As with the recent Classic Countdown shows, rage are zooming in on the first Countdown episode airing at the moment! So the picture extends to the edge of the ABC watermark. This means that those of us recording in 4:3 will not pick up the full picture. Recording in 16:9 will pick up all of the picture, but will also pick up the watermark and the black bars either side of the picture. It also means that the picture is cropping part of the original image off, and that the picture shown will be slightly less sharp than it otherwise would be. I really don't understand why the ABC feel the need to tamper with archival footage like this. I assume it will have already been done for all retro month episodes showing this year. It will certainly lessen my enjoyment of retro month.

Unless I'm seeing things, the audio is out of sync a fraction of a second on the 1981 episode- at least from New Toy onwards.

This gives a better illustration of what I'm talking about, though the stills below are not taken from last night's show.



The top still (Divine) is an example of how 4:3 videos 'should' look on rage when viewing the 16:9 signal. There should be a gap between the edge of the picture and the ABC watermark.

The middle still is an example of a zoomed-in on 4:3 clip. You can see that the edge of the picture is almost touching the ABC watermark. This is how the 1981 episode looked last night. The 1980 episode actually touched/overlapped with the watermark a little bit, so was zoomed-in on even more. I haven't yet checked the later episodes.

The bottom still is an example of recording one of these zoomed-in on clips in 4:3. When comparing to the middle still, you can see that some of the picture is chopped off either size, so you're not picking up all of the picture when recording these zoomed-in on clips in 4:3.

The audio seemed to get worse later in the episode, and looked like it was nearly a whole second out of sync.

I didn't notice this until you pointed it out, but yes, they've zoomed in about 10%. They did the same thing for all the Classic Countdown shows.

At least they're not doing it for the retro videos played inbetween - they remain in 4:3.

I record the digital TV stream as broadcast unaltered and in its entirety directly to my PC hard disk, so the concept of recording in "4:3" or "16:9" does not exist. It saves angst, believe me.

Does your recording pick up the watermark?

Recording the native transport stream (as I do also) picks up everything that is displayed on your tv, including the watermark. But it can't pick up things that aren't broadcast, such as the tops & bottoms of 4:3 videos that have been zoomed. That's frigging annoying that the ABC would do that!! Does the size of the black bars at the side really matter that much? No, of course it doesn't.
I am disappointed that they opted to deprive us of the entirety of the video. :white_frowning_face:

I fast-fowarded through the 1982, 1985, and 1986 episodes (I went to bed after the 1981 episode), and they too are like the 1981 episode, with the picture almost, but not quite, touching (unlike the 1980 episode which touched it) the watermark - similar to the first 'Miss Me Blind' still (the middle pic) above.

I thought things looked a little zoomed in, I am keeping mine in 4.3 regardless

And yes, I notices that Lene Lovich and Sheena Easton looked a tad out of sync as well

Thanks. So it wasn't just me.

I think this also proves (I've mentioned it before, but someone disagreed) that rage encode retro episodes from the source tapes just before/in the months before they air. i.e. the episodes are not 'all digitised', ready to go at any point. Because the Countdown episodes were not zoomed in on like this last year.

So, I guess I need to keep episodes in 4.3 and now keep them in 16.9 as well, arghhhhhhhhh

Yesterday morning the Mi Sex video for Making Love (On The Telephone) was also stretched as the ) after Telephone was cut off, so they are stretching videos as well, very annoying.

Jason, they've been zooming in on some 4:3 videos like this since at least the 30th anniversary special last year (Machinations' 'My Heart's On Fire' was one video affected). However, it's impossible to predict when they'll do this, as it only happens to some videos! Even for some standalone videos they've never aired before on the same show, there is variation (e.g. on the 1984 Vault episode last July, Billy Ocean's 'Caribbean Queen' and Culture Club's 'Miss Me Blind' were two videos affected; but others they hadn't aired before from the same episode, like Shannon's 'Give Me Tonight' and Bronski Beat's 'Why?' were not affected).

I don't know what makes them decide to zoom in on one video and not another.

Either your TV is set up differently or you've got the wrong Mi-Sex video - 'Down the Line (Making Love On the Telephone)' was not zoomed in on. Yes, it is a little bit wider than the format they digitised videos in pre-2012, but all of the picture is still within the 4:3 region of the screen, as there are very thin black lines down each side you can see when downloading my upload of the 'Down the Line' video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfz7AouYnew

The audio was out of sync 0.2 seconds for the 'Down the Line' video, though, so I re-synced it with an mp3.

Quality control at rage/the ABC seems to have gone out the window.

PS I can upload my .vob file of the Mi-Sex video if anyone wants it.

I just looked at the 1982 intro of Countdown in 16.9 and the COUNT DOWN in lights still looks cut off, so I may not even bother keeping it in 16.9 as well. May just keep the 4.3

I hope me pointing this out hasn't ruined your enjoyment of retro month, Jason. Sometimes ignorance is bliss...

I think we should alert rage to this, though, and ask them to please not ever do it again. I think it will be too late now though for them to re-encode the Countdown episodes scheduled for this month. It probably isn't their doing, anyway, but whatever bright spark they've got working in Archives who digitises the tapes.

I noticed the picture looking squashed before you pointed this out and it is squashed in the 4.3 ratio and in the 16.9 ratio so I will just keep the 4.3

I am going to call rage tomorrow and see what is going on.

Ignorance is indeed bliss, sigh

This squashing of picture has ruined my whole January.

I just checked the 1980 episode in 16.9 and it does have some more picture on the right compared to the 4.3 but the logo still goes over the picture slightly. So the ratios are just everywhere. So I will have to burn 4.3 and 16.9 copies,a rghhhhhhhh

I know! Tell me about it.

Great that you're calling rage. Let them know you're not the only one who has noticed/doesn't like it.

I worried this would happen after seeing all of the Classic Countdown episodes like this. I didn't care as much about those, though, as they had info boxes etc. all over the performances anyway.

At Clip Magnet:
I record the digital TV stream as broadcast unaltered and in its entirety directly to my PC hard disk, so the concept of recording in "4:3" or "16:9" does not exist. It saves angst, believe me.

Jason: How does one record from the digital TV Stream and can they be burnt to disc?
I have a Mac computer

Jason, there are a few ways of recording the "native" digital TV stream. You can get a TV Tuner Card for PCs (maybe not so easy for Apples though) that you connect to your TV antenna socket, allowing you to watch and record free-to-air channels on your computer.
You can also get external versions of those cards, that typically connect via USB. I'm sure some if not most of that type of device would be Mac-compatible. Brands like Pinnacle and Hauppauge have been making HDTV USB TV Tuners for many years.
Both the above options will record the native, unadulterated digital broadcast onto your computer hard drive, usually as a .TS ("Transport Stream") file, which is basically just an .MP4 video file with a few other bits of information combined into it. Many video playing apps and smart tvs will play a .TS file directly, but it is also a pretty simple task to edit a .TS file (which you would likely want to do anyway, to trim the start and end points of your recording) and save it as an .MP4/.avi/.mkv etc. or burn to DVD/Blu Ray. Because .TS is such a common format now, I'm guessing that all but the most basic video editing apps would be fine with it.

The non-computer-based option you could also go with is a stand-alone DVR, which is the method I use. It's a stand-alone piece of equipment that sits in between your tv antenna socket and your tv, and records programs to its internal hard drive. You can then copy the recordings (again, usually .TS format) off the DVR using a USB stick, or a wired/wireless network link and on to your Mac for editing. There's a range of DVRs out there from fairly simple & inexpensive, to some more expensive ones that have all kinds of extra features. Though even the most basic one will cost significantly more than a USB Tuner.

For anyone that happens to be interested, I've still got all the Countdown .TS recordings I made from 2014-2017, and I'm doing them again this year as well. They are mostly complete .. unfortunately I missed the start and end of just a couple of episodes in 2014, which I'm spewing about. But I'm more than happy to share them. The only issue is that they're generally in the range of 10-15 GB file size each, which is not feasible to share online, so ideally you'd send me a large memory stick or a portable hard drive, depending on how many of them you wanted. I'm in Perth btw.
For my collection, I edit the .TS files (each of which is basically a whole night of Rage) down into individual Countdown episodes as .MP4 (H.264) files, encoded at 2Mbps, which is not super high quality by modern HD TV standards, but IMO is still possibly overkill for old source material that is only a fraction of that quality. The result is Countdown episodes of ~ 900MB size each, which again, I am more than happy to share with anyone.
(or trade! I would LOVE to get hold of some of the older ones I missed out on before I knew about Rage Retro month)

Okay,

I just called rage and they are glad I called them about the zooming of the picture during Countdown which is causing stretching of the picture.

He told me he will go talk to the editing suite. He told me the editors are now using a thing called Premier Pro where as last year and before they were using Final Cut. I asked what Premier Pro is and he told me it was an Adobe for final cut.

He wanted me to explain is it being stretched or zoomed, I said it was being zoomed in and therefore the picture was being stretched and he understood. He said hopefully the episodes will be as they should this weekend as he knows many people wait all year for Countdown etc.

He also said there are all these new editors e.t.c. and lots has been happening at the ABC, he said most episodes would already be encoded so it may be hard to change but he said they may have control over the rest of the Countdown's before they go to air.


He told me there could be many factors as ABC go to HD etc ... But he will try and get it sorted with the editing department.

For those who also want to call rage about this, that would be great so hopefully no more episodes go to air zoomed in and out of sync. ABC's number is (02) 8333 1500, you ask to be put through to rage and they connect you.

^ Thanks Jason for your efforts. It's interesting to read about the editing programs they use.

It is all this new technology that is causing the zoomed in and out of sync on the Countdown episodes.

They need to just air them as they were recorded, simple ... I think this Premier Pro trying to upscale archival gems is causing all these things.

The comparison below is a still from Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall. Upper image is from the music video on Youtube; lower image the same frame from the version played on Countdown (the 1980 episode, which was the most "stretched" of the lot, as you can see from the overlap with the watermark)

This is of course not conclusive, but I am heartened by the fact that looking in the vertical plane, while a small amount seems to have been sliced from the top on the Countdown version, it also has more at the bottom than the Youtube one. So to me, that indicates very little, if anything, has actually been lost.
In the horizontal plane, the ABC one seems to have slightly less sliced off the left hand side, and is roughly equal on the right. But of course, overall the image is significantly wider.
So again, it's far from conclusive, but I'm thinking it has just been stretched horizontally by the ABC as opposed to just being "zoomed"
Neither is ideal, but stretching is the better of the two because at least nothing has been lost.
It's still a pain for anyone saving as 4:3, because either they will have to lose the edges, or use their software to "un-stretch" the stretched frame back to 4:3 size (which would be the better approach, but also more time-consuming, and might not even be a feature that is available on everyone's video editing software)


Anyway, you're a champ, Jason. Many thanks for contacting them about this! Fingers crossed that it is better from now on.

At Luuuc,

Is there a possibility that you could fix the episodes with your software and I could have copies on DVD?

I can pay you whatever you wish, I live for Countdown literally and stay alive all year for January.

Your passion goes without saying ;)
What is your ideal scenario? Cropping the black bars, then compressing the remaining stretched video back into 4:3 size, and burning to DVD as 4:3?
Once I know your preference (be as specific as you want) I'm certainly willing to give it a trial run to see if I can do it, and what is involved.
I've linked my email here in case you want to do this away from the message board.

Hey Luuuc,

I just emailed you through my hotmail

I called rage again just now about the out of sync sections as well and he asked if it was just on the videos and I said mainly just on 2 clips on the 1981 episode and some slight out of sync when James Reyne was hosting. He asked if it was during Molly as well and I said I didn't notice any out of sync as Molly.

So I said it's mainly the stretching of the picture.

Best I don't call them now as I have rang again just a minute ago so hopefully he gives the info to the editors. If not, then I will be having stretched copies unfortunately but better than no copies, I guess ...

Speaking 'Another Brick In the Wall', it was nice to see it played at its (I assume) correct pitch on the Countdown episode. The standalone copy rage have is notably pitched upwards after the first few bars.

Luuuc - I would not rely on a comparison with a Youtube video. Trust me, they are almost always cropped versions of the original. Sometime the cropping may be minimal, but on some clips I'be seen as much as 20% of the total image area missing because of cropping around the video. It seems this particuarly happens if the clip has gone through PAL to NTSC conversion before being re-encoded for Youtube.

I agree with you, Clip Magnet. It's a sample size of one clip, so it's not conclusive (as I made sure to note)
That one frame is definitely stretched horizontally in the Rage version though. The proportions are measurably different. Does that prove that no "zooming" has been done? No.

Here's an example of how even record companies can butcher YouTube uploads.

This image shows a snapshot of the clip "Don't Pay The Ferryman" from Chris de Burgh's official YouTube channel ChrisDeBurghVEVO, overlaid on the full frame from a proper 4:3 PAL TV recording.

A whopping 31% of the pixels are missing from the YouTube clip.



This is one of the worst examples I've seen, but some degree of cropping is extremely common if not typical.

rage's zooming on Countdown last weekend is tiny in comparison to the Chris De Burgh example. That is cut off to the MAX

It's my pet hate when YouTube uploaders (Vevo, official channels, and fan/hobbyist uploaders are all guilty) crop 4:3 videos to appear 16:9. All they're doing is removing a good portion of the picture, and zooming in on the video. How can anyone think that is improving things?

Worst of all though is when it happens for an official DVD release, as it occasionally does.

OK, I've analysed this properly and... Luuuuuuc is correct!

The image has been stretched not zoomed. Proof is comparing the clip of Take On Me played on the weekend versus an un-butchered PAL MPEG copy.

Comparison is below:



The overlaid image is the recording from Countdown. I have left the ABC watermark in but otherwise cropped the black bars so that you can see the "original" clip underneath. I free-scaled the TV recording image until it matched the original image underneath.

You can see the Countdown clip has indeed been stretched not zoomed or cropped and very little of the original clip is missing. In fact doing exact pixel measurements shows that the image content has square pixel dimensions of 818x576 when it should be 768x576. An aspect ratio of 1.42 instead of 1.33, or stretched horizontally by 6.5%.

Someone has set up or configured ABC's Adobe Premiere software incorrectly, and they need to fix it.

But it also means that these stretched video recordings could be restored back to their proper aspect ratio in a video editing programme with little loss of quality. So that is good news.

Who wants to make the phone call to rage? I don't have time during the day...

I have already made the phone call to rage telling them the picture has been stretched and another guy I know was going to call.

I am sure they don't want me calling them yet again this week.

Hopefully all will be fixed this weekend and on wards for the rest of January, the guy at rage said he would talk to editing but rage needs more phone calls and I have provided the ABC number above which will put anyone through to rage in seconds.

If you've not the time to call rage, could you email them? (rage at abc dot net dot au) I think it would be beneficial if someone who actually knows what they're talking about (going by your post - I don't know as much of the technical info as you) alerts them to this information. Even if you just copy and paste what you've written here.

While you may not get a reply from rage by emailing them, I'm almost certain they will at least read it. I've mentioned before that I emailed them around May last year to alert them to the overscan lines issue (I attached some images of screen-shots to illustrate what I meant), and it was fixed by the next rage episode! I never got a reply though, but I think it's unlikely that my email was sent just a couple of days before it was fixed (it had been an issue for about 6 months by this point).

I really hope you do at least email them what you've written here, complete with the image you have embedded.

OK Nathan - I can do that tonight.

Thanks!

There's something else also happening with the episodes. If you for example watch the credits, it just seems to me those and the whole episode takes on a film look rather than your typical videotape to air look. Possible they have also lowered the bitrate when they've been ingesting them?

What is most annoying about the 1985 Episode is in the UK, US and OZ Top 5's, the way the numbers and shapes are cut off.

Another eagle eye! Yes, you are correct. What they've done is deinterlace the video, not reduce the bitrate. It now seems standard practice (for some reason) when they digitise Countdowns / Rock Arenas (but interestingly, they do not seem to do it for standalone videos). Deinterlacing causes the "film look".

Now if the original video content is 25 frames per second, and the 2 fields per frame are correctly aligned with the frames and not split across frames, then deinterlacing doesn't cause any loss of resolution, and all is good.

But if the fields are slipped (split across frames) or NTSC content was converted to PAL for the original broadcast, deinterlacing will cause some loss of resolution and reduced sharpness / increased fuzziness.

Deinterlacing is particularly noticeable for computer-generated supers and credits, because that process generates 50 unique fields per second, rather than pairs of fields that are the same (and can be combined losslessly to create a frame). So deinterlacing will combine two different fields into one fuzzier frame.

Is this what they've been doing with videos since 2012? Since then, the way they've encoded them looks less-sharp/fuzzier to me, as well as slightly duller. I'm used to it now, but can definitely notice a difference.

I thought maybe they deliberately degraded the quality to make it less appealing to those of us who record the videos and sometimes upload them to YouTube etc.

I don't understand much of what Clip Magnet is saying as it is extremely technical but sounds like he knows what he is talking about.

They need to stop digitilising the episodes and just play them as they are, it can't be that hard!

Hello Jason,

I still have last weeks episodes on a USB stick which I recorded in .ts (transport stream)

Others have mentioned what a transport stream is. I re-encode the transport stream to an mp4 file. I keep all my episodes as separate mp4 files, I gave up DVDs a long time ago.

Anyway, let me know if you need/want them. I can encode them to mp4 for you if you let me know how you want them, otherwise the transport stream is exactly what you saw on the screen last week.

I suppose I should say hello to everyone :) I regularly post Countdown and Australian clips on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6d85bkFLK6f_QAkmgHHLlQ

Jason - they can't not digitise them if you want them broadcast. Analog TV died 3 years ago.

Buy they could stop deinterlacing, then you wouldn't notice the difference. Provided they also stopped the stretching/zooming.

ohnoitsnathan said "Is this what they've been doing with videos since 2012? Since then, the way they've encoded them looks less-sharp/fuzzier to me, as well as slightly duller."

I don't think they have done it every time, but it's certainly the case with quite a few Countdowns and Rock Arenas that they have aired. It probably comes down to something random like who was in the production suite that day when they got the Betamax tape out of the archives.

Well yes, analogue did die 3 years ago and with that was a good thing, being 4.3 no longer showed the ABC Logo.

What I was meant to say was they just need to play the Countdown episodes as they are without using Adobe programs e.t.c... If they have to use programs then get editing people who don't alter the original ratios e.t.c ...

I don't know about deinterlacing. But you get the drift. Basically, stop stretching, zooming and adding extra things to the original recordings when not needed.

Is it too much to ask for to just watch COuntdown's as they have played them in recent years, without stretching. I really hope this weekend it is all sorted

Analogue was shut down in December 2013, so it was just over 4 years ago, actually. I remember it vividly, as it happened the Friday before Kim Wilde guest programmed rage. What perfect timing - the watermark gone out of the 4:3 region of the screen in time for her guest programming.

Yes, a copy of Dancing In The Dark from Kim without that silly logo :-)

Bad news... the first episode airing tonight has been stretched. It's not touching the watermark, but the picture extends further to the right than it should for 4:3 footage.

Also, is it just me or is the audio also out of sync a fraction of a second on this episode?

The second episode is being stretched a little more to the right than the first; virtually touching the edge of the ABC watermark. The sound is again out of sync, with the picture being a fraction of a second ahead of the audio. I've checked both of my 4:3 and 16:9 recordings (on different recorders), and both have the audio sync issue.

D @ m n.

I can correct the sync on my recordings, using a program I have, but there shouldn't be a need to do this.

The 'Banana Republic' video shown in between episodes was not stretched, and the audio was in sync, so these issues are specific to the Countdown episodes rather than being a general broadcasting issue. I hope at least later episodes shown tonight are in sync.

My hopes were up for the stretching issue being resolved, as only one of the Moody Blues clips shown last night, all but one of which had not aired on rage in the digital era, was stretched slightly to the right.

GOOD NEWS! The third episode (the 1981 one) is not stretched, and the audio seems to be in sync!