A Digital Video Primer for Geeks &#8211; Three Thumbs Up!
<p>About an hour ago I watched <a href="http://xiph.org/video/index.shtml.en">A Digital Video Primer for Geeks</a>.  This is, hands down and no exceptions, the best instructional video I&#8217;ve ever seen. It takes a complex, dry, detail-filled topic and presents it with lucid clarity and a sense of fun.</p>
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<p>They&#8217;re not kidding about the &#8220;for geeks&#8221; part; the exposition is fast and dense and assumes the reader is able to handle having concepts as complex as Nyquist&#8217;s theorem thrown at them in one go.  But the exposition is also very clear and direct, and delivered with a keen sense of which details need most emphasis.  The effect is only secondarily to impart facts; what they&#8217;re attempting, successfully, is to give the viewer a <em>feel</em> for the subject matter, an overall grasp of how the pieces fit together which can be filled in by later deep-diving into the pieces.</p>
<p>Full marks to Monty for his delivery, which is excellent on all levels.  I&#8217;m no slouch myself at presenting technical ideas in accessible language, but I will cheerfully admit that this is as good as me at the top of my form, or possibly better.  I know how much skill and effort is concealed  in making a performance like this look casual; if you don&#8217;t, just trust me that what Monty has pulled off here is quite impressive just as an act of presentation-fu.</p>
<p>And yes, this is a video &#8211; not just an e-book narrated by a well-spoken talking head. The uses of props, whiteboard, and special effects are tasteful and understatedly clever. I particularly enjoyed the playful use of special effects to illustrate things like sample-rate compression, signal-clipping artifacts and how YUV chroma representation actually works.  That was a very effective way to tie those abstractions to experiential reality so the viewer won&#8217;t forget them.</p>
<p>The material was ideal for my level of knowledge at start.  That is, if you have (a) programmer chops, (b)  a bit of basic knowledge of the physics of sound, and (c) you&#8217;ve heard of Nyquist&#8217;s theorem before and broadly grasp the relationship between sampling rate and cutoff frequency, you&#8217;re going to eat the rest of the video up like candy. Probably (c) isn&#8217;t necessary; what it meant for me is that I started getting new material at the point where Monty explained about sample rates above 44.1 being a way to get away with cheaper bandpass filters.</p>
<p>In general, the production is unobtrusively immaculate.  This is all the more impressive because it&#8217;s clear the piece was shot on a tiny budget.  And it proudly announces at the end that only open-source tools were used.  Creative Commons license, natch.</p>
<p>One final thing: On top of all its other virtues, this video is a lovely aesthetic expression of the hacker posture of mind. If you are a hacker, you will know what I mean by this when you watch it; if you aren&#8217;t, there is little to no point in my trying to explain.  If you think you may be <em>becoming</em> a hacker, watch it twice.  Then get a night&#8217;s sleep and watch it again.  This will help you in broad and subtle ways.</p>
