Posted: 10/2/2011 1:37 PM
Post subject: Encoding Nintendo DS runs
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AngerFist
Active player (437)
Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3517
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
First edition TAS of 2015 Innovative TAS of 2007
Hey folks. If there exists already a similar topic, feel free to merge this one with it. So far, of all the runs I've seen (obviously not all published DS games), the bottom screen has been absolutely unnecessary to me. Provides basically zero information, entertainment and other important stuff to me as a viewer (I am sure there are games where the bottom screen is important). That being said, if there isn't any rule regarding encoding DS runs, shouldn't we mainly focus on only encoding the upper screen?
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
Posted: 10/2/2011 1:38 PM
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Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
That would be terrible for Castlevania: Dawn Of Sorrow and Portrait Of Ruin! I agree with this for some games though, like Super Princess Peach, where the bottom screen only serves as 4 extra stylized buttons.
Posted: 10/2/2011 1:44 PM
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AngerFist
Active player (437)
Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3517
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
First edition TAS of 2015 Innovative TAS of 2007
Another issue I have with encoding both the upper and lower screen is how squeezed the encode looks, just to make them fit with the encode. Labeling it as narrowed encode. This certainly doesn't feel right but it's the DS afterall.
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
Posted: 10/2/2011 2:20 PM
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feos
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For useless bottom screen games we simply must stack the screens horizontally. And for the rest, like that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0_GIuWHnyQ&list=PL01B5410FCAA811BF&index=1
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.
Posted: 10/2/2011 2:38 PM
(Edited: 10/2/2011 3:52 PM)
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AngerFist
Active player (437)
Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3517
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
First edition TAS of 2015 Innovative TAS of 2007
That way of encoding slightly confuses me. Is it a dualrun or what? I currently still stand by my point.
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
Posted: 10/2/2011 3:50 PM
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Derakon
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
I don't think the "expanded top view plus stacked view on the side" is too hard to interpret, and it seems like a good compromise. I don't think you're going to be able to convince anyone to just leave the useless view out entirely for official encodes. One idea I've seen is that apparently you can have multiple video streams in a given container, which should be displayed in separate windows; thus, you could let the users decide how they want to arrange the screens. But that's more work on the users end.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 10/2/2011 6:24 PM
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ALAKTORN
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Posts: 2527
Location: Italy
DS TAS of 2012
feos wrote:
For useless bottom screen games we simply must stack the screens horizontally. And for the rest, like that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0_GIuWHnyQ&list=PL01B5410FCAA811BF&index=1
this is the best idea in my opinion
Posted: 10/2/2011 6:33 PM
Post subject: Re: Encoding Nintendo DS runs
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sgrunt
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AngerFist wrote:
So far, of all the runs I've seen (obviously not all published DS games), the bottom screen has been absolutely unnecessary to me.
Respectfully, you are one viewer, and it's not going to be the case that a) every viewer is focusing exclusively on the top screen and b) every viewer is not going to find it detrimental to have only one of the two screens visible in the encode. I, for one, think it could be considered misleading to not show everything that the console itself is outputting. Recall that the major purpose of our encodes is to provide high-quality videos for those unable or unwilling to view runs in the emulator itself, [wiki EncoderGuidelines]subject to the following to guidelines[/wiki]:
  • to inconvenience viewers as little as possible; and
  • to aim for video output that reflects what one would expect to see on an actual console.
Cutting any material at all in this fashion would go against these guidelines, besides which I do not think that it is our place as encoders as publishers to decide on our own what is important and what isn't important to viewers by doing so. EDIT: I have to note that the 1x2 screen idea is what I would consider to be a reasonable compromise for games where one screen is obviously dominant, but only for streaming purposes - I do not think that a primary encode should ever be in that form (or any other form that's not as true to the emulator / console viewing experience as possible), though that's not to say that such a setup might be provided as a downloadable secondary encode if there's demand for such a thing.
Posted: 10/3/2011 3:54 AM
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FractalFusion
Editor, Expert player (2080)
Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 3284
Glitchy TAS of 2013 Gameboy TAS of 2013 PSX TASer of 2010
Angerfist, if you don't want to see one screen of a dual-screen encode, install AVISynth and make a AVISynth script that cuts out the screen you don't want. Then play in a AVISynth-capable media player. I think Windows Media Player works, but I don't know which others yet. This can also be used to rearrange screens on encodes of TASes which run multiple games at once. Edit: If you have questions about it or you would me like to make a script, then ask me.
Posted: 10/3/2011 6:04 AM
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Warp
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
With mplayer you can display only part of a video (and mplayer will scale that part to be fullscreen, preserving aspect ratio of course). I'm sure there are players for Windows with a similar capability.
Posted: 11/19/2011 11:04 PM
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ledauphinbenoit
Joined: 8/29/2005
Posts: 148
Location: Dayton, OH
Are the following assumptions correct? SD/512/10bit444 should show just the 2 screens, oriented either horizontally or vertically based on how the game orients them. HD is up to the discretion of the encoder to chose whether one screen should be "featured". Both screens should appear somewhere, but possibly minimized in favor of one larger screen, aka Contra 4 HD encode.[/list] Edit: Also, should there be spacing between the 2 screens? Or is that entirely up to the encoder as well?
Posted: 11/19/2011 11:13 PM
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sgrunt
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Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
ledauphinbenoit wrote:
Are the following assumptions correct? SD/512/10bit444 should show just the 2 screens, oriented either horizontally or vertically based on how the game orients them.
True with the possible exception of 512s, which are intended for streaming and therefore may also be set up in the fashion as HD encodes.
ledauphinbenoit wrote:
HD is up to the discretion of the encoder to chose whether one screen should be "featured". Both screens should appear somewhere, but possibly minimized in favor of one larger screen, aka Contra 4 HD encode.
Also largely correct. The preferred style at the moment seems to be "1x2"-style, such as that seen in the YouTube encode for [1902] DS Super Mario 64 DS by mkdasher & ALAKTORN in 14:23.34, though as long as you're showing both screens somewhere, I probably think that's okay.
ledauphinbenoit wrote:
Edit: Also, should there be spacing between the 2 screens? Or is that entirely up to the encoder as well?
In my view, this is game-dependent. If there are segments where the two screens form one continuous view separated by some distance, the screens in the encode should also be separated by that distance (we have a few examples of this, but I cannot immediately think of any). Otherwise, I would prefer no gap, but it's not the end of the world if a gap is present outside of those cases.
Posted: 5/14/2012 11:55 PM
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henke37
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Posts: 899
Location: Sweden
Did we ever reach a consensus on this? I find it silly that the issue isn't addressed in the guidelines.
Posted: 5/15/2012 12:01 AM
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natt
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Remember that Grunt was the Senior Publisher at the time, so what he said is more than just an opinion. Looking through everything that was said, seems pretty unambiguous. Downloadables: Always both screens at original resolution. Extra split gap optional if appropriate for a particular game (eg, Sanic Colours). Youtubers: Depends on game, but for games primarily on one screen, the doublesize "main" screen on one side, next to the stacked both screens, seems to be the most popular. If a game actually uses both screens rather equally, should resemble the downloadables more (eg, Sanic Colours).