OT: 4k video

this sounds like you need HEIC and HEVC drivers on the PC plus a graphics card AND Monitor/TV that can support 4k over Display port or HDMI

Getting arrested I hope.

Just bought a 43" 4K TV for £207. Will any other option be that much cheaper?

PA

I had expected that all replies to the original post would make this point.

Disappointing to discover that only one out of three did so.

Okay, so two constructive replies so far and two tossers. We'll see if there's any more of either kinds of answers in due course...

From a post in another group :-)

"An undesirable down the street has a drone. What gauge and choke of shotgun do you recommend ?"

Drone confetti is very festive.

In the year 2024, NEVER UNDERESTIMATE YOUR NEIGHBOURS. My neighbour killed his dog. The woman in the house, has had broken bones... twice. I'm beginning to think she is <cough> "clumsy". That's how you measure a neighbour.

FFMPEG changes video from one format to another.

Included in the application is "ffprobe" as in

ffprobe some.vid

and that will tell you what the video and audio codec declarations say. If the vid was an Apple format, it would tell you.

And this, will play it (most always).

ffplay some.vid

If the person building the executable, forgets a library or two, that leads to incomplete feature set. The reason ffmpeg and friends dump so much text into the terminal window, is the text is a record of the build options used.

An example of a packaging of ffmpeg-like capability, is VLC. You use this, when it is too much trouble to find FFMPEG package. There were two projects, libAV and FFMPEG, and applications can use aspects of either one.

Chinese IP webcams may not follow any standard and may be proprietary, which is why typically attempts to play content directly, won't work. But recording the video to a file and passing the file to VLC, should work. VLC is like using ffplay.

A number of sharpen tools don't work. It's possible an older copy of avidemux would work (it's not worth the effort to go all the way there, but it's the only success that comes to mind). I found a commercial sharpen tool, it ran for 12 hours and it did... absolutely nothing. FFMPEG should have one, but I have not tried it. I was just surprised, that ugly sharpen results with actual sharpening, were not more common. The "adaptive" filters were supposed to fool you into thinking the video had not been processed. And it was just that sharp.

On cheap cameras, sensor noise is a problem, and remains a problem even in sunlit scenes. That is one of the reasons you cannot over-sharpen, is sensor noise. The sharpen I'm talking about, is a correction for the compressor used in the camera, and the sharpening you will apply undoes the excess degradation of the compressor.

And don't use the IR illuminator on your drone -- smartphones, when you use the cameras in them, they have spectral response out into the infrared, and using an illuminator would make your drone stand out like a sore thumb. That is a problem with some of the whizzy stuff, is your opponent unintentionally has whizzy stuff too (smartphone). A good illuminator draws too much power from a drone, and can give vision to about 300 feet from the camera. That would be an array with (100) 950nm LEDs. But in terms of being covert, anyone can see your project approaching, from a mile away.

In some countries, drone flights are monitored on radar. Depending on local policy, and closeness to an airport, you could develop some new friends. It's unbelievable I know, but drone flying actually has rules. When you read the rules, you'll see the rules have a design intent.

Paul

Thanks. FFMPEG is a phenomenal tool alright, but it can't work magic if the hardware just isn't up to the job. I think I need to spend a bit of cash on something much faster than I currently have.

Probably because to loon is in most folk’s kill files.

Tim

This article makes a fair share of technical mistakes, but at least the message is present that some sort of profile-like issue might arise with the incoming video. Stating that the built-in GPU on the computer needs to be an Iris (for QuickSync video decoding), hints at the performance level required. Doing such a thing (QuickSync on Intel) does not load down the CPU. But what it does do, once the video is appearing on the screen, it still needs to be recorded somehow and that could potentially need cycles. Maybe there is some way to transfer the video from onboard storage, later, as an alternative recording means.

A 1650 might cover some useful formats in hardware, and would be cheaper than the 4090.

With MJPEG compression, all the cores on the CPU can be used. Some other formats, the extra cores you happen to have, might not help.

Paul

Well patently you need a 4k capable screen.

And from experience with such videos, a f*ck of a lot of graphics horsepower to drive it in real time.

Those are not possible solutions, they are the *only* solutions

What is your definition of 'undesirable' though ?.

Does the country where you live have the sort of data protection/drone usage/gun control that the UK has ?.

Probably not. All the money in a TV is in the screen. The rest is some ICs and a PSU.

Frankly what Curstor does in his own backyard is his affair.

Quite encouraged that only one out of three is a 1984 style big brother snitch.

Yes. I think I'll just have to buy a new telly, much as I hate the idea of ditching a perfectly good one - even if it is 12 years old it's never gone wrong in all that time. THIS is what's wrong with the environment at the present time: our throw-away culture and planned obsolescence. But what do they keep going on about? "Global warming" and CO2! And the two aren't even connected. Yumans are basically stupid.

There are *still* 'HD Ready' TVs on sale, more than ten years after

What's wrong with a decent 4k monitor?

Around £250 squids in the UK

I rather got the impression he was planning to snoop in someone else's back yard. Surely that's their affair?

Fair point. I'll probably end up getting both knowing the way I typically approach problems like this.