Just an idea, hear me out.
I can't be the only person who gets annoyed when the first 10-15 posts in every submission is basically "encode pl0x!!1". It's also annoying to have to check a topic multiple times before an encode is embedded into the OP, and sometimes that won't even happen. Instead you have to trudge through posts hoping to find a youtube link.
Sure, there's always the possibility of watching the movie file, but this presents a number of problems.
1- You're screwed if the run desynchs. This is especially true of newer platforms (N64, PSX, DS, etc).
2- You're screwed if the game is obscure and the rom is therefore hard to find. Not usually a big deal, but still a nuisance. It's also irritating to get the rom version to match (a lot of the ones out there are pre-patched).
3- You're royally screwed if the game is a hack. You have to go to all the effort of patching the game correctly just to watch the movie (+ it could still desynch anyway).
5- You might be forced to download a new emulator to watch the run (think SNES9x 1.43 vs 1.51 as a prime example). Also true if you're watching a run on a weird platform, such as arcade or sega CD.
6- You might be forced to download a new plugin.
Individually these might not seem like a big deal, but collectively these factors are annoying enough that probably 90% of viewers will just wait for the encode. So why not provide the encode right away?
I don't think this would be that hard to implement. Basically, when a run is submitted, it should only be viewable to encoders (and maybe judges). One of the encoders claims the submission for encoding, exactly the same way a judge claims a submission for judging. Once the encode is finished, the submission then becomes public to the rest of the forum. If there are technical difficulties, the runner, the encoder, and other encoders can communicate privately.
All this does is delay watching it for people who can watch it using the movie file. It doesn't get the encode out any faster. No real point, imo.
A workaround to this is to post the completed movie file in the appropriate thread in the games section.
Another idea is to force the TASer to accompany his submission with a temporary encode. Making an avi dump in SNES9x and VBA is extremely easy, you just need the right compression settings, and to playback the whole movie (you can even use turbo), and BAM: you have a decent quality avi ready for youtube uploading. If someone can put weeks, months, or even years into making a high quality TAS, surely they can spare an hour or two to make a temp. encode, especially when they can do other things during playback/uploading.
This is considerably more difficult for N64/PSX/DS/others, but those are the runs that are more difficult to watch in movie file form anyway. Imagine if the Super Mario 74 submission didn't come with a temp. encode? The rom patching instructions are so complicated, I followed them step by step TWICE and the patched rom wouldn't even run.
Perhaps mandating a temp. encode is too much, but it needs to at least be encouraged. Have a look at the workbench right now:
Sonic VR It's a hack, which already makes watching the movie file a pain. Yet the encode doesn't show up for 5 days, and the encode isn't embedded into the OP.
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance. 27 posts without an encode. Ironically, the last post in the topic is: "I would like if someone would encode this please."
Mega Man X6 A PSX run with no encode, and no posted emulator settings. Good luck getting that to synch. Also, PSX ISOs are like 4GBs, if you download the wrong one now it's 8 GB. I can only download 50 GB/month, I can't be wasting capacity like that just to watch a TAS.
Contra 14 posts without an encode. Seriously, how hard can it be to make a NES dump?
I'm not saying the TASers are to blame or anything. Just that if they were encouraged to provide temp. encodes we'd probably have to deal with a lot less unecessary waiting for youtube-ing.
I think what you're saying is, why not make the author go an extra mile after they have already went through the trouble of making a TAS? Otherwise it would be rather hard for them to find volunteers for encoding without somehow gaining their attention and asking them first. Which they can do easily by submitting.
Really, submitting a movie makes for a faster encode. All submissions get at least one. The only problem you should be listing in your first post is that many people are impatient go-getters who don't understand, or choose to ignore, the first two facts, and at the same time consider loading a ROM into an emulator an arduous task. So while your idea caters to that kind of people for the most part, the more diligent part of TASVideos populace will be forcibly deprived of watching a submission as soon as it's ready, because the only real way of notifying them about it is submitting.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
PSX ISOs fit on a standard CD (~700MB). There is no way you could fit 4GB on a PSX disc. You're probably thinking of PS2 games, which are on DVDs.
Encouraging temporary encodes is something I agree should be done. Doing it at the expense of making the submission process more convoluted just because people are impatient is silly.
Contra 14 posts without an encode. Seriously, how hard can it be to make a NES dump?
I'm not saying the TASers are to blame or anything. Just that if they were encouraged to provide temp. encodes we'd probably have to deal with a lot less unecessary waiting for youtube-ing.
The real difficult part is to make the dumped video available to others.
For many people, uploading bandwidths are much lower than downloading bandwidths, so even a low-quality encode of a ~15-minute movie could take hours to upload to a remote server. Which is worse, Internet-censorship etc. could make this procedure more difficult. For instance, Youtube is blocked in many schools and even whole countries and people there cannot upload a video to it at all unless they get on some proxies that allow/support uploading videos or VPNs etc.
<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days
<adelikat> no doubt
<adelikat> klmz, they still do
Dang kids these days.
The current ready availability of encodes is fantastic. It wasn't that long ago that encodes weren't available at all until the movie was published. Sure, it's always nice when the encodes show up sooner rather than later, but look at your possible sources for encodes:
1) The encoders for this site, who are all donating their time and computers. You really want to "force" them to provide encodes?
2) The creator of the TAS. Leaving aside the fact that just making the TAS is typically a monumental effort, many don't even speak English. How are you going to communicate the requirement and procedure for making an encode to them?
This is one situation in which I can safely say you should be grateful for what you already have. That applies to everyone whining about encodes in the submission threads too.
tl;dr encodes are a privilege, not a right
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Derakon wrote:
Dang kids these days.
The current ready availability of encodes is fantastic. It wasn't that long ago that encodes weren't available at all until the movie was published. Sure, it's always nice when the encodes show up sooner rather than later, but look at your possible sources for encodes:
1) The encoders for this site, who are all donating their time and computers. You really want to "force" them to provide encodes?
2) The creator of the TAS. Leaving aside the fact that just making the TAS is typically a monumental effort, many don't even speak English. How are you going to communicate the requirement and procedure for making an encode to them?
This is one situation in which I can safely say you should be grateful for what you already have. That applies to everyone whining about encodes in the submission threads too.
tl;dr encodes are a privilege, not a right
Hey, I was gonna post this!
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Derakon wrote:
Dang kids these days.
The current ready availability of encodes is fantastic. It wasn't that long ago that encodes weren't available at all until the movie was published.
tl;dr encodes are a privilege, not a right
This, exactly.
Back in the old days, people actually watched a run through an emulator, and they liked it that way. Granted, with larger sized games (psx particularly), watching a run through an emulator is a bit more laborious, but the amount of "large" (CD based) runs in the queue is still very small compared to "small" (cartridge) runs. Encodes are great, but they're not a god-given right. [/old man rant]
Definitely against this. I like having an encode, but if you're suggesting the run can't be submitted until an encode is finished I don't like that idea at all.
Seems to me the OP would rather solve problems by proposing solutions that create work for other people, than say, encoding stuff on the workbench really fast himself.
"Contra 14 posts without an encode. Seriously, how hard can it be to make a NES dump?"
Then do it?
Just sayin'.
Also, PSX ISOs are like 4GBs, if you download the wrong one now it's 8 GB. I can only download 50 GB/month, I can't be wasting capacity like that just to watch a TAS.
There are projects like Redump.org that attempt to catalog data about games on optical media in a way similar to or even better than Cowering's GoodTools. Maybe we should encourage authors to verify their dumps against those databases.
EDIT:
Enough with the Contra example, already. Encodes are now available ;).
I'll make a note of purposely encoding a video over 2GB in size for any future movies I submit, just to waste your bandwidth when the alternative is perfect quality for a whole 4MB.
Sonic VR It's a hack, which already makes watching the movie file a pain. Yet the encode doesn't show up for 5 days, and the encode isn't embedded into the OP.
The encode was posted several days before in the Genesis subforum: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=288037#288037
Furthermore, hacks of Sonic games no longer rely on IPS patches since several years ago, as they're based on disassemblies. Even the worst Sonic hack in the world comes in the form of a full rom hosted on sharing services such as mediafire / megaupload these days, and the best hacks (such as Sonic VR) are hosted on the Sonic Retro Wiki itself, removing the need to hunt for a specific Sonic rom and a specific patch file.
That said, popular games get encodes quite soon nowadays, sometimes you can find one in the second or third post of the Workbench thread, mere hours after the submission was posted.
From my point of view, I can generally only watch runs from the encode, but I don't mind waiting until there's an encode to watch the run (and I can still comment on the submissions thread if I know the game). I see no issue with letting people like judges get a head start on watching a run, when I know I'll eventually be able to watch it myself anyway.
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Atma wrote:
I'll make a note of purposely encoding a video over 2GB in size for any future movies I submit, just to waste your bandwidth when the alternative is perfect quality for a whole 4MB.
Watching the emulator movie on Linux+Wine is often difficult, if not impossible at all. That's why I prefer to use encodes for most platforms.
Nowadays, downloading them is much faster then updating my wine environment, having the latest gecko installed, possibly upgrading the emulator and then watchin with frameskip=2 because it's too slow otherwise.
But of course, "kids these days", there were times when we didn't have encodes at all until a movie was accepted, and I'm thankful for the work the encoders do in their spare time. Forcing anyone to do anything is a no-go.
There's still one point I have to agree on:
It's also annoying to have to check a topic multiple times before an encode is embedded into the OP
It's not immediately obvious when an encode was added, since the thread isn't marked as new on edits, nor will the "View unread posts"-link tell you about it.
Would it be possible to extend the submission system to mark submission threads that contain an encode? It might be as simple as a two-line heuristic in TVA's forum module:
if (stripos('[video', $submissiontext) !== false)
$posttopic = "(encode) $posttopic";
I think what you're saying is, why not make the author go an extra mile after they have already went through the trouble of making a TAS?
More importantly, this may dissuade some TASers from submitting. We are already pretty upset that there are some awesome Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest TASes on nicovideo that haven't been submitted here. Another barrier to submission is a very, very, bad idea.
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Yeah, mandating encodes will just delay submission or prevent some people from submitting entirely (leaving at best a full run in a game thread, just for it to receive little or no attention).
If there's a run without encode on the workbench and you want to watch it, either just download the movie file and watch it the old traditional way (some things in that workbench list of yours are much exaggerated, PSX has no special options bar some game specific fixes (only emulator version matters, which was noted), I've never had PSX runs desync other than because of emulator version (same with DS), and most others are perfectly watchable by emu without issues), or wait for an encode because sooner or later an encode will pop in anyway.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
I try to make temporary encodes before I make a submission, just to avoid the problem of people abstaining from voting until an encode appears (if it ever does). This is important because I have started working on PSX/GC games, which are on pretty large ISOs which would be hard for most people to download and watch on an emulator.
I don't think submissions should be delayed until a temporary encode is made, but since GC/Wii TASes will start being submitted, many people will not be able to watch the movie files until an encode is made (GC ISOs are about 1.4 GB and Wii ones are almost 4 GB). In this case, someone (maybe the author) should make an encode soon after the TAS is submitted.
Let me grumble too.
Encodes actually kill TASing spirit hidden inside watchers.
When people were forced to watch runs on emulator, they had a chance to tinker about, test whatever parts of the run seemed improvable, or just play this new game they didn't know about before seeing the TAS. And when playing the game people find tricks and glitches. They don't find them when watching encodes.
No wonder that majority of recent newcomers aren't TASers (while in the past majority of this forum members tried to tas something).
Encodes just make people more lazy, not more happy or anything. So no need to further encourage this vicious tendency, soon it will prevail anyway. Because encoding is much easier than TASing, so I foresee in 2012 all submissions will naturally have 0day encode as a norm. And TASers will be all the same people.
It's also annoying to have to check a topic multiple times before an encode is embedded into the OP
It's not immediately obvious when an encode was added, since the thread isn't marked as new on edits, nor will the "View unread posts"-link tell you about it.
Would it be possible to extend the submission system to mark submission threads that contain an encode? It might be as simple as a two-line heuristic in TVA's forum module:
if (stripos('[video', $submissiontext) !== false)
$posttopic = "(encode) $posttopic";
The above very much.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
