Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
sgrunt wrote:
I now see that there's been very little discussion of the topic at hand other than by those who originally prompted this thread to be created again stating their arguments.
I think that's not entirely accurate. The reason why there's been very little discussion is because people seem to agree that aspect ratio correction is unnecessary. That includes moozooh, Lex, Flygon, Nach (in this specific case), Bisqwit, Noob Irdoh and myself. I don't think anyone besides you is explicitly for keeping the aspect ratio so far.
As for the average viewer, I don't think we'll be hearing that much from him. People probably don't care too much about this. I mentioned in the other topic that if you search Youtube for DOS games from the mid-90s era that used 320x200 as their standard resolution are also pretty much exclusively uploaded without aspect ratio correction. People don't know or don't care enough about it.
But let me address the core issue here that you correctly raise:
sgrunt wrote:
To begin with, one of the founding principles of the site was that the site's movies should look as though they could have been played with authentic hardware. This is reflected as far back as the very first draft of the movie rules
The thing is that the SGB is really just an adapter for playing GB games on a SNES with some extremely minor differences. These games weren't made for the SGB—they were made for the GB. I would argue that the games we're playing have far more recognition in their original aspect ratio for that reason. At the very least, it's what these games were designed for. And not to put words in anyone's mouth, but Bisqwit mentioned he didn't have this particular scenario in mind when he wrote those rules. I think not stretching the content would be more in line with his intentions of making sure encodes are seen as people would recognize them.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Ilari wrote:
Dada wrote:
Mine just processed 360p in addition to 240p and 480p, so it looks like it's still going. That's nice. Every time an encode went up to 480p and then also got a 360p version went on to be full HD eventually.
Awesome!
There's no 720p/1080p version though. That's weird.
sgrunt wrote:
I would like to see the result of setting the AR flag for that encode, partly as a basis for comparison to without using it, and partly to see if there is any difference in the audience reaction between the two possible settings.
I reuploaded the same run twice. Once using ZMBV to see if it would somehow process faster. I've added the stretch tag to that one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxTyqGLZqDM
Let me know if you want to see it on the Original quality one instead.
By the way, I don't think there will be much of a difference in reaction. People generally don't pay that much attention to minutiae such as aspect ratio, especially when a large amount of game videos on Youtube don't have the right setting anyway. Just search for any 320x200 DOS game: they're pretty much all uploaded without aspect ratio correction.
The best thing to do, in my view, is to go by this topic.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
HHS wrote:
EULAs are of no legal significance whatsoever. They are not contracts, despite containing the word "agreement" in the title. There is no copy of the EULA in the vendor's office with your signature on it. You are not entering into a contract by clicking on something on your computer screen. You are not engaging in a conduct that indicates consent on your part to form a contract, you are in fact not engaging in a "conduct" at all, you are just sitting at home using your own computer.
It may be different where you live, but in the US clickwrap licenses have repeatedly been found to be enforceable. With some caveats, of course. Things that are clearly unconscionable can't be enforced.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Derakon wrote:
Dada wrote:
They might as well put in their EULA that writing negative blog posts about their company is illegal. Doesn't make it so.
In fact, I'm pretty sure companies have tried this, perhaps not in EULAs, but in contracts e.g. for review copies.
I'm sure companies try to make deals like that a lot, and successfully too, but I can't recall ever hearing about any lawsuits regarding this. Maybe in clear cases of libel, but not that I can remember anyway.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Lex wrote:
It says "You may not modify, enhance, supplement, create derivative work from, adapt, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise reduce the CD-ROM to human readable form." in the installer's EULA.
That's what we've been trying to explain all along: they can put that in the EULA all they want, but it's not going to make reverse engineering illegal. All they can do is terminate their contract with you, but they can't sue you.*
They might as well put in their EULA that writing negative blog posts about their company is illegal. Doesn't make it so.
*: technically you can always get sued for any reason, but it would be a frivolous lawsuit.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Mine just processed 360p in addition to 240p and 480p, so it looks like it's still going. That's nice. Every time an encode went up to 480p and then also got a 360p version went on to be full HD eventually.
NitroGenesis wrote:
No. I uploaded it 5 times and it only processed to 240p and 480p
Every video that failed to process that I can remember only got 240p and 480p, and no screenshot.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Slowking wrote:
Dada wrote:
The Youtube version I encoded still hasn't processed to HD. Hopefully Brandon's version will fare better.[/video]
From what I've seen with the FF8 TAS, youtube won't process videos into HD that exceed a certain length.
Yeah, but the segmented version of FF8 had three segments that were as long as this single video, and they all did encode to full HD quality. Youtube has been getting worse lately.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Another good example is OpenTTD. This is a reverse engineered (and subsequently improved) version of Transport Tycoon Deluxe.
When I started playing it, I originally thought MicroProse Ltd. had generously made the game open source, but they haven't.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
DarkKobold wrote:
(AFAIK, end-user license agreements haven't been tested in US Courts).
There have been a few cases where the user was clearly in violation of the license. Like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProCD_v._Zeidenberg
However, clickwrap licenses don't circumvent the law. You couldn't make a contract saying "you can't sue me if you accept this license", for example. The same goes for reverse engineering.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
A lot of software companies explicitly put a clause in their terms of use that disallows the reverse engineering of their software, but this would not stand up to legal scrutiny (it's the same with a lot of other things they put in there).
Some required reading: http://www.memagazine.org/contents/current/features/trade101/trade101.html
As a thought exercise, suppose you invent a lightsaber (à la Star Wars) and begin selling them in numerous quantities. A competitor buys one of your products, gains an understanding of its overall function, tears into it in order to reverse-engineer the circuitry involved, and begins selling competing lightsabers. You have no patent. Unfortunately, there is no trade secret violation in this scenario because the moment the product was sold, its status as a trade secret ended. No less an authority than the U.S. Supreme Court stated that it is perfectly lawful to “steal” a company’s trade secrets by reverse engineering.
This is a US-centric explanation but this is basically the same everywhere.
In fact, until the emergence of EFI practically all consumer computer hardware (save for Apple and various other smaller vendors) had BIOS code at their core that was basically reverse engineered from IBM's original work.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Just finished uploading the run to Youtube. Right now it doesn't have a 4:3 flag, but that can be added if necessary.
Link to video
Edit: it will take a while to process...
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Mister Epic wrote:
How about we get rid of expressions such as "SD", "HD", "Standard", "Primary", "Native" and "#X" and simply label them according to the website it's meant for? Like an "Archive.org encode", a "Download encode", a "YouTube encode", etc.
That is nearly exactly what people were using... before they realized they could save a lot of keystrokes by referring to them as 512kb, HD and SD, respectively.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Interestingly, even the border appears to have been made for a 1.0 PAR, even though it's only visible when using a TV screen.
But it's pretty clear that the game art should be the leading factor, and it clearly wasn't made for this kind of stretching.
As for the border, I honestly don't care too much.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
I wouldn't mind using another term if it bothers people, but it's just a term. I have the sense not to use it outside of this site because, like you say, our use of these terms goes outside of the accepted definitions. As long as we're aware that the term would be confusing to places other than this community, I think we're fine.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
fyi, I'm also working on an HD encode due to the delay. I don't mean to "steal" the claim from Brandon but it would seemed like a good idea as a way of making sure it will be done soon.
Stretched to 4:3:
