Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 June 3

= June 3 =

"Public Networks" of 1987

 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMFscTOazS0 2:49

Bill Atkinson said, "There are several hundred on the public networks."

How did they distribute user-created HyperCard stacks in 1987? Did they use some sort of BBS because Internet was not widely known outside selected U.S. colleges then? -- Toytoy (talk) 02:04, 3 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Exactly - there were lots of BBS services (which you had to dial individually) and communities of BBSes like Compuserve and AOL. Without a real search engine, finding your way around required a lot more a priori knowledge, and you very frequently see ads for BBSes in documents (e.g. the README for the shareware edition of Doom had the numbers to call for BBSes that hosted it). Dial-up was so slow that it was very common to get "best of" selections from a BBS as magazine cover disks or mail order (often advertised in the backs of computer magazines). If you were on the Internet it was still difficult to find things (there was Wide area information server, but it was a long way from being like a modern search engine). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 07:54, 3 June 2013 (UTC)


 * CompuServe and AOL (and others) weren't communities of BBSes; they were in effect really big single BBSes. FidoNet would certainly count as a community of BBSes. There were also tons of free shoestring-budget independent BBSes with their own isolated message boards and file collections. Software wouldn't spread between them unless someone downloaded it from one and uploaded it to another, but things can spread quickly that way (six degrees of separation and all that).


 * Sneakernet was also available and widely used (in person and through the mail). -- BenRG 23:54, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Two questions related to video
1. I want to cut some part of a video but I have no idea how to do this. So please help. 2. How to convert a video to an HD video? Scientist456 (talk) 04:06, 3 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Impossible to answer without knowing what format the video is in. (If it's a videotape, you can use scissors.) Looie496 (talk) 05:07, 3 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Its format is ".FLV" and I play it in my laptop using RealPlayer. Scientist456 (talk) 05:34, 3 June 2013 (UTC)


 * 2) I take it you mean to increase the resolution. This is generally a bad idea, as it increases the space it takes up dramatically, without really making it any clearer.  It's better to just use a player which can upconvert the low-res video, as needed.  (It still won't be any clearer, but at least you don't waste any space this way.)  To give an example, lets say your low-res vid is of a field of grass, which is recorded on the video as a blurry green blob.  There's no way to reconstruct the individual blades of grass and store them onto HD video, since the info needed just isn't present in the original video.  StuRat (talk) 05:52, 3 June 2013 (UTC)


 * To elaborate on what StuRat said. Your video is, probably, 480 x 640 = 307,200, HD is 1280 x 720 = 921,600 or 1920 x 1080 = 2,073,600. The 720-res is roughly 3 times the number of pixels and 1080 is 2 times over that (around 7 times total). What this means is that to upscale your video to 720, you would need to guess 2 pixels for every pixel you have, and for 1080 you would need to guess 6 pixels to every 1. Moreover, SD is 4:3 aspect ratio, HD is 16:9, so not only will the upscaler need to guess pixels, it will also need to stretch the original; so, it's not going to look perfect. Most players and televisions will upscale for you, usually as good (or better) than most software. If you do use software, be aware that if you upscale to anything other than the source's resolution, it will still have to perform more upscaling, which will be even worse (going from 480 to 720, then having the tv take 720 to 1080 will look worse than just letting the tv do it). In other words, you are much better off just letting whatever you play the video on take care of it. On a final note, I've noticed a lot of flv video is lacking in quality (or, rather, is used for youtube type sites), but, depending on what the video is of, there's probably a higher quality version available. I don't have any sources on hand, but if you google "video upscaling", you'll find a lot of info (beware any products claiming to do this.)Phoenixia1177 (talk) 10:24, 3 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Regarding the first question, FLV is "Flash video". If you Google for "Flash video editor", you will find a number of applications that can do what you want, some commercial, others free.  I have never used any of them and therefore can't make a recommendation. Looie496 (talk) 14:01, 3 June 2013 (UTC)


 * 7 free FLV editors. --Yellow1996 (talk) 00:06, 4 June 2013 (UTC)