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FODA wrote:
i didn't read many of the posts, but if we put a watermark, then the person stealing the video will easily put a bigger watermark right on top of our watermark, hiding it completely.
Precisely. I don't wish to go on a competitive war, it will just annoy the audience. I'm already doing the most I dare to discourage video ripping without upsetting the watchers of the AVIs.
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nitsuja wrote:
So to set the desired rate and resolution, it's only necessary to change the pointed-to width/height/rate values passed into VCRComp_startFile?
Exactly.
nitsuja wrote:
Is there anything known that VCRComp_notifyNewRes and VCRComp_notifyNewRate will be useful for, or are they only there in case some future use is found for them?
Ogg-vorbis can store audio of arbitrary sampling rate. I don't know if it can cope with changing sampling rates though. But it's there in case one wants to encode a stream where the sampling rate is decided by the game, but that is not known yet by the time VCRComp_startFile() is called. It doesn't work nicely if the game changes the sampling rate later, though...
Both mp3 and mpeg4 can technically cope with specifications that change in the middle of the stream, but I don't think many decoders or encoders can handle that.
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Morrison wrote:
Phil Cote's Castlevania in 11:41 should be starred!
It's predecessor was starred at some point, but I'm not sure why it lost its star. Probably in favor of some other movie of similar type.
I'll rotate a star from Ninja Five-0 to Castlevania. :)
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The moon stands for a notable publication. Mostly they're meant to be attention-grabbers at the front page.
When the movie is scrolled out from the list on the front page, it no longer has that purpose. It doesn't lose its status, but the moon is just never displayed after that.
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HiddenGamer wrote:
SO Dvd-r's only accept mpeg 2?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD#DVD-Video
And ps: It is neither the filesize nor not the visual quality that distinguishes codecs apart. It is the quality/size ratio.
You can accomplish nearly perfect visual quality with mpeg1, mpeg2, xvid, x264, ... any of them, if you use high bitrate enough.
And similarly, you can get small files with any of them, if you use a low bitrate.
The difference is in what quality you get with a given bitrate.
A car can travel 1 km. A pedestrian can travel 1 km.
A car can travel for an hour. A pedestrian can travel for an hour.
The difference is neither the distance they can go, nor the time they can keep up with it, but the ratio of those (distance per time, i.e. speed).
Similarly, the main difference between codecs lies is the ratio of quality/size, not in the available qualities nor in the available sizes.
I've been getting the feeling that you don't understand this core fact yet.
For example, yesterday you said "unless the bitrate is up'd, then you might as well use xvid". This is not true. If we used xvid with the same bitrate, the quality would be a lot worse. Yes, you can accomplish good quality with xvid by using a high bitrate, but same goes for every codec. The difference is in _how_ big bitrate you need in order to accomplish that desired quality.
Similarly, the difference in mpeg1 and mpeg2 is not in _what_ qualities you can accomplish with them, but in how high bitrate you need to get the same result. (And also, the format is different, which is why you can't interchange them in DVD.)
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Andy Olivera wrote:
Is this the same problem we were having with FCEU? Does Mupen run at exactly 60fps? I'm guessing not, so all we need to do is find the precise speed and convert it into a fraction for the AVI and that should solve the problem without skipping/adding frames, right?
It is not a matter of FPS. The problem is that audio is only generated at the game's whim. And I have already solved this issue.
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nitsuja wrote:
Does an "extern "C" {...}" need to be added somewhere?
Yes, that seems to be the case. I added it now, patch updated.
EDIT: Apparently it's more complicated than this. Yes, the problems are resolved by adding extern "C" { ... } at right places, but apparently, the places are scattered around. Many awful hacks.
#ifdef __WIN32__
extern ...
#endif
are found in many functions in that module separately, instead of having a clear API. Each one of those needs the "C" to be added in them.
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[EDIT]
I moved posts from a couple of existing threads into this thread.
This weekend, I worked a little on Mupen64 AVI recording code, and as a result, portions of it were rewritten -- affecting even the vcr_compress API.
http://bisqwit.iki.fi/src/mupen64-vcr-patch2-bisqwit.txt
= source code patch, applies to code extracted from mupen64_src-rerecording-v8.7z (after converting CRLFs into LFs)
The change introduces my custom perfect noiseless A/V sync into the AVI recording mechanism by duplicating/dropping video frames as explained earlier.
It also incorporates a lanczos audio and video scaler.
However, it is incomplete!
1. I have not tried to compile it yet, because I have no access to a Windows computer here.
2. The Windows AVI recording dialog needs to be changed a bit. I cannot do this because I lack Windows programming experience.
- The AVI recording dialog should ask two extra questions: desired video resolution, and desired audio sampling rate.
If the desired video resolution differs from the size the game is rendered at, the video will be scaled using a lanczos scaler before saving into the AVI. Examples speaking in favor of this option have been posted earlier in this thread.
And it should ask the desired audio sampling rate. The emulator will use a lanczos scaler to resample the game's outputted audio into the target rate, and will do that reliably even if the rate changes in the middle of game. The lanczos scaler has better quality than the linear sampler that there was before.
The changed API also supports implementing encoders into formats that allow changing the video resolution during recording, and formats that allow changing the audio rate during recording.
I repeat, this is unfinished code and help is needed to finish it.
A breakdown of the changes in this patch:
* Makefile: Added a rule for vcr.o, removed vcr_resample.o from the linkage list
* config.h: Added VCR_SUPPORT as default, because the code doesn't even compile without it
* main_gtk.c: Fixed an error
* nesvideos_piece.*: Removed obsolete files
* vcr.c: Renamed into vcr.cpp
* vcr.cpp: Added a lanczos rescaler, a perfect A/V sync and decreased the number of global variables
* vcr.h: Removed non-op function "invalidatedCaptureFrame"
* vcr_compress.c*: The semantics of VCRComp_startFile() have changed, updated the files to match it; added also stubs for two notify functions.
* vcr_compress.h: Added new functions, changed some, added documentation
* vcr_resample.*: Removed obsolete files
* main_win.c: Removed mention of non-op "invalidatedCaptureFrame"
* Makefile.win: Removed linkage of vcr_recompress.*, updated rules for vcr.c*
* mupen64.dev: Removed mention of nesvideos-piece.h
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JXQ wrote:
Vanilla Dome 2 (secret)
Vanilla Dome 3
Vanilla Dome 1 was also very cool.
Still watching. This is very cool indeed. And I agree that platformers are the best kind of TASes :)
[Edit: I meant 1.. not 2]
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TSA wrote:
I don't see why this run was published here.
I published this run, so I'll comment on this one.
I do not follow SDA. In fact, I don't know what happens over there. Occassionally, some new spectacular movie may raise a popular discussion, in which case I may download the movie and watch it. I have watched one Ocarina of Time speedrun, one Half-Life speedrun, one Half-Life 2 speedrun, and a few other speedruns. (And I have enjoyed them all btw.)
So my motivations of publishing a TAS on this site have nothing to do with SDA.
This movie was published, because it's OoT, which is a very popular game, and because the movie is entertaining to watch and is clearly different than non-TA speedruns. (*)
I am not an expert with OoT -- in fact, I have never played it. I also do not know what kind of new techniques there exist that are not used in this movie. Thus, I cannot judge it for its lack of techniques. Others can, but all negative points raised about the techniques used in this run were sharply diminished in comparison to the expectations made towards publishing this TAS. It is a famous game, and as a confirmation of the expectations, it was downloaded over a thousand times in the first day after its release.
I hope this answers your questions.
*) This is not a reference to any particular speedrun or any particular player. I am talking about features feasible in the playing.
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AzHP wrote:
Hmm...wouldn't that cause skips in the video instead? Up to 5 seconds of skipping according to the patch?
It may cause skipping in the video.
However, most N64 games naturally have a low FPS (OoT has 20 fps in 3D scenes, 30 fps in status screens), and we make the avi at 60 fps -- and the skip/duplicate ratios are very subtle -- chances to that two frames in a row skipped are very low.
Skipping 1 frame (or usually even 2) will not result in loss of visual information, unless the game actually works at 60 fps speed at that moment.
In OoT, I don't think frames were ever skipped; they were sometimes duplicated, instead.
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This is offtopic, but re: The A/V sync problems, I will try to release an updated Windows version next weekend, that should have perfect A/V sync with nondistorted audio.
(Or, if someone else wants to try it, take this patch <http://bisqwit.iki.fi/src/mupen64-windows-patch-bisqwit.txt> and find the relevant parts. Core ideas: Audio is _not_ modified in the VCR code; video frames are duplicated or skipped as per need; an "audiolead" variable controls the floating point rate control variable "videorate", which is the factor by which to speed/slow down the video and that defaults to 1.0.
Video can be scaled to an arbitrary size with a lanczos scaler.
The audio is resampled to target rate with a lanczos scaler _after_ the sync is done, but this part is not included in the patch, because it happened on my server remotely.)
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At frame ~3650, you should have used the pogo stick to jump into the pit to gain greater vertical velocity and reach the bottom faster. I tested it, it would have been 3 frames faster.
I couldn't find more instances of this error though.
At the pirate boss, couldn't you have luck-manipulated him to jump closer towards the chest that appears?
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Erave wrote:
How come in the first bowser hallway, the picture and the end of the corridor was Bowser. Isn't it supposed to start as Peach then turn into bowser as you fall into the trap hole?
Yes, it is supposed to do as you thought. It is an error in the graphics plugin used in the emulator when the AVI was made.
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An emulator is not a game. It is the engine on which the game runs. You need the game separately, as a "ROM image".
Do not ask us to give you them, or to tell you where to download them.
Game ROM images are copyrighted and distribution of them is pirating, which is illegal in many countries. Such activity is not allowed on these boards.
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Nightcom wrote:
Nice. Why that picture though?
Because I wasn't satisfied with the three provided above.
That one is not perfect either. It's actually quite difficult to find a good shot, considering that most of the game Link is viewed from the behind.
