Joined: 11/22/2004
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Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Acheron86 wrote:
(Also, why we're using spoiler tags in a game that came out when I was in high school is confusing.)
When Final Fantasy VIII came out, Bill Clinton was still in office. The One Piece anime hadn't even started airing yet. The Euro was still a theoretical concept. Windows 98 Second Edition had just been released and Mac OS X was nonexistent. The ILOVEYOU virus had not yet been created.
Can anybody think of other ways to make me feel old?
DarkKobold wrote:
So.... is anyone doing the SD encode?
I am, since I already have all the files.
edit: screenshot (square pixels, so does not need aspect ratio correction):
Joined: 11/22/2004
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Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
boct1584 wrote:
As far as the plot goes, I subscribe to the theory that Edea actually killed Squall at the end of Disc 1 and the entire rest of the game is a dream he has as his brain shuts down.Google search for "Squall's Dead" if you like. Not posting a link because it won't work right with the spoiler tags and the URL is a spoiler if you subscribe to the theory.
Oh yeah, I love that theory. Alternative explanations are usually very interesting to read because they do make sense on some level, even if they can rarely be perfectly convincing (as I recall it the creator himself didn't actually think it was true). Also love the theory that says Ultimecia is Rinoa.
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I actually did have sound desync, not sure why. I was able to fix it, though, and am now finishing up the Youtube HD encode. The audio file had a much longer silence before the "start of game" sound (in the video it was 8.771 seconds). I also had desync in disc 4 because the sound had 3.2 seconds more silence. That last one is probably related to my having to recapture the disc 4 switch (I believe that encoding at turbo speed might have caused two segments, the disc 2 and disc 4 switches, to be recorded at incorrect resolutions (640x448 and 320x224 respectively); capturing without turbo fixed that.)
Joined: 11/22/2004
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Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Noob Irdoh wrote:
This already happened in the past but now with DarkKobold's 8-hours movie we have a blatant example, of people voting without watching the movie. Unless they had access to earlier WIPs, the three people who already voted on this after only 2 hours didn't have the chance to watch it.
We did, as has been pointed out already. DarkKobold was constantly releasing new WIPs on Youtube so that everybody could see them without even having the ISO. All I really needed to see was the disc 4 events.
I personally don't think that people voting before watching a movie is a very big issue. It's not a matter of simply voting; publishers have to take the arguments people make into account as well. If someone were to post that there's actually a rather big and easy improvement to make, the run probably won't be published no matter how many people vote yes. Similarly, people may vote yes without having actually seen the movie but that doesn't mean people can't post valid criticism of the run or have it ignored.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
PikachuMan wrote:
You could lock this thread 'cause I think it don't need to be discussed anymore.
I never quite understood why people say "lock this topic" when it's done for them. Someone else might have the same or a very similar problem and find this topic through Google, no need to lock it so that they can't reply.
Joined: 11/22/2004
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Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
This method is probably the nicest way of dealing with it: http://wedemandhtml.com/tmp/nice_ff8dk-640x480.avi
Decimate by 3, deinterlace blend (double framerate, bottom field first), making sure to use the right offset. Though that causes the FPS to be 40.
Here's the same video converted to 60FPS.
http://wedemandhtml.com/tmp/nice60_ff8dk-640x480.avi
edit: bleah, I've got segments 194 and 448 in the wrong resolution (640x448 and 320x224 respectively). They should be 640x480, but the emulator did not dump them correctly. I'll have to redump them. Unless anybody else happens to have dumped the run in a lossless format and has them in the correct resolutions.
edit: seems that some people might have different segment numbers than me. To clarify: I need the "please insert disc 2" fade-in, and the "please insert disc 4" fade-in. All other source material is as good as done.
Joined: 11/22/2004
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There's one last problem to be solved for the FF8 encode: I have no idea what to do with the disc switch fades: http://wedemandhtml.com/tmp/195_ff8dk-640x480.avi
If anybody could shed some light on this, that would be great. It almost seems like some kind of strobe effect. I've seen the same effect when playing FF8 on a real PSX hooked up to a PC monitor.
I've talked about it with several people on the ffmpeg irc channel but nobody knew what it is. Maybe some kind of frequency problem/difference between PC/tv.
edit: this is what happens when I decimate by 3 and then blend deinterlace... looks better but it's not a full fade to black. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJiF0RWZZE4
edit: choosing a different offset for the decimation seems to fix the problem:
Link to video
Joined: 11/22/2004
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That's weird, I have one segment in 320x224 that should be 640x480 (the disk 4 fade-in, segment 448).
Besides that, I wonder what to do with these segments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeumK4B_onI
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Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
natt wrote:
nanogyth wrote:
Yes
Does anyone have the PC version? The pixels would have to be square there, so it should be an easier target to aim at than analog captures.
That would require assuming that the developers of the PC version understood the exact specifics of the aspect ratio on the Playstation version and replicated them accurately; seems unlikely.
I checked some screenshots on Google. The screenshots that seem to have been saved accurately (without resizing or cropping, etc) seem to indicate that 320x224 is indeed how it's supposed to be, and this is reflected in the PC version as well. Here's an example (640x448). So as it turns out, this game should be encoded (in my view) with a 10/7 ratio.
Joined: 11/22/2004
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Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
This discussion was pretty much inevitable, I think. It's no problem. This is an 8 hour long TAS, but it manages to show a ton of great things. Besides that, this is a truly classic game which I've been looking forward to seeing TASed for quite some time. Had a great time watching the various WIPs and I think the final result is definitely worth a big yes vote. :)
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Since 320x224 is square pixels, does that mean it does not need to be resized to 320x240 for the aspect ratio to be correct? That greatly simplifies things.
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natt wrote:
There are only two vertical resolutions for the ntsc PSX: 240 and 480. 240 is ~60p; 480 is ~60i. Any other supposed vertical resolution is in effect a cropped version of one of those. Practically speaking, you didn't see more than about 450 lines or so on actual hardware (overscan).
So how does overscan affect this? For example, the main gameplay is dumped by the emulator as 320x224, is that simply because it was 240 but got cropped by overscan to 224? I don't know much about how overscan works, so I need some guidance here, particularly in determining how we will treat the source material. The video on the previous page is my attempt at positioning things based on what looks good, there's no science behind that effort. At this point, however, I don't even know if we should correct the 320x224 material to 4:3.
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Dooty wrote:
Sorry to give you such a trouble Dada, it's also my fault as I was following a YouTube video entitled "99 Mudokons Guide", so I thought it was a correct branch for my movie.
No need to apologize, I should have paid better attention :)
Although I still think it's slightly silly that I need to redo the encode since the subtitles rule hasn't always been very consistently enforced.
Anyway, the new encodes are almost done (HD is already uploaded, just need to finalize the SD encode), so I'm sure this can be published soon!
Edit: new HD encode will show up soon.
Link to video
Edit: SD encode will finish uploading in about three minutes http://wedemandhtml.com/tmp/Dooty_ABE_SD.mkv
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If I take the menu videos, which are 368x224, and first letterbox them to 380x230, then crop 16px from the left side and 6px from the top, then scale everything to 320x224 (same resolution as regular gameplay and battles), I get the following:
Link to video
Quite arbitrary but it does look similar to the real screenshots this way.
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Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Flygon wrote:
And whoever wrote the PSXjin AVI dumper... will want to realize that their .WAV dumping support is a bit broken. I'll have to consult .kkapture for that one.
I have not yet checked the audio, but what exactly did you find wrong with it?
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Thank you, that's very helpful. Could you also make a screenshot sampled at 720x480 of the regular gameplay so we can compare that too?
Judging from these screenshots, the x216 height resolutions are simply letterboxed with 4px black top and bottom. That simplifies things.
edit: it's strange. If I take the menu, for example, which is 368x224, and then simply scale it to 320x224, it's simply not in the center of the screen. In your screenshots, however, it is. If I move the menu to the left by 6px, then crop off 4px from the left side, and move it up by 3px, and then scale it to 320x224, it looks almost exactly the same as your screenshot. But that seems so arbitrary.
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Okay, now it turns out that the encodes both have to be redone because the run subtitles should say 100%. Please please please check these things earlier from now on, instead of just before publishing, because these encodes have been up for a while now (especially the first HD encode) and now the publication has been delayed yet again.
I understand that this is my fault, but it kind of sucks that nobody even bothered to check until now.
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Could a judge check the movie file I posted and verify that the subtitles are correct? BrandonE mentioned that they might need to say 100% or "99 mudokons". Currently it doesn't. Would I need to redo both the SD and HD if that's a deal breaker? (Which sucks, because I did two HD encodes of this game already.)
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
nanogyth wrote:
Why not some edge directed interpolation, instead of point upscale?
And why end at something over 1080?
This is for Youtube, so we need to essentially fool it into generating high quality encodes by upscaling the whole thing. Using anything other than point upscale makes the whole thing fuzzy, so we try to avoid it if possible (if we are able to keep things lossless, that is).
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Fantastic! I'm glad you finished this. :) It takes a whole other kind of TASer to actually do an 8 hour long game and finish it. Going to start working on an HD encode now.
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To encoders:
This game uses four different resolutions: 640x480, 368x216, 320x224 and 320x216. psxjin will make new segments for every resolution switch. 320x224 is presumably the most common resolution since it's used for normal gameplay, followed by 368x216 (for menus) and 320x216 (for battles).
I need to check whether any of these resolutions are letterboxed. For example it could be that when switching from 320x224 to 320x216, all that really happens is the top and bottom are padded with 4px each.
For the HD encode, the goal should be to point upscale each segment to some sensible resolution that hopefully fixes aspect correction and then downscale them all back down to something above 1080p using Lanczos3.
(will be edited later as I figure out more)
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PikachuMan wrote:
My laptop slows down for some reason, my desktop CD drive is broken, and my Mac mini got a virus and endless popups. God forbid why is NO COMPUTER SAFE FROM VIRUSES, SPYWARE, ADWARE, etc for NO F***ING REASON!
I presume you're running Windows on that Mac Mini? I've never even seen a non-Windows system getting popups. I'm sorry to say, but these problems almost invariably stem from the user running or installing a malicious program. You should stay away from untrustworthy ROM sites for that reason. The ISO you downloaded might even have been the problem (in that case it might not even be a valid ISO file).
