1. An emulator capable of recording audio/video from this site's replays - if you can't play back a run, it's difficult to expect to be able to encode it.
2. For Windows users, a video codec suitable for lossless video dumping (i.e. the resulting stream will be of identical quality to the emulator output). The following codecs are suggested:
   1. CamStudio codec;
   2. Lagarith (LAGS) codec;
   3. FFDshow, configured to use FFV1 in the BGR32 colorspace.
3. The means to create a distinctive logo for your encoded movies. Free software to make a logo include Gimp, or Paint.NET for Windows users.
4. Software to add your logo and subtitles describing the movie to your encode. There are two choices available:
   1. mplayer/mencoder, is the cross-platform gold standard in encoding.
   2. AVISynth, a video-frame server that can act as an input for x264 and many other pieces of software At the moment, there is no 64-bit support that meets the encoding needs of this site.

1. Video Software:
   1. x264 is our video encoder of choice, used to do virtually all of the video encoding work for the site.
2. Audio Software:
   1. Nero AAC Codec is used to generate MP4 audio for most downloadable and streaming encodes encodes.
   2. FLAC to generating lossless audio for HD encodes.
   3. SoX, a multi-purpose audio processing tool; used for adjusting audio delay.
3. Audio Video Multiplexers:
   1. MP4Box, part of the GPAC project; used to combine video and audio tracks into the MP4 container format.
   2. mkvmerge from mkvtoolnix; used to combine video and audio tracks into the MKV container format.

Note that if you wish to encode all three formats the site uses, you will need all of this software, with the exception of mencoder. Below are applications that are not necessary, but may help you in your encoding endeavor:

1. VirtualDub, which, for AVISynth users, can be used to preview your AVS configuration files before encoding.
2. Audacity, an open source audio editor. If you need to pad 2 seconds at the beginning of your video and don't want to tinker on the command line with sox, this is for you.
3. A BitTorrent client with torrent creation capabilities, such as µTorrent; used to create the torrent files which are a primary means of distribution for our downloadable encodes.

On the following pages, we'll be exploring how to combine these various utilities from a bungling menagerie of liked files and libraries into a veritable orchestra of perfect pixels.

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Next page: Logo

[1]: Packages for most of these pieces of software are available for most Linux distributions; instructions for how to install them from there will be omitted.

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EncodingGuide/Requirements/Sandbox last edited by sgrunt on 2011-07-05 14:44:12
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