Post subject: Speedruns on DVD
Joined: 7/28/2005
Posts: 83
Location: Montreal, Canada
I just finished a rough DVD of the Mega Man X1 and Mega Man X2 joint run by DeHackEd. It takes advantage of DVD's multi-angle capabilities with five video tracks of the run: one matching the video as seen in the AVI on this site (split screen), two featuring each game on its own, and two with one game taking up the entire screen with a picture-in-picture of the other game in the upper-right portion of the screen. Four audio tracks are featured, including a trip-enducing 4.0 surround sound channel with Mega Man X 1 coming from the front speakers and Mega Man X 2 coming from the rear, a "VCD" stereo track with Mega Man X 1 monaurally coming from the left channel and X 2 from the right, and one for each game on its own. I'm aware that there's a certain interest in DVDs of these runs in general, and once I polish this one up I'll get to work on the other "recommended" runs. I was merely inquiring as to the interest in this. I mainly made this for myself so I could show runs to people when I'm somewhere where only a DVD player is accessible (or reasonable to "watch" something on), and from what I can tell interest seems to be reasonable enough for this sort of thing. I have no idea how distribution would work, whether by torrent or by some sort of mail ordering system (or a combination of the two), but I would like to get a feel for the level of interest in this. Incidentally, while this DVD only has the one run, other discs would have substantially more runs, since they will not be multi-angle. I currently need to encode more heavily in order to improve the picture quality, but otherwise the end result is quite good. Notes: The movie is encoded with interlacing at 59.94 frames per second. As a result the movie is about three seconds LONGER than it should be. There is no way to work around this and maintain reasonable picture quality, unfortunately. Also, since it's interlaced, it may not give reasonable picture quality on devices that don't support interlacing, such as some projection TVs or computer screens. This disc is designed with conventional television sets in mind. Similarly, the black border around the image is to avoid the "Action-safe" cutoff around conventional television screens. Mega Man X 1 and 2 Split Screen Mega Man X 1 with Mega Man X 2 Picture-in-Picture (the PiP has an opacity of 0.7) Mega Man X 2 with Mega Man X 1 Picture-in-Picture (the PiP has an opacity of 0.7) Switching between these video tracks is done by pressing the "angle" button on a DVD Player's remote. It generally takes about five or six seconds to change.
Former player
Joined: 6/28/2004
Posts: 219
Location: Raccoon City
Thats pretty really cool.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
The latter videos seem to be stretched horizontally, distorting proportions. Is this intentional? I don't think it's a good thing.
Player (206)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
Isn't the SNES picture supposed to fill your screen, though? From what I can tell, the proportions are wrong if it ISN'T stretched.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Joined: 10/3/2004
Posts: 138
The NTSC SNES pretty much has the same aspect ratio as the NES. I calculated the proper width of NES video for DVD and it's 650 pixels wide.
Joined: 8/26/2005
Posts: 7
Location: Westland, MI
I am currently finishing up a a DVD set for all of the time attack videos currently listed on bisqwit's site. I have categorized and grouped the time attacks together for better organization. The entire set will be aproxiamtely 20-25 DVD's will Lables and Cover art. I will glady seed this DVD's to anyone interested in packs until they have reached the masses and hopefully others will help me seed. I should have some samples up in the next week or so along with the cover arts and labels pending my job isn't too busy.
Evilheart
Joined: 11/2/2005
Posts: 198
If you watched it on a TV, would it really be that fuzzy?
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Former player
Joined: 3/30/2004
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Location: Heather's imagination
someone is out there who will like you. take off your mask so they can find you faster. I support the new Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun.
Player (206)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
It's a decent question!
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Skilled player (1828)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2161
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Cool, TAS on DVD would be cool to see, just like SDA archive have their speedruns on DVD. A question though, I'm no digital-movie-files expert or anything, but if you are to burn the TAS-movies to DVD's, will you use the current AVIs available or will you make new AVI recordings with better quality? I don't know if any current emulator we use can record avi's to DVD quality. Anyway, the DVD idea intrigues me, keep us updated on that part!
Joined: 10/3/2004
Posts: 138
Yes, you would regenerate the AVIs in a lossless format, then massage the video into DVD-compliant video. I've done this, and have created "perfect" test DVD copies of NES runs, with correct aspect ratio and no audio skew. The existing AVIs that can obtained via BT are useless for making DVDs. For FCEU NTSC output, you must resize the video to 650 pixels wide, pad with black to 720, and then fix the audio skew that is introduced due to a discrepancy between FCEU's actual emulation speed, and the round 60fps found in a generated AVI. I've talked about this issue on this forum, so it shouldn't be too hard to find. I find that an excellent tool for aiding in this process is the video scripting language AviSynth. Also, on this Doom9 thread, the issue was brought up, so I detailed my method for turning FCEU 60p output into DVD-compliant 29.97i, including screenshots (you'll also notice how my screenshots look more proper than those contributed by others into the thread) and a copy of my AviSynth script. I prefer a bilinear resize, since it gives a more "analog"-looking video. Here's an example of what I consider to be "perfect":
Skilled player (1828)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2161
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Oh, that picture looks nice, seems pretty lossless to me. :) If I'm not way off, I think a regular DVD film you can buy in stores can fit around 2 hours of film, maybe a little more. How much film (measured in time) do you think you can get on your DVD's LocalH, if you use that quality?
Joined: 10/3/2004
Posts: 138
I haven't determined that - I only did tests using 8000kbps CBR (and at least 192kbps AC3 audio). The image above is the direct output of my AviSynth script, before any compression (and is what I believe to be the closest possible replication of capturing RGB from an NES, which currently isn't feasibly possible). One issue with DVD encoding - MPEG-2, as used on DVDs, halves the chroma resolution in both directions. This would be more noticeable with NES-based content, than it would with "real" video. However, I'll state that I did not notice much of this chroma issue on a standalone DVD player. For cost reasons, I'd of course be going with single-layer DVD+R. I'll have to do some more tests to figure out approximately how much video I can fit on one disc without over-compressing it (such that excessive artifacts are present). Edit: It also goes without saying that the more action and movement there is on screen, the higher the minimum acceptable bitrate. I'll do some tests and figure out my boundaries. Also, I will only make movies from FCMs, as I don't use Famtasia and conversion is not feasible.
Joined: 11/2/2005
Posts: 198
Could I do the same thing with a video cd as my computer has no dvd burner?
A life without cheese is a life without life.
Joined: 10/3/2004
Posts: 138
You could, but you'd lose half the frames, since we generally deal with progressive 60fps output, and VCD can only handle progressive 29.97fps output. Unfortunately, especially with the NES, you'll have situations where a sprite happens to be visible during the frames that get dropped, and invisible during the frames that get kept.
Joined: 11/2/2005
Posts: 198
I have decided to buy a dvd burner for my pc, but whenever I try to make an avs, It says error. So does anyone know of any sites that have more info on how to use Avisynth?
A life without cheese is a life without life.
Joined: 11/16/2005
Posts: 46
LocalH, Could you either post some links or a short tutorial of how you converting the demos to DVD? I'm guessing you are doing the encoding after you get the frames out, right? I would love to make a HQ dvd version of some of these TAS and then provide a torrent. *Edit* Nm, I found the FAQ page.. http://tasvideos.org/HowToMakeAVI.html
Joined: 11/16/2005
Posts: 46
I'm hitting the 4 GB limit even when using Huffyuv v2.1.1. Are you guys just recording to segments AVIs or is there a way around this?
Joined: 10/3/2004
Posts: 138
Here is a document I wrote up describing my technique for making Genesis runs into DVD, and I've linked in this thread to a post I wrote over on doom9.org detailing my NES technique. As for the 4GB limit, I would advise you to use the CamStudio Lossless Codec which is available here. I has several compression settings, include a fast (but large) compression called LZO, and also a GZIP mode with settings from 1 to 9 (the higher the setting, the slower the encode, but the smaller the file - I recommend using 9 for the absolute smallest possible filesize). Using this codec, my "raw" for Gigafrost's Zelda 2 run ended up being 107841400 bytes for 8:40 of video, about 40% of which was audio. Since 107841400 goes into 4GB about 40 times, that means that you should easily be able to get some longer runs under the 4GB mark, at least an hour easily (although I wouldn't take that result too literally, because it depends on the game's graphics content and amount of on-screen motion). Audio is of course a constant with the NES (and would be exactly double with stereo consoles). And, I also use NTFS, and for the most part it seems the tools I use can support >4GB files on NTFS, so I haven't really taken that into consideration. Also, some emulators do indeed automatically segment an AVI recording. Gens Movie Test, for example, splits to a new AVI about every 1GB, and I'm pretty sure that Famtasia splits, but as I haven't used Famtasia in ages, I don't know exactly where it splits to a new AVI.
Joined: 11/16/2005
Posts: 46
Cool, I'll check those out. Thanks.
Joined: 11/2/2005
Posts: 198
Hey what program do you guys use to author your dvd's?
A life without cheese is a life without life.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Pegasys DVD author 1.6. I'm looking for a better solution if someone can provide it.
Joined: 11/2/2005
Posts: 198
I find Powerproducer to be very good, though I'm not sure how much it costs, because I got mine bundled with my burner. (It's quite a bit I think, but it's worth it)
A life without cheese is a life without life.
Joined: 10/3/2004
Posts: 138
I'm personally studying Adobe Encore DVD, due to it's integration with Photoshop and After Effects. But, like all Adobe products, the learning curve is quite steep, so I wouldn't recommend it if you don't already understand the intricacies of DVD-Video.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Ah, integration with Photoshop and After Effects... that sounds very good. I'm going to give that one a spin.