makz survives the apocalypse

Hoo, boy.

I've been an audio engineer with some IT responsibilities for about a decade now on and off, but suddenly I'm transitioning to a position that's more like being an IT engineer with some video engineering responsibilities… and let me tell you, I do not know video.

I briefly tried to run my own streaming server once. I can use ffmpeg with a guide open in front of me. I am aware of many ways to configure VLC. I gave myself many a virus back in the Windows XP days thanks to infected uploads of ACE's Mega Codecs Pack. This is the extent of my video knowledge. Or it was until a week and a half ago.

Now I'm studying SMPTE ST 2110 as if my life depended on it. I'm considering whether or not to get a SMPTE membership so I can read their magazine and take their training courses. I'm furiously typing "chrominance and luminance in digital broadcast video" into the Youtube search bar.

I know more about how color works than I ever needed to. (The red cones in my eyes are mildly deformed; I gave up on understanding color so long ago, and yet.)

(But you know, the compression scheme for JPEG images is pretty neat! I finally understood a little bit about why we studied all those discrete mathematics structures in undergrad!)

(As to why video broadcasting led me to research JPEGs, it's because fundamentally all video compression is either MPEG or JPEG. The two static image formats of the early web. Poor GIFs, sad, alone, lonely, and unpronounceable — you were the first moving standard, but you never had much luck.)

And I know I'm complaining, but it's actually pretty fun. It'd be pretty fun, anyway, if I were getting proper sleep, and therefore were able to properly encode new memories. (The air conditioner at my apartment has been out for two weeks. No word from the roommates on whether today's the day I go home to air that has been conditioned, so I'm betting I'm in for another sweaty night of barely sleeping, followed by another long day of trying to figure out how light becomes pixels becomes light again.)

But hey… I have a work trip coming up very shortly, and the hotel I'll be staying at will surely be air conditioned…! (I'm abandoning you, my roommates! Farewell! I'll never forget you…!)

Don't worry. I'll probably succumb to some kind of video engineering madness as my comeuppance for leaving you to bake in the hot apartment while I run off to shadow someone with actual experience…