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| Porn Users Forum » Monitor Settings! |
| 1-13 of 13 Posts | Page 1 |
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| 11-01-08 09:15am - 5895 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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messmer (0)
Disabled User  Posts: 2,582 Registered: Sep 12, '07 Location: Canada |
Monitor Settings! I appear to have too many differences of opinion with others of our members when it comes to the quality of videos on certain sites. They will praise them in their reviews while to me they look blurry and far from adequate. No it's not my eyes, HD still looks spectacular, no matter what site I download it from and anything with a bitrate of 2000 and higher usually also looks pretty good as well. So here's my question to a tekkie, if we have one in our midst: would the pixel setting in my monitor (1680x1050) affect older material so it doesn't look quite as good to me as it would to others with a lower setting? This is important because the lower rating I give a site is often based on what I perceive to be the poor video quality. | |
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| 11-01-08 12:09pm - 5895 days | #2 | |
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Cybertoad (0)
Disabled User  Posts: 2,158 Registered: Jan 01, '08 Location: Wash |
Heres a hint that I use personally, I have a 22in wide screen HD LCD. Top resolution is 1680x1050 1680x 1050 is not possible by most videos my monitors max at 75hz's But this is not a practical size for videos heres why! First on my monitor 1280 x 1024 on this makes so so videos nice. Will vary depending what size you have. I will get a better resolution if I lower this still but makes for 1 inch size icons so I do not do that. 1162x864 is about as big /small as I can go and still have quality, but the icons are bigger still. But the video is still better. Note that the use of the word resolution here is misleading. The term "display resolution" is usually used to mean pixel dimensions (e.g., 1280×1024), which does not tell you anything about the resolution of the display on which the image is actually formed (which would typically be given in pixels per inch (digital) or number of lines measured horizontally, per picture height (analog)). The display resolution of a digital television or computer display typically refers to the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. So if you lower the screen size the required resolution or pixels needed drops making a smoother picture. The trade off is that why this makes great video you lose screen size for documents, a browser etc as the screen content will be larger. This make sense hope so if not let me know. Cybertoad. Since 2007 | |
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| 11-01-08 02:21pm - 5895 days | #3 | |
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messmer (0)
Disabled User Posts: 2,582 Registered: Sep 12, '07 Location: Canada |
Hey Cybertoad, thanks! I, too, have a 22" monitor (actually officially it's a 21.5" Samsung widescreen. So, a 1280x1024 pixels setting would actually make a video look better? At least that's how I read it. I tried various settings yesterday but always ended up with the old 4:3 format for my desktop. :-) I wouldn't mind losing some desktop space if 1280x1024 is helpful and doesn't cause deterioration to pictures and videos. Let me know if I read you right! Please! P.S. Just came back from resetting to 1280x1084 and still came up with the old 4:3 format rather than widescreen. What's the correct number for widescreen. My present graphics card doesn't give me a preview. Thanks again. Edited on Nov 01, 2008, 02:25pm | |
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| 11-01-08 10:44pm - 5895 days | #4 | |
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Wittyguy (0)
Active User  Posts: 1,138 Registered: Feb 04, '08 Location: Left Coast, USA |
Me thinks that Toadsith, the forum master, would probably have the answer on this one. | |
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| 11-02-08 07:43am - 5894 days | #5 | |
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messmer (0)
Disabled User Posts: 2,582 Registered: Sep 12, '07 Location: Canada |
Thanks, so, Toadsith where are you? :-) | |
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| 11-02-08 10:55am - 5894 days | #6 | |
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Cybertoad (0)
Disabled User Posts: 2,158 Registered: Jan 01, '08 Location: Wash |
Yea , mine has a preview on it le me see what I can get it Toadsith doesnt figure for ya. Busy day today. Since 2007 | |
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| 11-02-08 11:42am - 5894 days | #7 | |
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messmer (0)
Disabled User Posts: 2,582 Registered: Sep 12, '07 Location: Canada |
Thanks, cybertoad, much appreciated! | |
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| 11-03-08 08:27am - 5893 days | #8 | |
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Cybertoad (0)
Disabled User Posts: 2,158 Registered: Jan 01, '08 Location: Wash |
I am not sure what kind of monitor you have or video card or player all these can affect the output so here is some baisics. Ok heres a small lesson we all remember the old monitors well, The character size on a 15-inch monitor at 800- by 600-pixel resolution is almost identical to that on a 21-inch monitor at 1280 by 1024 pixels. Another factor you should consider when choosing your resolution size is the screen refresh rate. Depending on your video card capabilities and your monitor size and capabilities, you can adjust how often the screen refreshes (measured in hertz) (see Display Properties in Windows Control Panel). The faster you can adjust this, the easier it will be on your eyes. I prefer mine at 70 hertz. But when you increase the resolution, the available refresh rates that your monitor can do will decrease. (i.e. moving resolution up from 1024x768 to 1280x1024 may reduce the available refresh rates from 100 Hz to 90 Hz - just an example, don't know exactly what the numbers would be) So the point being why the resolution may increase your refresh may decrease this is why , even though my monitor will show a wider bigger screen, the picture is clear and smooth at a lower resolution, I run a 512mb vdeo card and my monitor maxes at 70. So I lower the refresh to 65 and decrease the monitor resolution . This doesnt make it as big as it an be but makes it dam clear and quality is better. You can take avantage of a big screen without stretching the videos to the max. It will fill the screen not stretch the resolution if you make the scren resolution smaller and max the refesh rate. You may need to play around with it some but this is what works for me I use KMplayer and WMP TRue: bigger is better, but only if your monitor, and video card allow for both to be maxed if not lower it a slight amount you may be surprised it will look better. My HD alows what ever I want so I picked a nice medium fo doing work and watching video surfin etc. Hope this helps. Cybertoad Since 2007 | |
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| 11-03-08 12:59pm - 5893 days | #9 | |
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messmer (0)
Disabled User Posts: 2,582 Registered: Sep 12, '07 Location: Canada |
Thanks, Cybertoad, for going to this length to help me. My basic problem was that I wanted to decrease the pixels but keep the wide screen, just to see if some of the videos that had been praised by others and were found wanting by me looked better with a lower setting. No matter what resolution I tried I ended up with a 4:3 ratio desk top rather than a wide screen one. With my previous operating system/graphics card I could always preview the dimensions in connection with any given setting but with this graphics card I can't. Is wide screen even possible if I reduce the default setting (1680x1060)? | |
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| 11-03-08 03:27pm - 5893 days | #10 | |
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Toadsith (0)
Active User  Posts: 936 Registered: Dec 07, '07 Location: USA |
Firstly, sorry for my absence - I was on vacation in Philadelphia :-D Ok, this question is actually a bit more complicated than appears at the surface. Not only is our perceived experience of the video a product of its encoding and native dimensions, it is also a product of the display technology we use to view the video. First, let's look at the file technology. The Video File Three main variables control the visual quality of a video file. First are the dimensions - which dictate how many pixels the file is instructing. Thankfully modern video playing programs can interpret the information provided by a video file to be displayed on either more or less pixels. More pixels will at best make the image look blurry under close inspection. Fewer pixels can improve the perceived video quality - though this is largely dependent on the display technology used. Now seemingly small increases in dimensions can vastly increase the total number of pixels instructed (like why an 16 inch pizza is much more filing than a 14 inch pizza). So despite 480 pixels being 80% of 600 pixels, 640x480 contains a mere 68% of the pixels of 800x600. The total number of pixels instructed by a video increases on curve in relation to the dimensions of the video. The second variable is the bit rate which dictates how much data is used to instruct the pixels allocated for the video. The more the bit rate, the more precise those instructions can be. Ideally, to maintain a perfect image, every single pixel would be instructed as to what color it should display. This is part of the reason Bitmap image files can have such ridiculously large file sizes. There are multitudes of compression systems out there each with their own particular technique but they usually have one thing in common: They throw away information. For example, a frame from one of the new Batman films may have 100 thousand different shades colors between true black and a dark grey. If the program limits that to only 100 shades, it has just succeeded in making the instructions for the shadows a 1000 times smaller. Encoding programs also don't describe a single pixel, they describe groups of pixels - this can be perceived on videos with low bit rates in the form of blocking. Waterfalls, for example, are perceived by cameras as a series of small water drops moving very quickly - and it takes a lot of data to describe each droplet. If a video doesn't have a large enough bit rate, the encoding software will end up averaging the color of a group of droplets and deciding if they look more like the black rock behind the waterfall or the white droplets in front of it - ending up with either a grayish black square or a grayish white square. Moving water always proves to be one of the most difficult scenes in videos to compress. Not only is the image produced by the reflections and refractions of agitated water incredibly complex, it changes very rapidly due to the interactions of so many waves. Why this is difficult for encoding programs stems from another particular of how most encoding programs work. A Key Frame is used every time the video has significantly changed. For example: The video may be capturing Clint Eastwood's eyes. At the start of that shot, the encoding program captures a key frame, which is essentially a single image, rendered in the way normal still photos are rendered. Then, each consecutive frame is rendered with instructions explaining how that frame is different from the key from. Much of Clint's face is remaining still, so the encoding program will only describe the movements of his eyes squinting. A new key frame will be captured when the next shot is shown of Eli Wallach's eyes and the program then renders the following frames from the differences as compared to that key frame, and so on. Lastly is the oft forgotten frame rate. This variable honestly doesn't vary that much and is usually found in only two forms: 30 frames per second (as used by normal video or television) and 24 frames per second (as is common to film). Rather obviously the lesser the frames per second, the lesser the data used to describe the video. The Display Device This accounts for much of the dispute between users as to the quality of the video. This was less of an issue back in the days of CRT displays (Cathode Ray Tube) as the pixels in a CRT display are quite close together and images produced by the displays are less prone to jagged edges on curved and diagonal shapes. CRTs also don't have issues with scaling - as in decreasing or increasing the input signal data to fit the screen. Scaling is a huge problem in modern displays, most noticeably in LCD and DLP technology. The display devices are capable of running the input signal through hardware possessing a generic scaling algorithm, but the results are simply woeful in regards to what modern computers can do with software image scaling. If your current graphics card cannot produce the native resolution of an LCD display you are using, you'll see blurring of what should be crisp edges and jittering in what should be smooth motion as the monitor tries to scale the image. Hardware scaling has improved vastly since the dawn of full-color LCD displays, but it is still dismal as compared to what good software can do. Projector Central has a nice, though old, article on the debate of Native vs. Maximum Resolution - granted it is focused on how this applies to projectors, but the technology is pretty much the same. That said let us presume that each user is running their monitor at its native resolution. With hardware scaling out of the way, you return to software scaling and the precision of the monitor used. A small monitor running at 1024 x 768 native resolution displaying a 640x480 video (often described as DVD quality) means that 61% of the pixels being displayed are interpolated by the video software from the original video. A larger monitor running at 1600 x 1200 native resolution displaying the same video needs 84% of the pixels to be interpolated by the video software. Even though the upscaling technology is better, it still trying to fill screen with non-existent data - be it using fractals or what, the vast majority of the pixels in that example are generated using fancy guess-work. So the larger the display is compared to the video's native resolution, the blurrier the displayed video will be. Bottomline, Summation, Conclusion, Et Cetera In a nut shell, reviewers with older display technology will usually perceive smaller resolution videos better than reviewers with newer display technology. The reviewer with the small display will automatically perceive a video that is the same size as the native resolution as his display as being as crisp as possible - because, for that display, it is as crisp as possible. Any videos above that resolution will be down converted to that resolution in order to fit on the screen. Addendum: Refresh Rate There was some talk of Refresh Rate. That term is monitor speak for Frame Rate. 75 Hz is 75 frames per second; one hertz of course being equal to one cycle per second. The refresh rate issue went out the window ever since CRTs stopped being used. CRTs actually go blank and then redraw the image between every cycle; the lower the monitor frequency, the more one would perceive a flicker. Just in the same way that moving your hand in front of a normal incandescent bulb reveals the 60 Hz flicker. Personally I never run a CRT at anything less than 85 Hz, less and I usually get a headache from the flicker. LCD monitors do not work the same way, the LCD pixel is actually composed of 3 sub-pixels, one for red, green and blue. When a sub-pixel is on, that frequency of light is allowed through it - when it is off it is designed to be opaque. While the light of CRTs is generated by electrons hitting the phosphor layer of the screen causing it to phosphoresce, LCDs instead use a white florescent back light and that which is allowed through by the sub-pixels is what we get see. This brings up the another big pro vs. con situation between CRTs and LCDs. LCDs do not flicker because they do not need to redraw the image. They can just leave a sub-pixel open continuously if that pixel needs to stay red for example, while CRTs need to keep shooting electrons at that pixel to keep it phosphorescing. On the flip side, when a CRT doesn't want to show any color, it doesn't send any electrons; while an LCD must block the light from the backlight - which always manages to get through to some degree, thus LCDs never have a true black at best they achieve a dark grey. Due to the lack of need for redraw, most LCD monitors are not capable of updating at more than 60 Hz - which is still twice the frame rate of most video and plenty fast for exceptionally smooth animation, especially due to the flicker-free display. You can tell your graphics card to send the signal at higher than 60 Hz, but the monitor will simply down convert that to 60 Hz. Of course some monitors are capable of higher refresh rates and lower refresh rates won't bother LCD monitors either. "I'm not a number, I'm a free man!" Second Grand Order Poobah in the Loyal Order of the Water Buffalo Edited on Nov 03, 2008, 03:41pm (Toadsith: Typos and Grammar.) | |
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| 11-03-08 03:29pm - 5893 days | #11 | |
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Toadsith (0)
Active User Posts: 936 Registered: Dec 07, '07 Location: USA |
lol, Forum Master? Aw, thanky - what a wonderful title :-D "I'm not a number, I'm a free man!" Second Grand Order Poobah in the Loyal Order of the Water Buffalo | |
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| 11-03-08 07:34pm - 5893 days | #12 | |
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messmer (0)
Disabled User Posts: 2,582 Registered: Sep 12, '07 Location: Canada |
Welcome back and I am truly awed, Toadsith! Incredible knowledge concerning computering! I am the person for whom Windows was invented so, in sincere humility, I bow before the master! :-) And you answered my question with your statement above. Thanks! No wonder other reviewers and I seem to be on such different wave lengths at times. | |
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| 11-04-08 08:30am - 5892 days | #13 | |
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Toadsith (0)
Active User Posts: 936 Registered: Dec 07, '07 Location: USA |
I'm glad to be back - I just finally got my internet back at home too! (Not only was I on vacation, my cable company accidentally unplugged my apartment's connection.) I'm glad to hear the article made sense and answered the questions at hand. It is an interesting topic in as there is much more diversity in the display systems used that one really expects. I'm always shocked to see how many people use screen resolutions that I've abandoned near on ten years ago. Not that I'm running an epically high resolution right now, just a measly 1280 x 1024 - but I still run across casual computer users that run 800 x 600 - egads! Thanks for the compliments as well - I'm really just an avid amateur but I'm honored by the title :-D "I'm not a number, I'm a free man!" Second Grand Order Poobah in the Loyal Order of the Water Buffalo | |
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