Hi there! BizHawk users should use this guide instead! It's much quicker and easier!
Hi there. It's me, your buddy Samsara. Do you need a shiny temp encode for your WIP or submission, but don't have the time, knowledge, or Spikestuff required to do it? Then this guide is probably for you! I've been making temp encodes in my spare time for as long as I can remember, at least after that nasty bout of permanent retrograde plot amnesia I developed during what fans call "easily the worst arc of the series", so this guide is going to teach you my method for knocking these babies out, because I know exactly what all y'all want, and it's to be more like me.
I'm not claiming this is the quickest or even easiest way, but it works for me and it's easy enough for most people to understand. It's a pick-up-and-go sorta deal now. Coupla clicks and boingy-banga-kabonga, you got yourself a brand spankin' new encode ready to shove onto someone else's stream in a month or so before you upload it to YouTube and submit!
This process will not make publication-quality encodes. If you're a beginner and you want to make publication-quality encodes,
I've got a couple choice words for you. But seriously, if you want to learn how to make publication-quality encodes, you'll want to read basically any other thing in this subforum. This guide is for nothing more than temporary encodes!
Okay. Right. Got that? I hope so. If not, read it again.
To anyone who's actually good at encoding: If you have any way to improve this guide to make it easier or more efficient, by all means post it!
EDIT2: Due to some recent things happening with downloads, it is time for some Solid Rewriting. Everything should be easier now.
PART ONE: DUMPING, AND NOT THE DIRTY KIND
Actually getting the video to encode involves a fun process known as frame dumping, which in layman's terms means "recording the dang video". The emulators we use for the site all have AVI recording options, which can be found in menus. Look around, you'll see it.
When you want to record your sweet TAS or your sweet WIP or your sweet ass, you sexy sexy beast, pause the emulator and load up the movie. If you're using FCEUX or other non-BizHawk emulators, make sure the sound is on before starting to record, otherwise your dump will most likely be without audio! Most versions of BizHawk should be able to dump audio while being muted, though BizHawk 1.11.7 specifically adds a Sound Master Enable option that must be on.
Now for the actual recording part. When starting a recording, you'll get a choice between video codecs. The best option to use for great looking encodes is a little codec known as
Lagarith, which comes with a nice and easy installer so I don't have to tell you to hunt down a specific folder. I don't have all day, here, even in written form! The default option when dumping, Full Frames (Uncompressed), is exactly as it sounds. It dumps every frame perfectly without caring about compression or file size. This will give you picture-perfect, lossless quality, but even a tiny 1-minute Game Boy video may take up hundreds of MB. Lagarith is also a lossless codec, but it's very much easier on the ol' hard drive, giving just as perfect dumps with much lower file sizes. Lagarith is preferred in every case, so get it, use it, and love it.
When your TAS or WIP finishes, just stop AVI recording at a suitable time and your video will magically appear where you told it to, just like computers always do!
PART TWO: THE NEW AND IMPROVED EASY PART
Before, this was a long section of the guide that told you to download a bunch of codecs and set up a specific environment, but I had an epiphany after most of those links went dead and everything is much simpler now. Just download this here folder:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10529315/Encoding%20-%20Temp.7z
https://mega.nz/#!tz4hjTBR!fVvYv2FjRJO1tY8ru869uC_TTBljLAtOOZXcJvKUqqs
HOLY H*CK, 2020 EDIT: THIS IS 4 YEARS OUT OF DATE! I'll update it with a new, modernized version in the near future. Everything still works, just DO NOT UPDATE ANYTHING IN MEGUI, EVEN IF PROMPTED!
This is a portable MeGUI setup that contains all the codecs I recommended, as well as AvsPmod for editing AVS files, as well as a couple premade AVS files that can be edited. After you get that, all you have to do is four simple instructions:
1. Unzip the folder to a location of your choice
2. Open up one of the AVS files (
aaa-consoletemps or
aaa-handheldtemps) and paste in your full video path. The easiest way to get that is to Shift+Right Click your video and choose "Copy as path". Your AVISource line should look roughly like this:
Language: Avisynth
AVISource("C:/Users/You/Pornography/video1.avi")
If you have a much longer encode that's split up into multiple parts, you'll want to do something like this:
Language: Avisynth
AVISource("part1.avi") + AVISource("part2.avi") + AVISource("part3.avi")
or
Language: Avisynth
AVISource("part1.avi", "part2.avi", "part3.avi")
And so on and so forth for each individual part.
If you made a temp that includes different parts of different resolutions, then you may have noticed that an error gets thrown up if you try to do this. You have to manually resize each clip to be the same resolution before it'll let you encode. A messy, but simple-to-remember, way to do this is as follows, but you can check the other posts in this thread when someone inevitably tells me how to do it better:
Language: Avisynth
AVISource("part1.avi").PointResize(1024,896) +
AVISource("part2.avi").PointResize(1024,896) +
AVISource("part3.avi").PointResize(1024,896)
If you do this, you don't need the standalone PointResize at the end, since you're already manually resizing everything to an HD resolution.
3. Open up MeGUI and drop in the AVS file, and after that all you gotta do is click Autoencode. It should already be set to No Target Size (Use Profile Settings), if it isn't then just choose that option and go forward.
Now you have a shiny new HD encode ready for YouTube!
Continue reading the thread for other pieces of advice, such as how to properly format DS game encodes.
Edit by feos:
If the above is for whatever reason not
easy enough for you, we also have a solution that's simplified to the point of stupidity (sometimes it's exactly what's needed):
http://tasvideos.org/EncodingGuide/CasualEncoding.html
