In May, Google made international headlines when it announced that it was going to offer free, unlimited storage for photos and videos. If you read Google's press release, you'll see that the free storage plan limits images to 16 megapixels and videos to 1080p resolution. But if digital images are simply collections of binary data and if all other files on your computer also just collections of binary data then isn't unlimited photo storage simply unlimited storage?
If only something existed that made this easy to do; you know, something that could bitmap all the things....
[ Ed's Comment: This link points to the author's own personal software solution, but I'm sure that others will come up with alternative ideas.]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MrGuy on Sunday June 28 2015, @02:53AM
It seems like a relatively straightforward thing to losslessly decompose a 4k (2160p) video into 4 1080p videos, simply by dividing the original image up into 2x2 pixel blocks, and then taking the upper right pixel of all the blocks as video A, upper left of each block as video B, etc. Similar approach can decompose an 8k image into 16 1080p videos. All the resulting videos would be playable (and reasonable "downsamples" of the original), but could also be recombined perfectly into the original higher-res video.
I know a compressed video isn't a collection of full images, but I don't see why the same algorithm wouldn't work equally well on an I or B frame. Someone with more video chops can correct me here.
In other words, I don't see why the resolution limit actually changes anything.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Sunday June 28 2015, @12:16PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @01:11AM
Bingo!
You are correct sir!