Need Major Science Project that relates to DVD

[Deepa DvD]

Hi!
I need a Project for Science it's a Major Project for 8th grade - sort of like Sceience fair. What should I do it on? I want to do it on that has something to do with DVD.
Thanks in Advance!!!
:)

[RadicalEd]

Whoa :O 8th grade, and I thought I was like the youngest doom member ever (I started last year at age 15)
Well, for my 9th grade science fair project (which was also last year :/) I created a set of live action and animation, high motion and low motion clips and encoded them at a res of 320x240 in mpeg1, WMV8, RealVideo 8, and SBC, and at bitrates of 2000, 1500, 1000, and 500, and then did a double blind test on a bunch of people to see what codec produced the closest to uncompressed output. The people I tested mustve had really bad eyesight though because wmv8 came out on top ;P

[Mango Madness]

that's because microsoft claims better video quality; but it's interesting to note how this is achieved. Like when video goes to lower bitrates and produces nasty blocks and such, microsoft just blurs the image more. Coding experts, like us on this forum, know what to look for when it comes to details, sharpness, colors, and temporal/spatial qualities.

But for your project, you could test resizing algorithms.

Perhaps find a general ratio of DVD to XVID to where it can't be told the difference between the two. This could be done to actually help with some of the extremely experimental features of xvid to see if they have adverse affects and at what bitrates they work (ie, 1/4 pixel and GMC).

If you can program, or know someone who can, you could create an opensource program using xvid (can't you tell i like xvid?) and combine it with either vorbis or speex to create a teleconferencing program sorta like what yahoo has, but use much better codecs. This would probably be too difficult to complete in a timely manner, but is definitely something that is on my mind and would love to see. To put a spin on science for your purposes, you'd have to do a lot on optimizing for realtime coding and transmission. I had the idea that on the serving side you'd use a resolution reduction then on the decoding side, use something like lanczos to try to recover the original resolution. The thing is that you'd have to cram video and audio into something around 20-40kb/sec outgoing to fit into normal cable/dsl upstreams. Then you could play around with higher or lower upstreams for 56k or higher like T1. One day we will have h.264 available with much faster processors so that realtime coding is possible for transmission over the internet. Ok, so i'm really beyond the scope of this thread now, but it'd be really cool to have 24bit/96khz input via new audigy 2's using speex to use as audio with a high quality mic.

[Deepa DvD]

Thanks guys!!! I apreciate it!!! :)
@RadicalEd - Well, I'm really 16 and I like your idea!
@Mango Madness - I like your ideal too, but I don't have enough time!

So, I should use some miniDV footage right? Also how did you do your presentation? We have to do a verbal presentation along with a board. Also how did you take the encoded footage for the verbal pesentation?
Burn it on to CD or DVD. And open the mpeg1, WMV8 in windows media player and RealVideo 8 in Real Player. right?
Thanks!!! :) I appreciate the help!

[RadicalEd]

16 in teh 8th grade? you musta started school really late :/
anyway well, I didn't have to do a verbal presentation, just a backboard and data book and for those I took screen shots of the same random frame from each different codec to show the differences side-by-side. Although if you have access to a computer yeah, that wouldn't be a bad idea at all. Oh yea, my source was DVD, but I'm sure you could get away with DV.

@mango
yeah, funny thing was though is that Real8 was way better (and I'm pretty sure had more postproduction going on) than wmv
crazy people ;P

[Hiro2k]

If this helps any, i found a nice free VOB file on the intenet. Great quality, but it has a high bit/pixel, like .586 after a compression test. I like it because it exibits all the right colorfull scenes to make a nice codec comparison.

Warning: 140 Megs!
http://www.overlaytools.com/demo/profiler6Mbps.vob

For reference I emailed the guys at info@bernclare.com and asked for permision. Some Science fair entries might require it. They were really good about saying yes, all they asked for was the name of my school and City.

I am also doing a Science Fair Project right now for my 11th grade science fair. It's just a subjective "At which bitrate does this video still look good to you" kinda BS. Easy and since the teacher and students probably doesn't know crap about Video encoding you will amaze them all!

BTW Im 16 too!

[Deepa DvD]

THanks very very much for the replies guys!!! I appreciate it!!! :)
Cheers