So I think I give up on trying to make it work with Eternal SPU. Here is a link to my current progress:
http://aktan.site90.com/?vid=Mm4TestStream/CB2outF
That small clip itself had 37 desyncs. Estimating from that, the total amount of desyncs when I get to the end would be ~472. That's just way too many desyncs to work on.
What I'm going to do is, for the intro movie and ending credits, use Eternal SPU, and for everything else, use Pete's Midas.
Actually, in light of new information on how we stream stuff from archive, I think we can do away with Daily Motion and do a custom stream with awesome quality via archive!
Did anyone else notice that in the opening movie (right after choosing game start) Richter slams his hand down on the map that showed where you were in the original Castlevania between levels?
Wow I didn't notice this. Good observation! Thought I've never played the original Castlevania games...
honorableJay wrote:
Also, there seems to be a problem with the dailymotion link. Rather than playing the whole movie, it only plays the first 14 mins of it. I'm assuming that the file is broken up into 2 parts, and the link is supposed to simply play both parts 1 after the other, but it doesn't seem to be working correctly. In fact a lot of the movies lately have been doing the same thing.
No, this is normal, since currently there is no way to label the links in the publish page, only the first part is linked. To get to the next part, you would actually need to go to DailyMotion. I have made playlists on all my "parts" encodes so the next part should be linked there. Also if you pay close attention to the top of the screen near the first part, it shows you a brief link to the next part.
We get 70% of our information regarding the world around us from sight, so I would much rather have a good quality video stream at the expense of audio quality. In fact, several people (myself included) hardly ever watch runs with the sound on at all.
The thing is, archive.org doesn't have better video. The aspect ratio can be off, and the resize smoothing is gone.
I'm kind of wondering the same (except not the youtube part)... ads on daily motion getting on my nerve. There got to be better embed video site without annoy pop up ads. How about Wegame.com?
I don't get any Ads from Daily Motion, that's because I'm on Firefox with Adblock Plus. Maybe that's a trick around it? =p
Actually, I don't. The fact that just using another plugin would desync it means it has an effect on something internally. This change is probably what is needed to trigger the ending.
I've looked into the ending thing and I seem to have gotten an ending glitch. I've tried putting the final hit into Cortex at various points in the level, but the same thing happens. Crash is frozen in his position and you have to Start -> Warp Room to get out. Hopefully it is a game bug and can be worked around. I don't know what the stance will be if it is an emulation bug as the game has been 'beaten' (you can hear Cortex's "No"), it just doesn't 'end'.
I should have picked up on this earlier, apologies.
EDIT:
Okay, I've looked into it and it seems to be an emulation bug. I've tried hitting Cortex at different places and having each hit take different parts of his life. I've tried leaving the fight and beating him again, but nothing works.
I see the courses of action as follows:
1) Accept and publish as is with a subtitle explaining the emulation bug.
2) Accept and publish with an externally captured ending appended to the encode. (As this bug only affects parts of the game outwith that which is included within the movie file this shouldn't be a direct rules violation).
3) Accept and publish having found a code/RAM poke to force the ending, or some other bug fix (don't know how feasible this is).
4) Reject
Thoughts?
I got a better solution. I found if I use Eternal SPU to play the end part, it doesn't glitch out and the ending DOES show! I was about to stop working on this run for an official encode until I thought I might as well try this.
Nobody use Internal HLE BIOS, we all use SCPH1001, do you have tryed with it ?
I tryed with SCPH1001 as you said.
Then, desyncs happened in the third turn of the first Giant fight... orz
Sorry.
I will fix the movie file and submit it again.
I'm not sure you needed to remake and resubmit. There wasn't a rule that says the BIOS SCPH-1001 is required for all TAS. I think that's up in discussion still, and you did indicate what BIOS you used. Your BIOS is still a legit PSX BIOS, so I see no problems with it, really.
How bigger are you expecting an average file to be in that case? I'd say less than 5–10%, which is very much acceptable.
I'm actually unsure at the moment since I kind of need to know how compatible we need to be in order to figure out what options I can't use or lower. Also the % (obviously) really depends on the content, so 1 encode might be 5% bigger, and the next might be 20% bigger (as an example).
I must point out the downside to making it more compatible. Either quality suffers or file size suffers. I don't think quality is an option (at least in my opinion), so then file sizes may be slightly bigger. Is this okay?
How about just going for a set crf? Does a certain crf have the same quality for every encode?
It sure does for the most part. All my encodes are crf 20.
Correction: All my lossy encodes are crf 20.
Raiscan wrote:
So you're saying that the perfect standard is to have a less-than-ideal compatibility?
Just wondering, what features are incompatible? I'm guessing the ref=16, but on what players? Do you mean DXVA compatibility? There is a limit how compatible one should be. Do you want it iPod compatible (=p)?
mz: Recently I've been trying to encode a PCSX movie that is on WorkB, and I've noticed that when enabling movie sync mode, a lot of sounds in the run Crash Bandicoot 1 and 2 are missing. I took a look at the source and I saw basically, seemly, movie sync mode doesn't do some SPUreads normally. I was wondering if you can explain how this would make the movie sync.
It's my understanding that most other runs don't use a BIOS file at all - you'd need to ask someone who's actually created such a run.
This is wrong. The internal PCSX BIOS is very buggy. Most runs are done with SCPH-1001.
sgrunt wrote:
It's moot - PCSX disables it automatically when starting the movie.
While it does auto turn it off, it does have an effect (aka I think a bug with PCSX). If it is off before you start PCSX and don't ever turn it on, the music is indeed 2x too fast.
As I was one of those who suggested MP4 instead of MKV, let me provide the rationale.
MP4 advantages (vs. MKV):
- much better hardware compatibility, even if not complying to standard profiles.
MP4 disadvantages (vs. MKV):
- no Vorbis support (negligible, as HE-AAC does the job at least as well);
- marginally higher overhead (absolutely negligible);
- no soft subtitle streams (the largest disadvantage, but can be worked around by providing an MKV instead of or as an addition).
The marginally higher overhead is actually not there becuase of the fact we are foreced to use the no-simpleblock option in MKV. Due to that option, MP4s are actually smaller.
There is soft-sub support in MP4.
amaurea wrote:
My experience is that mkvs are gaining rapidly in popularity. Furthermore, from the discussion on IRC, it seems that MP4 is inferior as a container, lacking support for features that have already been used in published encodes. So I think we should continue using mkv. If people need the video in mp4 format in order to play it on specialized hardware, then converting from mkv to mp4 is a quick operation that doesn't require reencoding:
ffmpeg -i video.mkv -vcodec copy -acodec copy video.mp4
Why not use mp4, and let people who want mkvs convert instead? Because mkv's features are a superset of mp4's.
As for the codec settings, I think being pretty aggressive is ok. If the resulting file follows the standard, then players should be expected to be able to play it. Non-conforming files shouldn't be allowed, though.
Since MKV is a superset, your above command does NOT always work. There would be conversion needed.
hmm somehow the forum ate my post. Anyway, about the sounds problems. There are three ways. TAS SPU (minimal SFX), Pete's Midas (some SFX (tip from Atma)), or Eternal SPU (seemly all SFX). The first two syncs fine while Eternal desyncs to hell. I think I may jump this run for 1 to see if it is easier to do 1 first.