to understand what is learning. We had a glimpse of tribal and agrarian society. This post deals with industrial society. Characteristics of industrial society are usage of coal, petroleum, steam engine and urban dwelling.

The objective of this three-part post is to understand the motives behind the veneration of gadgets (i.e. smart phones) usage, and education that emphasize reading and writing skills. 

Genesis of industrial society

Extensive use of coal and steam engine by the society can be regarded as the starting point industrialization. Earlier times steam engines were used to draw water from iron mines.  Their efficiency improved and used in locomotives. First successful locomotive using steam engine was devised by James Watt. 

Britain was in the forefront in industrial revolution as iron and coal was extensively available. Climate conditions in England helped to start textile industry. People used to spun, and then weave it to make cloth at home. It was a labour intensive task.  In a textile factory, conversion of cotton into cloth was carried out with machines with the help of few workers. Textile mills were very productive and were able to produce cloth economically. The machines like spinning jenny, water frame, flying shuttle, spinning mule required huge space to house them. Thus buildings were exclusively built. Thus first time in history mass production of goods was carried out. Till then it was production of goods by masses.  (Above statement is an adaptation from Mahatma Gandhi's famous quote “We don't require mass production but production by masses”).

A mill engine from Stott Park Bobbin Mill, Cumbria, England.  Image source: Wikipedia