Filming CRTs: It's pretty easy, actually

[@markdaga1711]

LOL, the CC reads “regrettably smooth jazz” when the theme music kicks in. Love a good joke, in any format.

[@TechnologyConnextras]

Couple notes here; I need to get a real voiceover setup soon, as that annoying whine you hear is annoying and you can hear it which is annoying. I'm sorry for the annoying whine you hear. The _real_ fun comes when you want to film CRT computer monitors! Same rules apply, but you might need to adjust the refresh rate of the monitor if your camera doesn't have a matching shutter speed.

[@munjee2]

Please don't show a recording of you talking while doing a voice over it very confusing

[@ebennett3655]

what is the name of the song at 1:04?

[@munjee2]

@@ebennett3655 probably from the audio library

[@vaclavtrpisovsky]

@@ebennett3655 The jazz song is: Jean Boyle - _The Light in the Storm_

[@UpLateGeek]

I assume by "fun" you mean having to notch out the frequency of the horizontal sync rate? Or is there a fancy button that does it automagically for you?

[@jmalmsten]

As a video maker in sweden I can confirm that pretty much any camera worth its salt here has options to run at 25 and 50 fps nowadays and with that, our camera shutter speeds tend to be multiples of those values. A few years ago we could most often only actually record in 50i, but frame buffering in cameras could get down to 1/25 shutter or even lower. But as CRTs are becoming more of a thing of the past the cameras have been unshackled from the dependent need to have signals that are directly matching all the way from the sensor to the monitor. One thing to note however is that our screens likewise aren't shackled to the hertz of the mains power supply either nowadays. And manufacturers of cameras of lower prices are not required to adhere to PAL standards. Even high end phones aren't that concerned with PAL standards. Often shooting at 30 or 60 hz . So it's not too uncommon for a modern games console to render at 30 fps and send that as a 60hz signal over hdmi to the screen who happily switches over to 60i in our PAL country. Webcams likewise tend to default to NTSC standards of 30 or 60 hz no matter where they are sold. If you are using handheld devices it's likely just the same 30 or 60 hz code rendering at that speed on the monitor. It's awesome for localising content since it's nowadays is more about translation than rebuilding the renderer since most screens can display any of the standard refresh rates. But for knowing what is actually happening you need to research quite heavily for each setup. For example. My european GH4 camera is only european in the sense that they had to impose a 30 min limit to continuous video recording and a few translation options are changed for the GUI. But in terms of framerates... It got it all (not unique to the GH4, mind you). If I set it to PAL, I can record at 25p and 50p, in NTSC I have 23.976p (because we still need to comply with 3:2 conversion) 29.97p, and 59.96p, and finally I have a cinema mode that provides actual 24 fps progressive (my favourite). More than that, in menus you can often finetune the shutterspeed to get rid of the wandering lines you mention. This option has been present in prosumer gear since the time of vhs camcorders. Chances are, your camera has these settings too. It's just often hidden under strange names. An artefact of GUI translators who have no idea of industry lingo and the engineers building the code often not being fluent in english. So for reading the manuals can be quite an ordeal to get what you want. I also remember reading that in making of Videodrome, one of the groundbreaking effects that they used was a device that synced the TV refresh rates to standard 24 fps film cameras (probably ran the crt at 48hz but I don't know for certain). That way they could film TVs and not have to do the standard optical matting in post to get flicker free images. So... Yeah. It's not as cut and dry as one would have hoped. But researching what devices actually do is part of the fun and a big part of why I'm subscribed to these channels.

[@fozzillo]

I am very sensitive on frame rate and stuttering in videos, I hate standards! I remember 20 years ago, I was using a PAL HI8 camera pointed at the VGA monitor of my computer as a "poor man oscilloscope" to set the frame rate of the VGA card as close as possible to PAL 50hz. I had a Matrox Rainbow Runner capture card and I wanted to edit fluid flowing videos with no stuttering. When the ghostly line was almost not moving I was close to 50Hz ( but that made a mess when the VGA blanking was synced to the capture video blanking and the card could not decide witch field to choose... it's another story...) Now I use hotkeys to rapidly switch the video card between 48, 50, and 60Hz in order to watch each video without stuttering. I hate 24p, I can set my playback to 48hz but videomakers that use 24p usually do not understand anything about framerates, they film in PAL or at any framerate and just editing at 24p to see that "film look" that it is only terrible unrecoverable stuttering. Unless a video is filmed and edited all in 24p it will look terrible at 24p, and very few monitor will sync at 48Hz as I do, the majority will be at 60Hz. I film in PAL only if I the content is for PAL television broadcasting, videos for the web are better in 30 or 60p. 24p is for guaranteed stuttering only, nobody will be able to watch it correctly.

[@vwestlife]

"Real" video cameras and camcorders come in NTSC and PAL versions depending on which system is used in your region, and the NTSC versions will record at 29.97 or 59.94 frames or fields per second (even if they are advertised as "60 fps"), while the PAL versions are 25 or 50 frames/fields per second. Most Canon camcorders have a TV mode to lock the shutter speed to 1/60 (or 1/50). On Sony camcorders, turning off SteadyShot does the same. However, smartphones and point-and-shoot digital cameras are almost always 30 or 60 fps (exactly, not 29.97 or 59.94), even those sold in PAL regions. If you're lucky, there will be an option in the menu for "light frequency", allowing you to set the shutter speed to match either 50 or 60 Hz, to reduce flickering. I don't know about DSLRs because I've never owned one.

[@fozzillo]

​@@vwestlife Yes, you are right. I "say" 25, 30, 60fps for simplicity. I live in Italy, a PAL country. I think that camcorders should all be multi standard, at least the PAL ones, the vast majority of computers monitors and devices are set to 60Hz, if you are making videos for the internet, to be watched on computers and devices, filming in PAL or in 24p will always stutter. With "photo" cameras there are options and hacks to change the standard but for real video camcorders it is more difficult, they are truly optimized for just one standard (they would need two distinct oscillators, one for each standard, to have the same optimization in both standards) and there is not much request for multi standard because not many people really care. Look at how many people love to shoot at 24p, even if they look at the results on a 60Hz monitor. This is why I change the monitor frequency to comply with the source, I set it at 50Hz to watch TV and Italian videos on KZbin. For TV it is very good, for videos it depends on the videomaker, sometimes they film with phones or other devices that are set to 24 or 30fps but they edit the video at 25fps because they are in PAL country and it makes no sense. I set it to 48 or 72hz for 24p content, it works good for netflix but it is very very rare that it works good for YT content, they usually film and edit at any kind of settings than they export at 24p because movies are in 24fps so it must be the best... As I said unrecoverable stutter guaranteed. I also notice many smart tv that process the video at 30fps only. So when you watch a PAL content trough an app on the smart tv you get horrible stuttering. I dream a world where monitors sync to the source video whatever standard it is....

[@MayContainJoe]

With the expection of a few countries almost the entire world films video in 50 Hz (consumers as well as professional broadcast TV), simply because light flickers with 50 Hz there. But computers (and therefore KZbin) came from the Silicon Valley, so they introduced everybody to 30 fps first without thinking twice. Same goes with video games: Japan happened to import NTSC from the US, so they started with making 30 fps games and (badly) converted them later. It's essentially the same issue as with the metric system, which entire world uses expect the US. ;-) In the end you are always going to have two kind of devices: The ones designed with frame rate in mind and the ones ignorant of the issue (because they're good enough for the US market, the Xbox One being an example). The latter will stutter.

[@vwestlife]

Most of the Western Hemisphere, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Myanmar, and various Pacific islands is a pretty large area to be excluded from "almost the entire world"! And then there's the weirdo hybrid system used in Brazil, which uses PAL color but runs at 60 Hz.

[@BlameThande]

In Star Trek DS9, they were able to just use regular CRTs as background monitors/control panels on the set by adjusting the frequency of the CRTs to match the cameras, rather than vice versa.

[@AndersEngerJensen]

Most professional cameras over here in Europe have both standards included and even variable rolling shutter, consumer cameras less so, but I do believe most of them can be synced somehow.

[@SianaGearz]

Consumer cameras are often locked to 50, which is frustrating in the age where were trying to interface with KZbin and computers.

[@MrHack4never]

@Anders TV studios have a cable that just give sync to ALL cameras so that they can also instantly change between cameras

[@AndersEngerJensen]

MrHack4never Of cours, they do, but we’re talking more consumer grade equipment and what the mere mortal can afford.

[@MrHack4never]

@@SianaGearz YT has no problem with 50 FPS video

[@MrMisterMaster]

Anders Enger Jensen Your fear of hurting me, is hurting me.... This keeps playing in my head when I see you comment 😃

[@EposVox]

Another difficulty is getting a good view of what's showing on the screen without having all the grille nastiness show up (present in a lot of your clips) it's a real tough one. Synchro scan on some cameras helps a lot with the shutter speed syncing so you can get them perfectly aligned.

[@noelj62]

Ok, I've got the camera's shutter speed set correctly. Do I need a CRT or can I film without it?

[@noahagnew6517]

just set your lcd to only show one pixel at a time and scroll across the screen, that should get the same effect

[@Jaymac720]

Noah Agnew it would be kinda cool if that were possible, especially if it could mimic the fluorescence of the phosphors

[@brumm3653]

@@noahagnew6517 I doubt any LCD can do that with speed high enough to simulate CRT refresh rate :)

[@elevatormaniacgames]

Now I am vice versa for you. I have a CRT but I don’t have a camera with a changeable shutter speed.

[@invisibledave]

At first, I thought the title was "Filming Cats: It's pretty easy, actually", and I was going to say, I know. I've seen the 1 billion cat videos out there.

[@neilforbes416]

Oh dear, that's "pussing" things a bit too fur....er.... far! LOL

[@neilforbes416]

There'll be scrolling bars progressing upward or downward on the screen if attempting to shoot video of the older Cathode Ray Tube(CRT) screens, but if you shoot a video from the new LCD flat-screens you simply don't get any flicker or scrolling bars whatsoever, just a nice, clean image, either at NTSC 24 fps or PAL 25 fps.

[@neilforbes416]

The NTSC system was "nominally" rather than "actually" 24 fps.

[@KidCop2011]

You don't want to know what I thought the title was...

[@ShatteringKatana]

This is incredibly ironic in retrospect

[@davidnabbit]

You’ve done a good enough job of filming CRTs this way in your videos that I completely forgot that it normally doesn’t work.

[@maxximumb]

I remember, back in the day, on some UK TV shows, where a TV was needed on screen, they used a CRT with it's screen painted green. Then the TV show the cast was watching was added with Chroma key. There was no rolling, but the angles of the green TV and the camera shot of the virtual TV show were never quite right, giving the TV a slightly disconnected look.

[@CinemaSynesthesia]

We most definitely have 25p and 50p options with our cameras. Most DSLRs that do video will have a PAL mode, that often requires the camera to 'reboot'. To get 24p recording we usually need to change to NTSC mode.

[@UpLateGeek]

Low-end video cameras like mine may only have a choice between 50i and 50p, and no option to switch between NTSC and PAL. In fact, mine only gives me the 50i/50p option when shooting in AVCHD; if I choose MP4 then it only gives me the option of 1080/720, doesn't say whether it's interlaced or progressive.

[@SeanBZA]

@@UpLateGeek Will most likely be interlaced, lower data rate and thus lower cost in the signal processing, and lower power. Also means you can use a smaller gate array to make the camera, and this means cheaper as less silicon used for the processor.

[@Jegbonto]

25p and 50p is not shutter speed. It is the framerate of the recording. The actual shutter speed will vary based on lighting conditions. With direct sunlight one camera could easily record with 1/1000th shutter speed but leaves the framerate at 50, in which case half the screen will be empthy. The 1/60 and 1/30 shutter speeds are historical standard values from film photography way before any of the tv screen recording happened.

[@UpLateGeek]

@@Jegbonto Alec did question in the video whether we had 25/50p recording options in PAL regions.

[@Stoney3K]

@@UpLateGeek When I use a lower end camcorder, I will usually set it to one of the 50fps modes and set the shutter speed to 1/25. That way you will never suffer from interlacing artifacts when filming motion, and de-interlacing is easy because each field is just repeated twice.

[@hedgeearthridge6807]

Glad he made this. I saw it in his video, and was thinking "wait, that's real! He's filming a CRT! How is he doing it?"

[@ancientflounder]

“So...that’s interesting.” The captions agree.

[@victoramicci840]

BONK

[@SianaGearz]

The NES and PlayStation don't produce blank fields. They run an even number of lines across both fields so instead of being displaced by half a line, the two fields coincide spatially and you get stronger scanlines and half the vertical resolution. But you get progressive 60fps.

[@flatfingertuning727]

That is true, but if there are too many objects on a scan line, it will draw as many as it can on during one frame, and then give priority to whichever ones it failed to draw on the next frame, typically causing objects to flicker at 30fps.

[@SianaGearz]

@@flatfingertuning727 NES ignores sprites beyond 8 per scanline, but sprite cycling and flicker is a software-controlled effect, by either inverting the order of things in the object attribute memory every second frame (assuming 50/60Hz frames, since it would be silly to call them fields given there's no interlacing), or by nudging the DMA start address, which leads to wraparound and the complete OAM being populated anyway.

[@flatfingertuning727]

@@SianaGearz What's important is that objects which are displayed on every other frame are prone to disappear entirely if only half the frames are shown.

[@FilmmakerJ]

I love your use of the Granada Sherlock Holmes series here, because while I never watched it back when it was on PBS, I'm aware that it was an elegant fixture of 80s and 90s television that people without cable would have seen on occassion. Even in low-quality SD, it's a show that radiates class and is filled engaging performances. I feel blessed to own the complete series.

[@j616s]

Video cameras in 50Hz areas will normally (almost always?) provide a 25/50Hz option. Otherwise you might get flicker under artificial lighting.

[@brantisonfire]

Another nifty trick, which most digital videographers probably know, is to sorta mimic the blur of film with digital, and set the FPS to 24 and the shutter to 1/50 (1/48 is preferred but some cameras don’t have that setting). Learned that from another KZbin channel a few years ago.

[@CattoRayTube]

Gear in Australia usually has both standards available. Motorola's version of the stock Android camera app has no option to switch from 30fps to 25fps though, which is ridiculous and another good reason to use OpenCamera.

[@3DSage]

I was just having this problem today so thank you for the help!

[@dawn_h6]

The same technique also applies when filming with fluorescent lighting. It's because of this that any camera with a manual mode (that's sold in a PAL region, at least), will certainly have 25/50 shutter options. Using house lighting would be impossible otherwise.

[@DAndyLord]

I have a question that's related only on a tangent. How did NTSC work in Japan? Japan's power grid is 50hz in some areas, and 60hz in other areas. How did an NTSC tv work at 50hz? Thanks for the quality content!

[@CT7ALW]

My question is related: how do you record the TV on a room where the lights are at another frequency?

[@alexjones3035]

Today was my birthday, and a Technology Connections video is easily as good as any present. I've really grown to love your channels over the past year, you cover some of the most delightfully obscure things I never knew much about before I started watching. Many thanks for your hard work!!! :)

[@llaughridge]

On most Fuji cameras (I have the X-T3) you can set the shutter speed dial to "30" or "60" and then use the back thumbwheel to dial up or down to 50. Most people in the comments are confusing FPS with shutter speed. Also on the Fuji cameras, it actually has 29.97 as a frame rate for video *instead* of 30. So, 24, 25, 29.97, 50, 60... are all selectable choices.

[@Grizzly_Lab]

As I live in Italy and I own both a Panasonic HC-V750 and a GoPro Hero3+ Silver Edition I can tell that: 1) Yes: PAL cameras available in Europe are capable of operating either in 50fps or 25fps 2) GoPro can be set up either in PAL or NTSC, and will let you record in 60/30fps or 50/25fps accordingly (or 120/100fps at 720p, again accordingly to NTSC/PAL operating mode) Other than that: veeeeeeery interesting trick, thank you very much Moreover, last year I've found a little tricky to operate with a Canon Legria Mini (in US/Canada its "little sister" is the Vixia mini) because its shutter operates in 24fps, whilst the Minitel screen operated ad 50Hz, so there was both the diagonal line and that line was a separation between a lighter and a darker part of the screen, i guess for the same reason. Anyway thanks for this wonderful clarification.

[@Rainer67059]

I liked CRTs and I thought, one of their drawbacks was, you couldn't film off the screen. Now you've shown me, CRTs are better than I thought. Thank you.

[@MichiganFordDriver]

I highly appreciate the end credits fake out.

[@wallykramer7566]

Me too very much! I haven't stopped chuckling for over 20 minutes!

[@Psythik]

@@wallykramer7566 Damn, I wish I was that easily amused. Depression is a bitch. :/

[@NESherv]

What song is that?!

[@wilkdc]

Goddamn, you are the best youtuber out there, so much dedication, I hope it pays off, congratulations

[@frigbychilwether]

Hi, I used to work with film cameras and when we had to shoot a scene with a real TV(CRT) we had a little box that was connected to the camera(we used arri SR3 or 435 mostly). The box was placed on the back on the tv to read something(not entirely sure what it was, probably magnetic) to allow the film camera's shutter synchronise with the TV so there were no moving black bars. So think yourself lucky all you have to do is fiddle with the shutter speed !

[@qbradq]

This was way harder during the days of physical film. Glad it has improved :)

[@greggv8]

Now if only people would stop saying "film" and "filming" or "tape" and "taping" *when they aren't using film or tape*! Use "record" and "recording", that covers all video and audio recording technologies.

[@seanzappulla71]

I have done it with a PAL TV but we can only buy PAL video cameras that sets at 25th and 50th of a second. It does the same as you do with a NTSC TV and Camera. You should and try and try and shoot a video with a DSLR in PAL mode at a NTSC TV and that is interesting. Most Colour CRT TV’s have NTSC play back in the RCA and SVideo plugs here in Australia and Europe. But the tuner is PAL. It was very useful future with a TV when I got DVD’s and Blu-Ray Disc’s that are NTSC like all region discs or discs that are region 1 with the player that wasn’t region locked.

[@tiagotiagot]

Some cameras, but not all, have a setting to match the mains frequency to deal with flickering or banding when shooting indoors due to the flickering of lights.

[@roxics]

An episode about widescreen HD CRT TVs would be awesome. Most videos about them online relate to gamers and gaming today, but I would love to know more about their history as televisions, their short time on the market, why they didn’t really take off in the US that well, etc. I remember seeing a bunch of them in a store in Germany in 1998 whereas back home in the Midwest of the US we still had mostly 4:3 SD TVs. They fascinate me from a sort of alternate history perspective, since many of us skipped over them and went from standard definition 4:3 tubes and rear screen projection TVs to flat screen HD plasmas or LCD TVs. In fact all that early analog HD stuff is fascinating. BTW I love your channels. Thank you so much for making all these videos.

[@insovietrussia]

I love how you just do these videos without multiple takes and just talk (although I do enjoy your blooper reels, too. Happy Holidays!

[@emmettturner9452]

240p from systems like NES was still 60FPS, so you would have seen something no matter what. They accomplished this with a “double strike” that would start the frame over and, thus, draw two consecutive frames on the same scan lines on both passes in 1/30th of a second.

[@Studio23Media]

Every KZbinr needs to watch this. It's so annoying how often I see this.

[@Patrick_AUBRY]

You should also find the acetate like filter use in television studios and stuck to a television"s front CRT when use on set. They where kind of amber. Info is hard to get nowadays on this technique.

[@jon87386]

BEAUTIFUL shots like the one from 2:59 - 3:21! Love it.

[@Jake-bt7ig]

can we get a 30 minute loop of that jazzy music you play. it makes me smile every time.

[@SkyCharger001]

can you add a genlock to your camera? (this will remove the 'traveling line' completely instead of merely halting it, by *forcing* the shutter to only pass during a vertical retrace)

[@dunebasher1971]

Usually it's only professional broadcast-spec cameras that offer a sync input that could be used to genlock.

[@Stoney3K]

@@dunebasher1971 And even then, only when it is being used in an analog TV setup because a digital setup will not need it. But analog TV gear is pretty available for the cheap, including cameras and video desks, because it has all been dumped by broadcasters. Just make sure to rent a U-haul and have a spare room to put it.

[@kanalnamn]

I'd like a video about time base correction/correctors. I have one myself, and they are truly wonderful, wonderful devices when using vcr as source. Couldn't live without it.

[@kelvinc]

“So, that’s interesting” the motto of the channel

[@Tardisntimbits]

The little snippet of Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes made me super happy, lol.

[@ChristopherGaul]

Every old Amiga user is screaming "use a TBC and a sync! " ;')

[@clam2190]

If Technology Connections is so good, why is there no Technology Connections 2? Oh.

[@enemixius]

Talking about mobile phones, both of my Xiaomi phones (Mi5 and Mi8) have an "anti-banding" feature I can set to either 50 Hz, 60 Hz or automatic. So it syncs to whatever is being photographed or filmed to eliminate banding. Not sure what other phones have that feature, at least I can't find such a setting on the Samsung S5.

[@KittyKatKya]

Another major issue with filming CRTs is automatic exposure compensation, which is a setting which can't always be worked around. This is more than likely responsible for the strobing shown at the 00:42 to 00:53 second point or so, given that it's not just the CRT that is being affected, but also the overall exposure of the entire frame.

[@JoelRiggs]

Thanks for making such great content! Always look forward to your vidoes. I'm glad you included a few seconds of the outro music...oddly enough, I always kinda miss it when it doesn't make it into the end of a video! :)

[@jeremytravis360]

Thanks for that important information. I always wonder why some people make a mess when recording CRTs.

[@manleyvideos]

Wanted to add that some CRT televisions and computer monitors run on weird frequencies that won't work with the shutter speed solutions that you suggested. To combat this, most professional cameras allow you to dial in specific frequencies down to the hundredth of a decimal. Every manufacturer has a different name for this, such as ECS for Sony and Synchro Scan for Panasonic cameras. The weirdest use of manually adjusted specific shutters was when I was shooting a segment for a show at the Weather Channel HQ in their main studio. The large touchscreen LCD displays run on a weird frequency so to make them not flicker, they cameras ran on a dialed in shutter, which I had to use for my segment, but I've forgotten the exact number.

[@radiozelaza]

extremely interesting observations. Professional cameras, incl. Lumix GH5, are capable of syncing the shutter to fractions of refresh rates, so getting ideal 29.97 Hz is possible. Which is important also for filming computer monitors. I have a cult hi-res monochrome monitor for Atari ST, SM124, which outputs 640x400 in 71Hz, so it would require ideal 1/71s shutter to get rid of any interference in the recorded image. Of course I still need to get such a camera to finally get around to filming this ancient piece of technology. By God, that monitor was the first Retina display!

[@xedmada8737]

Now you've got me wondering if there are any reasonably prices solutions for genlocking with a non-production camera. Ever look in to it? I really appreciate both the quality of your content and the charming presentation, even in these low effort uploads. Thanks for making KZbin suck less.

[@metricstormtrooper]

no wonder the Lions were hard to see, That was Tigger and he's a Tiger.

[@Cae_the_Kitsune]

You're talking about 240p when you mention sources like the NES and the PlayStation drawing only odd fields or only even fields. It's technically a neat variation of 480i, but the result appears progressive, so people call it 240p. This is still done at 60 Hz, though, meaning you get extra even fields in place of odd fields or vice versa, so you probably shouldn't see the screen disappear in recording, if I understand correctly the reason you said it might. 240p is possible from every home game console up until the GameCube (so, excluding the Xbox) plus the Wii, although it's used much less commonly in Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube, and Wii games. (Natually, PAL regions got 288p at 50 Hz, though games were usually converted very poorly to PAL.)

[@SianaGearz]

The magic of interlaced scan is that there is an odd number of lines in total across two fields, so a vertical retrace oscillator automatically produces an offset of half a line between fields. Progressive game console output simply used an even number of lines, so the fields coincide vertically instead of being offset.

[@TechnologyConnextras]

Huh, I didn't realize that was possible! Analog tech is full of surprises

[@irtbmtind89]

This is part of the reason why a lot of scalers and capture cards make a mess of old consoles. It's an old trick, the 8 bit microcomputers from the 80's used it too, and AFAIK Video CD works the same way which is why they chose 240p and 288p. The Playstation and the SNES had real 480i60 modes, they're mostly used for menus though because it really impacts game performance (though there are a few SNES games that use it for the actual game). On the SNES it only allows the use of a limited colour pallette too.

[@SianaGearz]

@@irtbmtind89 On the Playstation, you must either be able to guarantee that you render a field in 1/60th of a second or you need to double your framebuffer space, leaving very little space for sprites/textures. So the former solution would be chosen and only low-impact graphics would be normally eligible for interlaced mode. A notable exception is Tekken 3 running in 480i with probably dual 384x240 framebuffer. The textures and framebuffers all need to be carved out from a common 1024x512 space.

[@nitrax8629]

@@TechnologyConnextras You may still get items missing from the screen that flash 30 or 25 times a second - for example, older games commonly used this to simulate transparency or as an invulnerability effect.

[@gavindavies793]

Well, when I get my PSOne hooked up to one of my CRTs, I'll have a go at filming it. I've got a 28" Trinition, and a 32" Quintrix, so will be fun comparing them.

[@Megatog615]

When I was a kid, we had a CRT TV that was aging. The top of the image was cut off(leaving black in its place, like a crop), creeping downward as the TV got older. No matter how much we adjusted the picture there was always a large black bar at the top. What could have caused this? I've only ever seen it on that one TV.

[@SeanBZA]

Power supply capacitors aging, and the top section of the picture there was insufficient beam current in the EHT circuit to provide a bright image. The picture started lower down as the scan current reduced as the scan got to the middle, and the lower half the scan coil, while still having an increasing current, this was stored energy in the coil being dissipated before the high energy pulse rerquired to do the retrace to the top again. The CRT is blanked during flyback in both vertical and horizontal, so the blanking interval was increasing as the set aged, and your particular set design used the vertical deflection circuit as the source of the vertical blanking signal. Other designs used a digital counter in the jungle chip to do this, you would have had a smeared image with the slow flyback instead, though generally the later chipsets also sensed beam current, and would shut off the horizontal and vertical drive to the CRT if the current varied beyond acceptable parameters, done by sending a specific set of pulses during the top overscan in sequence to get the dark current, a mid scale current and a full bright current, and storing to allow to compensate for tube aging. If you deliberately made the raster fit the CRT instead of being overscanned you would see a set of 3 red green and blue strips on the top 6 lines, with there being none on the left, then either 3 or 6 lines, one dark and one bright of each colour. This then set the black level clamp of each gun and the peak colour drive of each one instead of having to adjust them during service, so the hue did not change as the CRT aged.

[@JohnAudioTech]

Probably a failure in the vertical deflection circuitry. A failing electrolytic capacitor is a common cause in solid state TVs.

[@JacobHollis96]

I had a similar issue with an old crt tv I owned. I remember playing a game one time and hearing a soft pop then two black bars slowly moved to the center of the image cutting it off to just about 2in from the center from both sides. Im still wondering how that happened.

[@dashcamandy2242]

**regrettably smooth jazz** 3:30 - Chevy Chevette or Pontiac T-1000 3:34 - "NO ITALIAN FOOD. MAKES ME FART." Lol

[@AmEv7fam]

Reminds me of times I've seen desktop CRT monitors running at 75 Hz, being filmed.

[@tin2001]

Almost every news item involving an office worker from about 1995-2005. Usually with that MS Plus nature theme set.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Who in their right mind would run at 75 Hz. That is already flickery 85 Hz minimum, better yet 100 or 120 Hz

[@kn00tcn]

@@HappyBeezerStudios not all models went past 75

[@dannyboy42223]

Good advice, never thought how shutter speed applies to video filming. I usually just have to snap a picture or I just capture video.

[@AloofObserver]

Speaking of camera's, you should do a series on photography! The evolution of cameras and so on. Every topic you do is done so well, so it would be super interesting! Just an idea :P

[@heavymoves]

Thank you for taking PAL into account!

[@joeaddison]

more high end video cameras will support 1/48th, 1/50, 1/100, etc. Or they will use shutter angle such as 180 or 360 and that will vary depending upon the frame rate of the recording, how long the shutter is open for

[@ZinZalo]

Since you mentioned game consoles, could you do a video about 240p on crts? I've heard that it's more of a hack than a real standard but many early consoles still used it and it worked fine on tvs of the time

[@phazonlord0098]

Would be great to have a video on that topic. 240p really was a hack since it allows you to have a progressive image on a crt by using only one field, that's also why the have scanlines on them since the unused field generate that look.

[@FritzCopyCat]

Check out this one by Displaced Gamers: kzbin.info/www/bejne/sKingatsnbWSars

[@nesnioreh]

Sounds like he needs to read up on 240p. He obviously misunderstands how it works in this video.

[@MrBrianms]

My HD Camcorder shoots at 50 frames per second with the option for 25 frames per second. Scotland is a region 2 PAL system area. I had problems capturing a Video8 NTSC tape using a PC so I settled for playing Video8 onto my 48 inch TV while recording using my HD Camcorder on a tripod lined up at night. I captured the audio with my PC using audacity and VideoStudio put the HD footage and clean audio together. Success a Bluray was sent to the original owner of the footage. This is fun. Thanks for your excellent documenties.

[@FerralVideo]

Trivia! You can use a CRT as a "Macrovision" detector, even if you don't have the ability to roll the picture with a V-hold adjustment. Look closely at the top and bottom of the filmed picture at 1:10. See the distortion at the top? (common) See the wraparound at the bottom? (less common) That means Macrovision, as the set's H-hold is unable to lock on normally during the protected part of the signal.

[@The_Future_isnt_so_Bright]

I have old 700w lamps that have shutter speeds written on them. You have to sync the camera with the 60hz lighting otherwise you end up with similar issues to the CRT television.

[@mrnemo204]

I remember when Modern Vintage Gamer did a video on this

[@emanuelantol]

Actually on most dslrs you can choose between PAL and NTSC and that changes shutter speed options too.

[@AstoundingAmelia]

Most cameras will have a "powerline frequently" option which tells the camera what frequency appliances and lights run at, this is useful if you have a microwave you want to film as with this option it will stop the display flickering

[@DylanReeve]

Typically cameras in "PAL" territories do offer 1/25th and 1/50th shutter speeds, yes. I assume this is because the entire system is operating on a 50Hz clock and it's much easier to do shutter timing with that 50Hz base frequency. Many professional video cameras will also have a feature called "clear scan" or something similar which allows for very fine control over shutter speed to allow for better timing with display refresh rates.

[@BedfordLevelExperiment]

My iPhone 6S can be set to 30 or 60 fps in the Photos & Camera settings. When trying to record my Commodore 1702 monitor, I've found the 30 fps settings work terribly, but the 60 fps setting works pretty nicely, with just that fairly subtle "disturbance in the force", only if I have the camera in one of the two possible landscape orientations. If I have it in portrait (which you shouldn't be shooting video in anyway) or the wrong landscape orientation, it tears and rolls badly.

[@DanielLopez-up6os]

Most phones also have the manual shutter option to film CRT´s or projectors, anywhre from 1/16000 to 1/2 s

[@TheDarkFalcon]

"regrettably smooth jazz" 😂 😂 😂 😂

[@rommysoeli]

I live in a country with PAL standard, when recording a scene with a working CRT, I will record it on 240 FPS then use burn effect so the bright area will last a moment till the next few frame fill the new picture again, so there will be no black lines. But the camera have to be steady, erratic camera movement will make a weird ghosting effect.

[@radiozelaza]

With Lumix cameras you can actually set the shutter speed to like 1/10000 or even 1/16000 of a second and then you basically can shoot the electron beam traversing from right to left on video... although rolling shutter artifacts are major

[@BenHelweg]

It's going to get mentioned a zillion times, but on pro cameras there has long been a function called clear scan, which allows altering the shutter by tiny increments. E.g. the monitor or lighting source may not be a perfect 60 or 50 hz lock and you can "tune" it in by altering the clear scan to something like 60.2hz. It was actually a big thing in motion pictures and film cameras back when this first came into use, and productions were able to sync cameras by either manually offset the shutter or synchro lock by means of genlock. You started to see it used a lot in the 80s.

[@truthseeker1995]

1:27 Hey it's Jeremy Brett, hands down _THE_ _BEST_ Sherlock Holmes!

[@V1Tz]

On iPhone you can use Filmic Pro to get 24/25/30/48/50/60/120/240 frame rate options.

[@_BangDroid_]

Tangential related question: Can this sort of thing be done to improve recording clarity of multiplexed LED 7 segment displays, like seen with Big Clive's HOPI meter? Or is the speed to low generally on multiplexed displays that the image would be blurred?

[@AstAMoore]

Lower the shutter speed until the flicker disappears (or reduces significantly). The rest of the movement in the frame might appear too blurry (that’ll be the motion blur), but the multiplexing will be virtually invisible. You’ll need to adjust the exposure accordingly, though.

[@Tamara_SL]

3:51 What a neat little TV. Reminds me of a Pipboy. ^^

[@cedrick2537]

I was actually wondering about exactly that yesterday

[@retropcs88]

Technology Connextras: That´s interesting Decoder: Y E S

[@spoddy8342]

How about a video on Genlock?

[@NourSelim0]

Having a 25 FPS option is necessary for cameras in Europe (and other areas, like Egypt), because power lines are 50 Hz here, so light bulbs flicker at that speed, so if the cameras aren't synced, things will look terrible indoors! Edit: I don't know if LED bulbs have pronounced flickering or not, but that was the case with old tungsten coil bulbs.

[@SianaGearz]

Some LEDs have zero flicker and others flicker a lot stronger than incandescent bulbs ever did. Many electronics variants.

[@nitrax8629]

@@SianaGearz CCFLs are also really bad for this - especially the large bar varients.

[@xmlthegreat]

What camera are you using? Most cameras actually shoot at 29.97fps when they say 30fps. It's visible in Premiere's properties dialog, I have a Canon 1200D and it's 30fps mode says 29.97 in the file metadata.

[@EllipticGeometry]

NTSC runs at 30/1.001 fps. When you see 29.97 or 30, that’s generally a rounded representation of the actual value. It wouldn’t be a huge error anyway. An error of this magnitude would manifest as a disturbance in the force cycling almost twice per minute: not quite as disturbing as the flicker of a major mismatch. The precise value won’t be met anyway because of clock drift. That’s why there’s genlock if you want to be very professional about it.

[@kn00tcn]

that canon's specs say 1920 x 1080 (29.97, 25, 23.976 fps), 1280 x 720 (59.94, 50 fps), 640 x 480 (30, 25 fps), but it's a waste of space to fill in the entire number on a small screen interface

[@LordZordid]

The software in my phone automatically adjusts for flicker and shutter. Amazing!

[@RealLatinGeek]

One thing to note is that NES and some other sprite-based systems did some wonky "draw the sprite on every odd or even line/frame" stuff to increase the total sprite count or fake transparency, and that might not come through as well on a 30fps camera.

[@darrenorange2982]

I have a Sony HDR-HC1E(Pal HDV camera), If you want to do some tests! In Chicago sent you a e-mail about your Bolt a while back. I bought one in part thanks to your videos!

[@MagnusSkiptonLLC]

When I was a kid, and I had a few, uh, let's just say _grown up_ VHS tapes, I would connection only the video cable into the TV, and connect the audio cable from my Super NES or Playstation and turn on a game. That way from another room it sounded like I was playing a video game when I...wasn't.

[@SianaGearz]

Camera firmware usually differs between NTSC and PAL region. Here in Europe 60hz is usually not available, or at least used to not be, which is frustrating.

[@IgnatSolovey]

Sony EX1R user here (you see it on my avatar, and I love this camcorder, as well as all PMW and many PXW series XDCAMs). First, ALL PAL camcorders and all video-capable PAL still cameras do have 1/25 and 1/50. There is one bitchy thing though: when you are in an artificially lit room (and AC current here in Europe - Russia is a part of Europe by all means in this regard, even if two thirds of it are geographically Asia - is 50 Hz) and have a video wall, a projector or a display that is distinctly 60 Hz. So, Sony offered a nice solution in its professional camcorders: several different types of shutter. First, classic shutter (with “Shutter off” setting it's at the framerate speed, 1/25 in case of PAL 25p and 1/50 for PAL 50i... or 50p on more recent camcorders). Then global shutter that emulates classic cine shutter and completely eliminates the rolling shutter issues. And even if global shutter doesn't help, there is a mode called ECS (Extended Clear Scan) - you set frequency specifically to counter scan lines banding. For instance, setting ECS to 32.15 completely eliminated all problems with one particularly nasty projection - while preserving normality of the rest of the scene lit by a mix of halogen, fluorescent and LED lights (yes, conference halls in luxury hotels are weird).

[@Seal0626]

I appreciate your choice of viewing at 1:23.

[@acidhelm]

The part at 3:23 about the slowly-moving black line reminded me of something that I saw in CRTs that I never could figure out. I used to work in a computer lab, and we had a rack of servers, each with its own CRT. When two adjacent CRTs were turned on, the picture on one of them would slowly creep up for a few scan lines, and then back down. The place where the picture was distorted moved similarly to your black line, although from what I remember, it moved faster than your line. Do you know why that would happen?

[@flatfingertuning727]

The computers are probably using different kinds of display cards that run at slightly different speeds, and the yokes are not very well shielded. Consequently, when one beam is moving down the screen, it will pull the adjacent monitor down slightly as well, and when it's moving up it will pull the adjacent monitor up.

[@bakonfreek]

Having shot to a traditional camcorder for the last 16 years, this is a foreign thing to me, but now I want to try recording this and see what happens when I deinterlace with keeping the top field and with keeping the bottom field (though I usually just keep both using QTGMC in AviSynth because KZbin's ludicrously heavy compression with 60p means absolutely nothing to me as I have no standards--production value here is null). Also, do own a PAL camcorder, those shutter options are about as common as our nifty 1/30 and 1/60 here in NTSC land (that's to say virtually nonexistent on Sony camcorders older than about 2011 or 2012).

[@Noxie_13]

I always had a 25fps and 50 one. But anyway you can always go to a close setting like 48 fps and use one of thoses fluorescent light filters when editing

[@Vlican]

good video, most folks don't care about shutter speed when shooting video (car reviewers, looking at you, shots of LED headlights/taillights look like crap)

[@Gartral]

@Technology Connections 2 for phones, you want to fiddle with the antiflicker settings to shoot a CRT!

[@veggiet2009]

Here in the US I've seen cameras with 25 and 50 options, so I'm fairly confident the cameras over there default to these settings.

[@Jaymac720]

The slo mo guys play their videos at 50 fps. Older videos were at 25 fps. All of that was for mathematical convenience with slowing down the footage from whatever ridiculously high filming frame rate they were using to playback speeds

[@alsmoviebarn]

My SLR can be set to 24, 25 or 30 fps, and the shutter speed adjusted in 1/3 of a stop, which gives you: 1/25, 1/30, 1/40, 1/50, 1/60

[@oligneisti]

Jeremy Brett will always be my Sherlock.