Video Cassette Research Articles

Management Insights

Management Insights

Czy kolekcja sztuki musi być artystyczna?

The paper comprises short reflections on the situation of art collections in the modern reality. While the work of art has always been present in collection, the collection itself, as a specific form is a historic phenomenon closely bound with the early modern idea of art as an autonomic symbolic sphere referring to intellectual and spiritual values. This is where the paradigm of such collection comes from – the collection as an assembly of men-made artefacts of a special masterpiece status, attributed to them due to their originality, uniqueness and virtuosity (in a sense of personal making) determined by the artist’s talent. Since the early 20th century, and especially in the years 1950–1980, a significant part of art openly rejected that paradigm through works, that were neither original, unique nor masterly, and finally, by rejecting their material aspect in favour of the creative act or action. In effect the traditional art collection could no longer meet its needs. The works of modern art often as such can not pretend to the special status of the masterpiece. The creative act or artistic situation entirely escape the collector, leaving him/her with nothing but props, accessories and leftovers, or with data carriers with recorded work – such as film tape, video cassette, compact disc or carriers of the memory of the creative act and testimonies about it, as a visual documentation, legal acts, instructions, certificates, reports and affidavits, and in extreme cases – just the viewer’s memory.This should however not be perceived as the end, the death of traditional art collection, which has been proved by the reality (the flourish of museums and private collections). However it is true, that it has lost the monopole, the exclusiveness of the model of art collecting, that now has to coexists with other modes. If in past it was an amateurs’ collection or a gallery exhibiting masterpieces (original, unique and of personal making), today next to them appears what usually did not or has not been granted the artistic character: an archive, a library, a property-room, storage-room or even a scrap-heap, or a film- or record library, database and finally the Internet, as an entirely separate reality, seemingly non-collection- like at all. In the face of increasing phenomenon of the art melting into the aesthetics of commonplaceness, what fills them is more the testimony of spiritual and visual culture then the masterpiece and is being collected for documentary rather then purely aesthetic purpose.

“There’s Suspicion, Nothing More” — Suspicious Readings of Michael Haneke’s Caché (Hidden, 2005)

“There’s Suspicion, Nothing More” — Suspicious Readings of Michael Haneke’s <i>Caché</i> (<i>Hidden</i>, 2005)

Uses and Gratifications of Home Videos among the Nigerian Teenage Audience: Implications for Cultural Development and Sustainability

The fall out of the introduction of the video cassette recorder (VCR) in the mid-1970s has been the proliferation of home video films. And the dominant audience of this unique medium today is found among children and teenagers, which have employed it for various purposes. This work studies the gratifications sought by teenagers in Enugu-North Local Government Area of Enugu State in the home video films they watch. Using the survey research design and a population of 200 this work found that the preponderant of the population use home video for diversion and relaxation, while a sizable number use it to ease tension. The content and duration of watching put in this past time are different ball games. As much as 42 percent of those polled spend 3 -5 hours a day watching films. Their dominant genres are love, comedy, sex and children films. The implication of all this for cultural development and sustainability is that our youths have become captive audiences to immorality and alien culture. The researcher recommends a stricter regulation of this medium as well as training of continuous practitioners of the industry.

A Locality-Aware Peer Searching Scheme to Support VCR Functions in a Mesh-Based P2P VoD System

With the wide penetration of broadband access, it is desirable to provide supporting user interactivity services such as Video-on-Demand (VoD). However, this introduces a challenge on how to efficiently support Video Cassette Recording (VCR) functions for VoD services in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network. In this paper, we propose a locality-aware peer searching algorithm, called LAPS. In LAPS, peers are distributed in various areas by its physical location. For each peer, it could implement relocation of forward seek based on neighbors’ and trackers’ information. To decrease the backbone load, LAPS dedicated to download media content from local area. We explore several key issues in LAPS including overlay organization, three various situations of forward seek with neighbor circle. We evaluate its performance through simulations and compare it with existed system. The results show that LAPS is superior to a previous scheme in terms of latency and backbone load.

The Performative in Ilyās Khūrī’s Bāb al-Shams

Abstract This article focuses on Ilyās Khūrī’s engagement of performative aspects within his 1998 novel Bāb al-Shams (The Gate of the Sun).The novel utilizes different forms of the performative—the most transparent being oral narrative, but also video representations, television appearances, Jean Genet’s essay-turned-play Quarte heures à Chatila, and street performances—to show the collapse of nationalist myths in Beirut’s Palestinian refugee camps and to comment on the near impossibility of collective historical memory under the difficult conditions prevailing in the Palestinian diaspora. The failure of the epic genre in the context of the Shatila camp is the failure of the nationalist project and of historical memory; with the camp’s inhabitants severed from both their land and their history, nationalist myths based on ideals of heroism cannot hold, the collective memory is acutely compromised and Palestine becomes little more than a simulacrum. The logical result of the narrator’s failed epic cycle is a dislocation on the part of the camp’s inhabitants from authentic forms of representation. The Palestinian experience is performed through the tools of modern media—video cassettes, television programs and Western theatre—by which the residents of Shatila lose both whatever remaining connections to Palestine they may have held as well as their ability to build a collective memory for their own history as an exiled community. The way in which the 1982 Shatila massacre is remembered and performed takes on particular importance. The only hope Khūrī offers is through a street performance which allows Shatila’s residents the chance for reconnection to the tradition and an alternative to the simulacra by which they find themselves surrounded.

TrueVod: Streaming or Progressive Downloading?

In this paper we compare the necessary server load of a generic Video-on-Demand service in peak hours for two delivery methods, streaming and elastic progressive downloading. We use a simple user model for the VCR (Video Cassette Recording) actions behavior that is described with two parameters. As a function of these parameters we compute the ratio of the necessary server loads. Based on analytical results we identify those settings in which streaming works better. This gives the opportunity for the operator to choose between the delivery methods.

University Teachers’ Job Satisfaction in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan

The major purpose of this study was to explore the level of job satisfaction of university teachers in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. The objectives of the study were: to assess the general satisfaction level of university teachers, to determine university teachers’ satisfaction level for each of the twenty dimensions of the job, and to give suggestions to improve university teachers’ job satisfaction level. All the university teachers working in North West Frontier Province of Pakistan constituted the population of this study. A sample of 108 university teachers was drawn from this population. A questionnaire following the theoretical framework of Herzberg’s two factor theory was developed. The findings show that university teachers were generally satisfied with their jobs. However teachers were neutral with dimensions: working conditions, organizational policies and practices, recognition, supervision technical and promotion opportunities. The teachers were satisfied with work variety, creativity, moral values, compensation, work itself, colleagues’ cooperation, responsibility, ability utilization, authority, activity, social status, job security, achievement and students’ interaction. Provision of sufficient fund to universities for the availability of modern tools, scholarly publications, properly equipped libraries and laboratories is recommended. It is also needed to provide instructional technology i.e., video cassettes, computer technology, project and transparencies and other modern gadgets in the classrooms. Teachers are not consulted in academic matter which causes distrust and frustration. Their participation in decision making, revision of curricula, and other academic matters must be ensured. A formal strategy needs to be put in place to address teacher’s needs while stressing and encouraging accountability and initiatives. A distinction is needed to be made between the efficient workers and shirk workers. The system of rewards should be introduced to encourage the teachers with better performance. Refresher courses, seminars and training workshops must be arranged for university teachers to keep them abreast with the contemporary teaching techniques and research skills. They should be properly trained in the development and proper use of A.V aids.

2010 gadget census

Every ten years the Government conducts a census, we thought it might be interesting to see what gadgets UK consumers have in their households. Society has become more gadget-obsessed over the last ten years and if you want proof of this, check the stats. Ten years ago, the Web was exploding, clamshell mobile phones were getting smaller, and you could navigate your virtual aircraft airily over the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on Microsoft Simulator for Windows. Bill Gates was considered an evil multi-billionaire by some and Steve Jobs wasn't considered either by anyone. We were gadget-obsessed even back then. The typical household was accumulating more and more TVs. The increase in satellite and cable viewing had meant that teenagers would be less inclined to watch with the family, and more inclined to hole themselves up in their rooms with their own portable sets. The PC would be a large hulk of a machine with a noisy hard drive, a large CRT display and if it was the only one in the house (as it usually would be), it would reside in the living room and its primary function would be email and word processing. Browsing would be a chore thanks to dial-up Internet connections, which tied up the telephone line. The only radios that were available were analogue technology that had changed little in decades. Homes had several radios either as standalone devices or incorporated into body-building ghetto blasters, alarm clock radios and hi-fi units. If the phone line was tied up, you may have been the lucky adult in your household who had a mobile device. Back then people used them to talk to one another. Although beginning to become mainstream thanks to prepay talk plans mobiles were relatively expensive and WAP Internet hardly made these phones smart. In fact, other than computing or CDs, digital was still a rarity with cameras, video cassette recorders and audio cassettes binding us to an analogue century, with its magnetic tape and film. Excluding white goods, the typical household would have about 19 consumer electronic devices (excluding white goods) in the home. Today, that number has increased to almost 30.

Print Philip K. Dick on film in print

Paul M. Sammon, Future Noir: The Making of 'Blade Runner'. Revised edition. London: Gollancz, 2007. xix+588pp. £16.99 (hbk).Jason P. Vest, Future Imperfect: Philip K. Dick at the Movies. London: Praeger, 2007. xviii+223pp. £29.95 (hbk).Brian J. Robb, Counterfeit Worlds: Philip K. Dick on Film. London: Titan, 2006. 317pp. £16.99 (pbk).As John Anderton stands 'in front of a cracked mirror' (Dick Minority 85), he hears the radio blaring from another room. It's an announcement that 'the prophylactic pre-detection of criminals through the ingenious use of mutant precogs' (84) - otherwise known as the 'Precrime system' - has identified the fugitive Anderton as a (probable) murderer. The certainty of the mutants' prediction is that a computer systematically compares and correlates their visions. Since 'unanimity of all three precogs is a hoped-for but seldom-achieved phenomena', the computer collates the opinion of the majority pair and produces 'a minority report of some slight variation, usually with reference to time and place, of the third mutant' (85).In Anderton's case, the minority report is a 'misphased' (89) or meta-vision, a reflection, as through a cracked mirror, of the majority report; this minority report changes the future, since it takes into account the fact that Anderton is notified by the original report of the pending murder: 'a new time-path had been created' rendering the original majority report 'obsolete' (88). But so too does the minority report create another (101), and Anderton eventually manifests his innocence by himself issuing another report - choosing to kill the story's villain, someone who sought to enslave the entire planet Earth. As a punishment (or reward, depending on one's view), Anderton is exiled to the off-world colonies, where his ignominy (or his heroism) will be neither vilified nor praised - just utterly forgotten.Taken from the story 'The Minority Report' (1956), here is an indirect allegory of the adaptation of Philip K. Dick's fiction by industrial cinema. An original text, all the more significant because it captures a minority view, a heterogeneous vision of the future, is rendered obsolete, then refracted as through a cracked mirror, which gives rise to a never-ending spiral of dissenting reviews and interpretations, where that series of discursive disputes sends the prophetic source into exile (or benign neglect, depending on one's view). Dick's original text becomes, ironically, the minority report that disputes the Hollywood adaptation, but it is exiled, by neglect, into heroic ignominy or ignominious heroism. Complications, convolutions and conditional parentheticals abound. Very phildickian, that.1Ever since the appearance of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (US/Singapore 1982), whose genetic ancestor is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Hollywood has shown considerable interest in mining Dick's work for estranging and estranged ideas, which it then immediately subordinates to the system of homogenisation that still marks the Hollywood ideal.2 This tendency is revealed, perfectly I think, in the DVD extra 'Minority Report from Story to Screen'. That story isn't Dick's 'The Minority Report' but instead the story of how Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg came to work together, their mutual enthusiasm based in mutual respect: two Hollywood giants, so to speak, cranking 888, the Penfield Mood Organ's number for 'the desire to watch TV, no matter what's on' (Dick Androids 4).There are now nine films from Dick's work - Blade Runner, Total Recall (Verhoeven US 1990), Confessions d'un Barjo (Boivin France 1992), Screamers (Duguay Canada/US/Japan 1996), Impostor (Fleder US 2002), Minority Report (Spielberg US 2002), Paycheck (Woo US/Canada 2003), A Scanner Darkly (Linklater US 2006) and Next (Tamahori US 2007). Scott's film alone has had almost as many manifestations - a US theatrical release, an international release, a circulating 'working cut', a pan-and-scan version for broadcast TV and video cassette, a Criterion analogue laser disc (wide-screen, but with the bottom ten per cent of the image cropped), a so-called 'Director's cut', an uncirculated forty-seven-minute remix by Charles de Lauzirika and a final cut, let's sincerely hope, called The Final Cut (2007), which ran in limited release before being embalmed with others for the 2007 DVD packages. …

Time-Lapse Videomicrographic Observations of Blastocyst Hatching in Cattle

Morphological changes of cultured bovine blastocysts during hatching were observed using time-lapse videomicrography in order to investigate the patterns of the hatching process that occurred in the blastocysts and to determine whether the hatching patterns differed between blastocysts developed from fresh and cryopreserved embryos. Compacted morulae (CMs) were collected from superovulation-treated Japanese Black and Holstein dairy cattle and cultured in a medium in a CO(2) culture chamber equipped with an inverted microscope at 38.5 C. Images of resultant blastocysts during the period from blastocoel formation to completion of hatching were taken at 4-sec intervals by a CCD color camera connected to an inverted microscope and recorded by a time-lapse video cassette recorder. In blastocysts developed from fresh CMs, hatching was found to begin with protrusion of trophectoderm cells from zonae pellucidae at the expanded stage. Protrusion of the cells occurred in any site of the trophectoderm. After protrusion, a large or small slit was formed in the zona pellucida in all blastocysts as a result of blastocyst expansion or enlargement of the protrusion. Then, blastocysts completely escaped from the zona pellucida through the slit in the state of expansion. From these findings, the hatching patterns of cattle blastocysts could be classified into 5 types. In blastocysts developed from frozen-thawed CMs, the hatching pattern and length of time needed for hatching are similar to those in blastocysts developed from fresh CMs. In addition, the pregnancy rate of recipients following transfer of frozen-thawed CMs (52.4%) did not differ from that of recipients following transfer with fresh CMs (58.3%). These results suggested that the quality of frozen-thawed cattle embryos is comparable to that of fresh embryos and that there could be a relationship between the hatching pattern of blastocysts and the viability of embryos after transfer.

Standards and standard-compliance

Standards and standard-compliance

Unusual Suicide Note Written on the Body

Suicide notes are commonly written on some materials, such as notebooks, papers, and mirrors. Additionally, suicide plans have been communicated in face-to-face conversations, by speaking on the telephone, recording on CDs or video cassettes, and sending messages through text messaging. In this article, 2 suicide death cases are presented in which suicide notes were written on the bodies of the victims. The first case, a 32-year-old man, was a university graduate and had been unemployed for years; he committed suicide in his house by hanging. On the external examination, it was seen that there were some words on the body written with a pen; specifically "DONKEY" was written on the forehead; coursing up-and-down along the chest, "HODJA" was on the right, "DO NOT" was on the sternal region, and "WASH" was on the left; and undecipherable handwritings were on both zygomatic regions. The second case, a 39-year-old woman, was a housewife who was being physically abused by her husband and committed suicide by ingesting an insecticide. It was observed that on the left leg, a note was written with a pen saying that she could not stand being beaten by her husband on account of the inheritance dispute between him and her elder brother; there was purple ecchymoses in the periphery of the right eye and in the right gluteal area. Since we have not found any reports of suicide notes written on the body in the literature, we present and discuss our cases herein.

멀티캐스트 기반의 VOD 시스템에서 MPEG의 특성을 고려한 VCR 기능의 설계

VOD(Video On Demand) 시스템은 실시간으로 사용자의 요구를 받아들여 동영상 서비스를 제공하는 시스템으로서 크게 서비스를 제공하는 서버와 사용자의 요구를 처리하는 클라이언트로 구성된다. 하나의 서버에서 다수의 사용자에게 1:1로 서비스를 제공하기에는 네트워크 대역폭의 제약이 크기 때문에 이를 해결하기 위한 다양한 연구들이 진행되어왔다. 그 동안 제안된 다양한 멀티캐스트 기반의 VOD시스템들 중에서 Batching방식의 VOD시스템이 단순하면서 네트워크 부하가 적은 것으로 알려져 있다. 하지만 Batching방식에 의한 VOD시스템에서는 VCR(Video Cassette Recorder)기능을 제공하기 어렵기 때문에 VOD시스템의 On-Demand 특성을 제대로 제공하지 못하는 단점이 있다. 본 논문에서는 대표적인 동영상 압축표준인 MPEG의 특성을 이용하여 VCR기능을 제공하기 위해 필요한 대역폭을 최소화하는 기법을 제안한다. 제안하는 기법에서는 MPEG로 압축된 동영상에서 독립적 재생이 가능한 I픽쳐만 추출하여 빠른 재생을 위한 데이터를 별도로 구성한다. 이렇게 구성된 빠른 재생을 위한 데이터와 일반적인 재생을 위한 데이터 모두 Batching방식으로 멀티캐스팅으로 전송한다. 성능분석을 통하여 제안된 기법을 사용할 경우 클라이언트의 버퍼요구량과 네트워크 사용량을 줄이고 이와 더불어 CPU사용량도 줄어드는 것을 확인하였다. VOD(Video On Demand) that provides streaming service according to the user's requirement in real time, consists of the video streaming server and the client system. Since it is very hard to apply the traditional server-client model that a server communicates with many clients through 1:1 connection to VOD system because it requires very high network bandwidth, many researches have been done to address this problem. Batching technique is one of VOD system based on Multicast that requires very small network bandwidth. However, the batching based VOD system has a limitation that it is very hard to provide VCR(Video Cassette Recorder) ability. In this paper, we propose a technique that reduces the required network bandwidth to provide VCR function by using the characteristic of MPEG, one of international video compression standard. In the proposed technique, a new video stream for VCR function is constructed with I pictures that is able to be decoded independently. The new video stream for VCR function is transmitted with the video stream for normal play together in Batching manner. The performance evaluation result shows that the proposed technique not only reduces the required network bandwidth and memory usage but also decreases the CPU usages.

Strategies to Commercialise Breakthrough Technologies

In this paper we focus on the different strategies used by companies during the process of development and diffusion of breakthrough technologies. We distinguish three phases in this process and show that, depending on the length of these phases, pioneers might be confronted with completely different scenarios just after the invention of a breakthrough technology. Different strategies to commercialise breakthrough technologies are also distinguished: a mass market strategy, a niche market strategy and a wait-and-see strategy. We show that the result of these strategies can diverge considerably depending on the scenarios. These strategies are studied in detail for the cases of the photocopier, video cassette recorder, digital camera and microwave oven. Several conclusions are derived from the cases. The main actors involved in the development and diffusion of breakthrough technologies change considerably during the different phases. The market adaptation phase is the most turbulent among all phases: many actors enter and leave the market over a relatively short period of time while making substantial losses. Customer segments and user applications also change considerably during the phases. Usually, niche markets emerge first, i.e. specific customer segments using the technology in specific applications, which diverge considerably from the mass market applications that emerge later. In our cases, pioneers of breakthrough technologies never create a mass market. The pioneers that do survive stick to their niche market strategy. After the pioneer, multiple entrants adopt a similar strategy but many of them have to leave the market later. Only a small number of them survives, either by consistently adopting a niche market strategy or by creating a mass market. The strategy of the entrants that manage to create a mass market is discussed in more detail. The management implications of these findings are large. Companies should be well aware of which phase they are in; their strategies need to be adapted to the phase of the process, strategies that appear to be successful in the market adaptation phase, for example, can be detrimental in a later phase. The results of the case studies also indicate that most successful actors consistently pursue one strategy.

After the Interview: The Interpretive Challenges of Oral History Video Indexing

Digital audio and video are opening up new ways of working directly and easily with audio and video interviews. New digital tools have recently appeared that offer direct access to the audio and video “content” of oral history collections. There are many broader implications of these changes to the theory and practice of oral history. First, and foremost, digital oral history promises a move away from transcription. Recorded interviews were quickly transcribed and the original audio and video source was either set aside or (once) discarded altogether. With the loss of the orality of the source at such an early stage, the power of oral history to put a face and a name to history was muted. Analogue audio and video cassettes were ponderous to use and, as a result, underutilized. This paper documents the creation of a fully-indexed digital video database of oral history interviews relating to the displacement of paper workers in Sturgeon Falls, Ontario. It describes the challenges involved with the development of new interpretative technologies from a humanities standpoint and emphasizes the need to adapt nascent indexing software to oral historical practice, rather than the reverse. Such video-indexing may be an alternative to the time-consuming practice of transcription and, more importantly, it allows for the examination of data – body language, facial expression, and intonation – which traditional transcripts tend to ignore. Likewise, indexing makes specific portions of interviews – the discussion of a labour dispute from various perspectives, for example – more easily accessible.

Proxy Caching for Video-on-Demand Using Flexible Starting Point Selection

In this paper, we propose a novel proxy caching scheme for video-on-demand (VoD) services. Our approach is based on the observation that streaming video users searching for some specific content or scene pay most attention to the initial delay, while a small shift of the starting point is acceptable. We present results from subjective VoD tests that relate waiting time and starting point deviation to user satisfaction. Based on this relationship as well as the dynamically changing popularity of video segments, we propose an efficient segment-based caching algorithm, which maximizes the user satisfaction by trading off between the initial delay and the deviation of starting point. Our caching scheme supports interactive video cassette recorder (VCR) functionalities and enables cache replacement with a much finer granularity compared to previously proposed segment-based approaches. Our experimental results show a significantly improved user satisfaction for our scheme compared to conventional caching schemes.

A 252-Mb/s Recording Experiment Using Flexible Optical Disks for Broadcast Use

Flexible optical disks (FOD) have a feasibility of their high data-transfer rate and large capacity for archival storage. We have been developing the FOD in order to replace as the media with a current professional video cassette recorder (VCR) of HD-D5 format which have a data-transfer rate of more than 250 Mb/s. Here, we developed the FOD with the high recording sensitivity for high-speed recording, and succeeded to record the 252 Mb/s data with the high-speed tracking control method and optimized write strategy. We also employed the partial response maximum likelihood (PRML) read channel for playback data. We could get and achieve the low byte-error rate (BER) below 2 times 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-4</sup> at the recording speed of 252 Mb/s, enough to record the video signals of HD-D5 VTR for professional broadcast use.

SonicVoD: A VCR-supported P2P-VoD system with network coding

Video-on-demand (VoD) service on the Internet has been surprisingly popular during these years. And it is being greatly enhanced by the emergence and maturation of both the peer-to-peer (P2P) schema and network coding (NC) technology. P2P-based solution can make VoD systems obtain high scalability. The introduction of network coding improves the content distributing efficiency of the system. Meanwhile, digital video cassette recording (VCR) functionality provides users more freedom to choose playback mode while viewing video-clips. Designed a video segmentation-aided VCR support for P2P VoD system without network coding; and in ,we designed a P2P VoD system with scene-segmentation and network coding, which is called SonicVoD. In this paper, we will place our detailed design for SonicVoD and introduce some extensions for it.

Design for Communication: Post-Occupancy Evaluation of Classroom Spaces

The purpose of this study was to examine faculty and student satisfaction with classrooms in a university teaching facility in the Midwest, U.S.A. The two-story, 95,000 square foot (79,429.5 square meter) building cost 13.5 million dollars to build and was dedicated for use by the entire campus with no college or department given permanent classroom space. The facility's classrooms were designed to incorporate state-of-the-art communications technology including television monitors, DVD and video cassette recorders, overhead projectors and slide projectors, video presenters, and hook-ups for computers and CD, tape and other audio equipment. A post-occupancy evaluation (POE) survey of 125 faculty and 5,048 students using the facility indicated that the majority of faculty and students were satisfied with the classrooms (overall satisfaction: faculty, 65.3%F students 73.0%). However, problems were cited including: difficulty in using equipment, uncomfortable room temperatures and seating, and a sterile environment (all but three classrooms are windowless).