As always this is so much more than merely a video debunking. It’s a great piece of comedy, an insightful analysis of technology and even great commentary on the historical development both back when the video was made but also the now current state of the environment around social media creators. Absolutely amazing.
I was very happy to see a new video from him. It has been ages. I highly recommend the one debunking the magic trick with the card, the glass and the monkey. As you said, it’s much more than a debunk, he even went to the place where it was filmed.
He makes amazing videos by placing the cameras in all wierd angels and adds so much stuff to explain a concept, that makes you think it's simple, yet you finish his videos admiring him even more...
The first video I saw was the tape measure trick shot debunk. I immediately subbed when I noticed he was inserting himself *into the footage he was debunking* to prove his point. I don't follow another YouTuber that has such dedication to their craft, though I'm sure they exist.
Captain D produces some of the most impressive technical content out there, wrapped in subtle and not-so-subtle zingers, and breathtakingly illustrated. Decomposing a frame into its brightness channel, rotating it, and collapsing the columns to make a waveform graph? Mind completely blown.
The debunk videos are his major stock in trade, but I personally love (and discovered him through) the explainers about frame rate and shutter speed, color spaces, interlacing, and other details of the video art.
And of course, his mindbogglingly detailed exploration of Flight of the Navigator -- if you've seen the film, make some time tonight and watch it.
Oh, it's worth a watch. The intro sequence (no spoilers, but when you get to the dog scene, you'll know what I mean) is just great, and there's a handful of classic lines I quote to this day. (Sarah Jessica Parker and the Coke question! No VFX needed, it's solid gold on its own merit.)
I honestly don't know how the film holds up today, especially from the eyes of a grown-up watching it for the first time. The overall narrative may or may not earn its keep, I guess. But all those VFX shots were in service of a larger story, and if nothing else I think you'll appreciate them more in context.
I recall Paul Rubens, jokes about Twisted Sister, morphing spaceships, time travel, Fort Lauderdale Florida (which seemed impossibly alien to this midwesterner), and a lot of pop culture references.
Most likely torrenting but could also be referring to the practice of using a vpn to access content available in another country on your streaming service of choice but not your home country
One thing I didn't understand about the original video - why didn't they just CG in the bins instead? Why go to all the effort of CG'ing out the ball, changing the trajectory etc? It seems like it would have been easier to have him make 3 random kicks then add some bins in where they landed. But, maybe there's something obvious I'm missing.
Because they would then have to camera track the whole clip to place the bins, and also make sure the bins stay in the correct positions when they reappear and disappear out of frame. In contrast, they only need to camera track the few frames when he does the kick. The quick movement of the ball also makes it harder to spot CGI errors IMO. Whereas if you have to fake the bins, you also have to deal with camera zoom, exposure changes, etc. that happen throughout the clip.
> The quick movement of the ball also makes it harder to spot CGI errors IMO. Whereas if you have to fake the bins, you also have to deal with camera zoom, exposure changes, etc. that happen throughout the clip.
Way back in the day, Michael Crichton's Rising Sun, it talks about primitive video editing (when some people are editing the video scene of a crime). Looking at security camera footage over a period of time is monotonous, but harder too is also editing the audio. You could stare at the screen and still easily overlook a glitch, but a hard cut/slice in the audio will catch your notice even when only minimal attention is being paid.
Changing ball trajectories accurately is hard but you are editing something in motion that is visible only for a few seconds, is in air, and will mostly be viewed through a bad screen. Adding in cg bins on the other hand, you need Beckham to do 3 kicks that land where the shot is looking, but more importantly have to get those cans tracked perfectly for the entire duration of the shot as they are always visible. I believe that is a much harder to pull off.
For me, someone on Mastodon linked it maybe a year ago. I've watched at least half the videos back and became a Patreon for a while. I can't believe I never heard anyone talk about the channel before or since -- until this HN post. I've shared it with some friends but nobody knew it. People here seem to be familiar, though, so I am curious how you discovered this gem of a creator
I was reading about VHS captures and the argument on whether to deinterlace, and realized I could explain how interlacing works from a signal-on-the-wire perspective but not how it actually affects the picture.
I went searching for videos that explained it, and found Captain D's video which was so much better than everything else, like just breathtakingly done, and funny, and I watched it like 3 times to let everything sink in.
I probably watched a few other videos on the topic from other creators, but they weren't remarkable enough to hook me and make me gorge myself on their other stuff.
Been following for so many years, I can't remember anymore. I watch a lot of VFX related content, it could have been in my feed because of that. He's had so many viral videos, it could have been totally unrelated to my personal feed.
If it wasn't on my homepage 10+ years ago, it was likely Reddit. Been a huge fan since.
He's somewhat in the same mental collection for me as the old Corridor Digital videos.
At Factorio office. Rseding was working nearby and seemed to always have these weird videos playing. "Why is that guy chromed?" I asked. "That's just how his face is", or something, was the response. I was curious so went and found them for myself. Was not disappointed.
IIRC I discovered it via some random HN comment a few years ago. Binge-watched everything he made back then. I'm happy to hear he's making videos again, I'll catch up as soon as I have a spare moment.
I think my one of my adult kids that was interested in video production pointed him out to me quite a few years ago. What is amazing is that you can see his comedic schtick was already in his earliest videos from 16 years ago
What caught my eye was that in 2011 they couldn't shoot it in 6K stabilized and crop for motion afterwards. But there were already 4K cameras at the time, and with zooming they should be able to capture at least the critical time window of Beckham kicking the ball / landing stabilized for easier post-processing.
But the nature of motion glitches found suggests they did actually post-process on a shaky video. They could do a better job, but then the trick worked for more than 10 years, and thus fulfilled its purpose more than enough.
One thing this man brings to our attention as software developers is that at least in this department, software has reached a level of complexity that it takes a lifetime of study to master it as a user.
I know it's not the only subspecialty that has such an in depth consideration to UX but it's worth mentioning.
Absolutely. If you like CD, you’ll like TC. Though TC’s videos trend to the longer side (approaching an hour for some), but they are a fascinating way to spend time.
Bobby Fingers has a similar vibe, though less family friendly feel.
Someone casually doing amazing feats of technical and artistic craft, while making each video a self contained story and having throwaway jokes that are deeper and more complex than the average YouTubers entire career.
He also did a crossover episode with Adam Savage the Mythbusters dude as they are apparently mutual fans.
Probably best to start at the beginning and go in without any research that might spoil surprises. Another reason to start at the beginning is that the current video is him narrating an erotic ebook that he wrote as side quest during a previous video.
suckerpinch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c8i5SABqwU
Doesn't have the same level of presentation as captain D (who does?) but he combines humour with whimsical technical achievements.
Old AvE did great breakdowns and explainers of electronic tools and manufacturing and stuff while mixed with colloquialisms, stories and jokes, but it seems he went off the anti-vaxer deep end during the 'rona and got violent with his wife (or the police) while drunk, got tazed, and spent three months studying scripture.
Wow... I gave up on AvE around the time of the Canadian Truckers protests. It seemed like his videos were going more sndnmore into conspiracy BS instead of "making cool shit on the internet." Sad to hear about his further decline.
Corridor Digital has always been cringe and weak for me. They try way too hard in everything but VFX skills. Kind of reminds me of really bad acting and writing mixed with passable VFX.
Corridor Crew was great until some of their shock value videos started to get big and they decided that was a high value niche. Some of it was funny but the underlying joke got old.
They made a video glorifying killing dogs and I was absolutely done with them.
I don't see how it's glorifying killing dogs. The CGI robot is given the task of killing a CGI robotic dog, and it refuses the task and runs away with it.
well, they make tons of different videos. to be clear, i'm a subscriber to their online streaming platform and like their casual videos a lot, so probably a bit biased.
they do make some videos which are very edgy, i guess. the bowling animation videos come to mind, where they try to be as edgy as possible. imagine a bowling ball with plane wings slamming into two towers, as an example.
but i never got the impression that they're actually disrespectful or problematic.
These guys have no idea what they're talking about. I've seen them talk about things I know about and they weren't even remotely in the ball park. They have cheap reaction videos where they criticize stuff they know nothing about since they haven't ever actually worked in vfx.
They used to be one of my favorite channels. Then they started pushing AI generated content (that was garbage) and threw the entire VFX industry under the bus. Fuck those guys.
That was like the video of Steph Curry just casually throwing up five full court shots in a row from near the tunnel. In a press conference after a game he said "I'm humbled that people think I'd actually be capable of that, but yeah, there was some help in the process..." and then added "but I did make two myself!"
I submitted it ten days ago, it got no comments or upvotes, so submitting it again is totally fine. Only submissions with some attention make something a dupe.
I'm not saying it's a dupe. I was referring to the fact that the HN timestamp says it was posted 3 days ago yet the comments are only 10 minutes old yet I remember reading the comments days ago.
I was wondering if I had gone insane or if there is some bug with HN.
Not complaining about this being a dupe at all.
For the record, I have nothing against you reposting it, but I am weirded out when the timestamps don't match my memory.
That time stamp effect is probably the second chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool). Those submissions get their time stamp mangled because it‘s easier for the ranking algorithm.
Sometimes "very interesting stuff" gets resubmitted by the HN gods for a second try and it messes up the timestamp too, although I guess in this case it was a resubmission indeed
This has also left me confused with timestamps that make no sense based on my memory. I thought I was going crazy recently because I was trying to find a way to make sense of things with the expectation that the timestamps couldn't magically change!
Beckham is known for his precision in kicking. It's his whole thing.
Beckham actually did hit the trash cans in practice kicks; this happened on a public beach and there were plenty of fans hanging around watching it happen.
That being said, it would have required an alteration of the laws of physics to land a soccer ball in the trash can as the diameter of the opening of most beach trash cans of that style in the LA area is smaller than the diameter of a soccer ball. (There are several styles of trash cans on LA area beaches. Several of them have capped/shielded openings; some of their are just uncapped basic cylinders, and others are cylinders with lids and narrow openings. The purpose of the caps/narrow openings is to limit the ability of wildlife like seagulls from getting at the trash. Generally, the uncapped basic trash cans are limited to more popular beaches where the trash cans will be emptied daily.)
No sure why you are downvoted. I can easily see Beckham hitting a 3 of them in a row with some practice shots. Fairly big targets. Getting ball into the can is impossible (he would have to try a lot of time, 3x in a row probably statistically impossible).
People on HN like to pretend that non-tech people couldn't possibly be good at doing things that techies aren't. Most techies couldn't kick a soccer ball that far, let alone come close to hitting a target that far away, so they assume the very idea is impossible.
Those who actually watched Beckham play (in Europe, or even during his retirement era in Los Angeles) knew what he was capable of[1], and that's why the general public was willing to believe this ad could have been true when it was released: because Beckham could easily have hit a target that big and that far away, and it wasn't much of a stretch to believe he could land a ball inside a trashcan with practice.
[1] Beckham was a free kick specialist, and is regarded as the best free kicker of all time. The movie "Bend It Like Beckham" derives its title from his legendary skill.
No, it's a combination of (1) we don't see everything (or even 10%) of what gets posted, and (2) most people underestimate their own provocations and overestimate the provocations that come from others, so it always feels like the other person started it and did worse.
Thanks for the explanation and for the detailed responses in the links.
I agree with them, but what ends up occurring is similar to situations in schoolyards where a bully who starts a confrontation isn’t punished, but the person who fights back is punished because it’s the person who fights back that causes a scene.
I will reach out you via email to delete my account.
I think this is a repetition of the same phenomenon. No one looks upon themselves as the bully or the person who started it. That's always the other person.
