APFS: Afternoon Programmes Follow Shortly Discussion

This is my progress:
https://up.metropol247.co.uk/Ne1L%20C/Screen%204.png

I had a thought about this.

There's a site called Fandom where you can make your own style of wiki's.

Maybe someone could use that to make the next APFS.

Its an interesting thought. I personally know nothing about wiki creation and have stopped mocking for a while but if anyone wants to step up to the plate.

I do have some suggestions for areas of the wiki

1. Tutorials
2. Sources of references (eg which fonts were used by which stations)
3. A comparison of free vs paid sofware
4. Templates
5. Where to find free backgrounds, music beds etc
6. A forum (naturally)
7. Reviews of manuals etc

I did try something simillar a few years with "TV Live Presents" a few years back, but it didn't really take off.



I have something in the pipeline along these lines...

We wait in anticipation.

I adored APFS back in the day, and would await with anticipation the Friday updates, and having to wait to download the videos in RealPlayer. There were some cracking home-made mocks in the presents gallery, and I frequented the forum at the time, although i recall it became clogged with spam from the legendary Lee Bedwood (there’s a name for old TVForumers!).
My own gallery was on presents, all suitably aged with a copy to VHS via a home microwave transmitter being interfered with by a tin can, great stuff!

I remember doing some fairly creative edits to try and get the VHS “look” - for the colour patterns I’d make a layer of psychedelic swirling colours and subtly overlay it with minimal capacity, and for analogue “ghosting” I’d do a similar effect with motion blur. Doing a minor image blur and then sharpening gave images a better off-air look (removing sharp anti-aliasing which gave away that it was done on a modern computer) and a small rotate and altering the red/green/blue controls (removing the blue gave a good aged yellow effect) made things look more like a physical static slide. Not bad for a 14 year old in the early 2000s with a cheap copy of Paint Shop Pro 😅

Later on I would split the image into Hue/Chroma/Luminance, slightly move one of the layers sideways and rejoin them together, giving a nicely realistic VHS effect. Add some tape distortion at the bottom (either recreated through gradients and blurs or just pasted in from a real VHS capture) and it didn’t look too bad!

Ah, back in the the days then Billy when you couldn't just apply an off-the-shelf filter to your pictures and video to get the VHS look, you had to do it manually. The modern filter is basically crap compared to the reality of video and much like the distinctive EMI Camera look of the 1970s, its hard to recreate that "look" from a modern starting point - its just not the same.

I’ve yet to see a ‘VHS filter’ look anything like something recorded off a videotape.

I die a little inside every time I see a "VHS" filter with Mini DV-esque pixellation used for so-called analog distortion.

Quite often even recording to a VHS tape doesn't give you that look, especially if it's a new tape on a modern machine.

I don't see how its possible to recreate something that only occurs on old hardware with old tapes in the first place.

But then I suppose its probably not cost effective for a production to get a half-knackered video and a half knackered tape for a one off insert in a film or TV show and actually, you know do it properly, when you can just slap a video effect on it in some studio somewhere and be done with it. I wouldn't be surprised though if in a lot of cases the desire to show something recorded on a videotape is an afterthought in post and of course by that point your budget's almost exhausted and its too late to go back and do it properly...