I'm just getting started with FCEUX. I'm still in the phase of getting used to the tools before I start any project in earnest. What I'm trying to do is start recording a movie and pick the recording of it back up days or weeks later. VBA has a recording mode called "discard mode". It allows me to interrupt a recording and overwrite new input into the movie before it's finished playing. The closest I've seen in FCEUX is playing a movie, reaching the end, and disabling read-only mode. I can't seem to append new input after the end though. It just stops at the last frame and no new data is added. The movie has a fixed length and new frames don't appear. I've also tried using BizHawk; with EmuHawk, I've managed to record new input after the movie is over, but in that case, if I make a mistake and need to rerecord partway through, I can't write over the old input in the movie. It's like it's still in read-only mode even when read+write is enabled. The only solution I can come up with right now is to record a movie in one session, hoping that nothing interrupts the session, like a power outage or an ill-timed reboot. Since I can't just jump in with an overwrite or discard mode, I could take the long route and use TAS Studio or a TAS editor, but it seems like reinventing something that is probably already at my disposal. Am I missing something?
VBALink's email address for website support is down, as is the link to VBALink's forum. If there's a forum to ask questions related to the development of the VBALink program, or a way of contacting the developers, please let me know. There are no other GBx emulators that feature GBx compatibility, either as a stable or a beta release.
VBALink apparently does not support the link mode of Game & Watch Gallery 4. Here's an unlisted video describing the problems I've encountered with link compatibility in VBALink:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBkTcLuk84c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bULIboqe9DA&feature=youtu.be
The movie file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5zIz1YSh_e7aEpUOGJnYnFLT2s/view?usp=sharing
Recorded with Virtual Boy Advanced Re-Recording (480):
https://code.google.com/p/vba-rerecording/downloads/list
Recorded with Open Broadcaster Software:
https://obsproject.com/download
I've completed level 3. I used OBS with quality set to 10, max bitrate set to 3000, CBR disabled, 48kHz format in the AAC with a bitrate of 320 in stereo. There's still some compression artifacts visible in level 3.
I didn't record the footage with VBA's built in AVI recorder. There's something wrong with the scaling; the resultant video ends up blurry, like it's trying to scale the original resolution rather than use the properly scaled image I see in fullscreen (close to what is visible in the YT video). I tried using ffdshow, x264, HuffyYUV, and ligrasomething lossless, but they all ended up blurry. x264 failed to render any video (I have K-Lite installed rather than ffdshow by itself, with priority set to LAV for most of the codecs that support it).
Level 1 does not have acceleration; the R and L buttons lack functions.
I wasn't able to hit droids behind pillars in level 3 while accelerating; the progress meter is based on droids hit--speeding past them would take longer to complete the mission. There are a few droids I think I could have hit with long-distance shots while moving diagonally towards the next droid, but I don't feel like it slows it down enough to make a difference when I finally get to that droid since the ones in the open don't require deceleration, and I have to slow down anyway to get the second droids behind the ones in the open (the second ones are behind pillars in some locations). Hopefully it makes it interesting to watch; the collisions are way less buggy than level 2 unfortunately; it makes running into things easier and makes shooting droids on the other side of pillars less likely. Feel free to improve on it, but until then, I'm the best there is at this game, and have been the reigning champion for eight years now. :D
I'd also like to figure out how to set up ffmpeg (and possibly VLC) to stream in YUV 4:4:4 at 1920x1080 at 60fps, but I'd need to know what the required bandwidth for that would be, and how to set it up. I might need to use OBS, and the probable outlet would be own3d.
If you want to replace the audio, you can do so with MKVmerge/MKVmergeGUI after encoding.
If you want to mix the audio, you can do so with Avisynth, or extract the audio after you have the final timeline (e.g. via VirtualDub) and edit it in an audio editor
My goal is to merge an audio track with the game audio of a video dump. Since the audio is already extracted by the Hybrid Encoder, the method that would enable the most flexibility would be a variation on creaothceann's first and second instructions: mixing the audio in a video NLE for reference to specific on-screen events, and then exporting the audio only to the same format that the end Preset 4 Hybrid Encoder video uses: sample rate-49716, bit rate-499kbps, stereo, and .ogg; this file would then replace the original audio using MKVmerge. Barring that possibility due to lack of lossless .ogg exporting support by NLEs, an audio-only NLE, meaning Audacity, would be the mixing tool for the original Encoder-transcoded audio dump and the second audio track. However, it's possible this will result in lossy or desynced audio, so it may be faster when dealing with long recordings and may keep the recording lossless by simply merging the two audio tracks using transcoding tools. I tried it and it worked, and it appears to be the easiest method.
After a video is run through the Hybrid Encoder, a .ogg file is created in the "temp" folder that contains the audio from the video dump. The rate is 49716. I recorded test audio with Audacity and saved it at the same rate as an .ogg. I downloaded the most recent version of AVISynth and MeGUI. When I try to run a script merging the two files from within the MeGUI environment (or from within VirtualDubMod), it says it cannot open the sample .ogg file. AVISynth's wiki says that it requires a third party library and plugin set to mix .ogg audio files. I downloaded BASS, but can't figure out where to place the libraries for use by AVISynth.
feos
IRC is a good place to ask too.
Aktan
Also to speed things up, it be preferred you get on IRC to get help from us.
There was no one online at midnight on Saturday. Posting of the most frequent periods of online user status from the experts in this topic might help when trying to get live help.
I was able to encode a video as soon as I had the information about renaming the user's video dump to movie.avi, but not in YUV 4:4:4, and not without several issues with running the programs and with nonlineardocumentation. I would like to be able to add an audio track on top of the original game audio, but based on what I've been reading it sounds like that would only require a rip, encode, and packaging of the audio with the video, mostly using VirtualDub (that research is still ongoing, but responses in this thread might provide some advice to make the learning process shorter).
Step one in the Encoding Guide / Requirements gives a summary of the requirements for a logo. I created a .png at 1728x1080 resolution, which I thought was the target resolution of the end video, but for preset 4 need to be 2560x1600. The logo encoding page gives instructions on creating a video from the image; however, the logos in the archive package are simply images, so the instructions appear to pertain only to doing it from scratch and as a general standard. The encoding guide says to "Replace the logo;" in the context of the encoding package, there are two logo files, logo.png and hdlogo.png; I think the intended message of the instruction is to replace one or more of the logo files depending on the user's desired output quality.
Step 3's Video Dumping page does not address DOSBox dumping or the page that outlines TASVideos' requirements for DOSBox recording. http://tasvideos.org/EncodingGuide/VideoDumping.html
Step 4.2. mentions the feos AVISynth syntax highlighter http://code.google.com/p/feos-tas/downloads/detail?name=userDefineLang.xml. After getting it running the way it is supposed to (following instructions from Notepad++'s site, which are not mentioned in the Encoding Guide / Requirements), I closed out of Notepad++, started it back up, and encountered this error:
An exception occurred. Notepad++ cannot recover and must be shut down.
The exception details are as follows:
Code: 0xC0000005
Type: Access violation
Exception address: 0x1006CB0D
After ending the notepad++ process from task manager, uninstalling version 5.9.3, installing 6.2, then pasting userDefineLang.xml into C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\localization, choosing AVISynth from the language menu in notepad++, loading an .avs file, restarting notepad++, and loading an .avs file, I confirmed that the .xml would run without issue.
After following Aktan's clarifications for running the TAS Encoder Package, I was able to encode a video twice, but with an error that does not seem to affect the encoder from completing an encode. The script encounters an error after aoTuV Beta 6.03 runs:
avs2pipemod[error]: Exception while processing ScriptEnvironment::ThrowError().
(encode.avs, line 174)
Error: Not found RIFF WAVE header.
I ran global.bat twice, which resulted in successful encodes. After modifying the subtitles regarding tool-assisted speedruns to leave only the \n flags (because it does not apply to the genre of the videos I'm making), it encountered an error stating zlib1.dll is missing. I downloaded the file and placed it into C:\Windows\system, and then this sequence of errors appeared, after which it would close without pausing to display the error (I used GameCompanion to keep grabbing screenshots until the errors appeared):
avs [error]: Evaluate: System exception - Access Violation
(encode.avs, line 201)
x264 [error]: could not open input file 'encode.avs'
mkvmerge v5.6.0 [...] built on May 27 [...]
Error: The file './temp/video_youtube.mkv' has unknown type. Please have a look at the supported file types ('mkvmerge --list-types') and contact the author [...] if your file type is supported but not recognized properly.
After replacing the absent spots in the text with placeholder periods, the video encoded without errors other than the RIFF WAVE error. I deleted the placeholders and \n flags, and the video also encoded successfully.
I ran preset 4. VLC tells me that it uses Planar YUV 4:2:0, which does not comply with the 4:4:4 standard, so unless VLC is giving incorrect media information, I need to know what to do next to enable YUV 4:4:4. One possible cause might be DeDup's implementation. sgrunt said "Our old standby of DeDup only supports YV12 and YUY2 input/output, which doesn't play nicely with our current projects involving YUV444." http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12065 Step 4.2.* in the Encoding Guide / Requirements http://tasvideos.org/EncodingGuide/Requirements.html says that ExactDedup http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12065 should be used due to the unspecified issues mentioned by sgrunt. feos gave a link to the .dll only http://code.google.com/p/feos-tas/downloads/detail?name=ExactDedup.dll; this file does not contain the "Further [documentation] available in the package" originally included by sgrunt. Based on the context discussing AVISynth, it sounds like it is to be placed in the AVISynth plugin folder included in the TAS encoder package (mine is located in C:\program files (x86)\TASVideo Encoding\TASEncodingPackage\programs\Applications\AviSynth plugins). AVISynth autoloads plugins at launch, so next time that global.bat runs, it should load ExactDedup.dll. I was unable to figure out how to launch AVISynth aside from my installation of ffmpeg independent of the one included with the TAS encoder package; the independent one includes a GUI/frontend for AVISynth, but based on the separate installation and location of the ExactDedup.dll file, it is not likely that the plugin is loaded in the package installation of AVISynth prior to running global.bat.
sgrunt's next steps for enabling ExactDedup are as follows:
replace the DupMC call with an ExactDedup(firstpass = true) call; and
replace the DeDup call with an ExactDedup(firstpass = false) call.
Based on the inclusion of text reading "DupMC," "DeDup," and "ExactDeDup," I think sgrunt is referring to encode.avs. encode.avs already makes calls to ExactDedup, so it is possible that the notes in encode.avs no longer apply and ExactDedup is already in use by the package; these calls to DupMC and DeDup within the encode.avs were references to the global.bat file's script, so no modification should happen to encode.avs:
# Batch sets a pass for downloadable/streaming encodes:
# 0: audio extraction / streaming (archive.org 512kb; AR correction);
# 1: DupMC (no AR correction);
# 2: DeDup (no AR correction).
pass = 0
global.bat does not have text reading "dupMC," "DeDup," or "ExactDedup" in the file.
The first lines of the instructions for the hybrid encode script mention the automated method, along with an archive that "contains all executionals, scripts and DLLs you are going to need," along with a link to the archive. The archive mentions that several other files are needed:
You will need to get some stuff yourself though:
- Lossless codec
- VirtualDub
- AviSynth
Based on the forum threads on the topic, it seems that x264 and H264 are the preferred video codecs, and the preferred audio codec is ogg. I have installed ffdshow tryouts to C:\Program Files (x86)\ffdshow. Ffdshow video encoder/decoder configuration under the decoder tab listed in format H.264/AVC says that a supported format is x264, so I assume the codec has already been installed for use by the hybrid script and does not need to be downloaded again in this scenario. While it is apparently already enabled for use in my case, I'd like to know the right place to install it to if I need to reinstall again for any reason. I have AviSynth installed to C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth 2.5; ffdshow's multiple configuration utilities list AviSynth as an option, so I assume it is also installed in the location of ffdshow. Does AviSynth or "lossless codec" need to be placed in the same folder as the hybrid encoder archive? Which codec does "lossless codec" refer to?
The next lines of the instructions for the hybrid encoder script say to "Unzip, put the AVI dump named "movie.avi" in a root folder." It might be that this is a placeholder name for files the user is to drop into the root folder, but usually those are named something indicative of it being a placeholder, like "examplemovie.avi". Otherwise, the archive does not contain any files named "movie.avi." The script might need the placeholder name altered by the user in order to run on the user's movie, but there is nothing in the instructions to confirm this theory. It's causing the error image linked at the end of this post. I have the archive placed in C:\Program Files (x86)\TASVideo Encoding\TASEncodingPackage. I placed the avi dump from DOSBox into the same folder. What location does "a root folder" refer to?
http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/2159/sp3220121027233251.jpg
I wanted to make a speedrun of a fairly new Star Wars game, so I completed the first two levels of Flight of the Falcon for GBA. In the WIP, I take zero damage, and have 100% accuracy on all levels.
The second level has the land speeder complete the level as fast as possible and since lateral movement doesn't affect it, there's a whole bunch of tricks: the speeder can run smack dab into a building and go straight through it and the edges of most buildings can be run through; the speeder almost goes as fast as lasers, so stormtroopers can be shot point blank; and lasers go through multiple buildings at really long range to hit stormtroopers.
I made it with the 1282 build back in October of 2007! :O No one has made a speedrun of FoF since then, so at the moment I'm the most elite player of it in the universe. --_-- That said, I completely ruined the first level because I didn't realize there was acceleration for the Falcon until the third level. :( I hope someone else likes the game enough to redo the first level and finish the game, because I sure can't finish it. I'll get around to FRAPs-ing it so it can go up on YouTube anyway. Maybe. *-* The .vbm is over at dehacked. It's worth a look for the second level. :D
EDIT: a low-fi video recording of it is available on Youtube.
