Posted: 11/11/2010 8:30 PM
(Edited: 11/11/2010 9:08 PM)
Post subject: HQx or not?
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GabCM
He/Him
Joined: 5/5/2009
Posts: 901
Location: QC, Canada
This is a poll for everybody. I'm not sure if I will continue to encode in HQx, since there's that new rule. Maybe I'll upload my HQx encodes to Dailymotion instead of YouTube, but I'm not sure about that. I know there are people who prefer an unfiltered encode. So, I may stop encoding in HQx. I'll think about it. Your answer in the poll will help me take my decision. EDIT: Just in case, I put the comparison I've made in this topic here. Without HQx, it looks like these screenshots : 1 2 With HQx, it looks like these screenshots : 1 2
Posted: 11/11/2010 8:35 PM
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scrimpeh
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To be honest, I prefer point-based encodes because they are more accurate to the actual video emulation and don't look any worse than HQx. Not that the difference really is a big deal, but it is indeed a waste to encode the same movie twice with differences completely impossible to see unless you're using fullscreen.
Posted: 11/11/2010 8:35 PM
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Noxxa
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I prefer point-based encodes myself, because they are more true to the original game's quality.
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Posted: 11/12/2010 1:27 AM
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Dacicus
Editor, Player (67)
Joined: 6/22/2005
Posts: 1041
HQx looks too blurry to me.
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Posted: 11/12/2010 1:31 AM
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Flygon
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
I am honestly very surprised and actually shocked at the HQx dislike so far... Man, people have really odd ethics and values.
Posted: 11/12/2010 1:34 AM
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mmbossman
Experienced player (822)
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I actually like stills from HQx more, since they're all smooth, but I can understand the reasoning for wanting encodes to be more accurate to the real emulation. But since I don't watch encodes very often, I'll just say that HQx looks pretty, and leave it at that.
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Posted: 11/12/2010 1:38 AM
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moozooh
Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
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Location: Away
HQx is an attempt to increase the resolution by "smart" interpolation, but naturally this results in artifacts that look completely out of place everywhere the algorithm misfires or can't calculate the right values, so that's a no for me. In more complex cases the distortion looks pretty awful. Then again, I don't care about HD encodes other than on YouTube anyway, because: a) I prefer watching stuff I like in emulators, where I can use any filters I want if need be; b) going above 4x of the original resolution (that is, 2x width 2x height needed to battle the colorspace issue with H.264) is pretty pointless because scaling will occur as soon as the user enables fullscreen. Increasing file size by an order of magnitude to make it a tiny bit less blurry (but still not perfect) doesn't really compute with me.
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Posted: 11/12/2010 3:40 AM
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Zack_Niwa
Joined: 11/12/2010
Posts: 5
Hqx I think is best for me. What is the difference? For the screen resolution that is HD, it is easier to see images in HQX format than SD. It is also easier to see small details HQX than in SD. I vote YES to save the HQX! -------------------------- sorry for my english, i'm french.
Posted: 11/12/2010 3:41 AM
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GabCM
He/Him
Joined: 5/5/2009
Posts: 901
Location: QC, Canada
Zack Niwa wrote:
Hqx I think is best for me. What is the difference? For the screen resolution that is HD, it is easier to see images in HQX format than SD. It is also easier to see small details HQX than in SD. I vote YES to save the HQX! -------------------------- sorry for my english, i'm french.
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Posted: 11/12/2010 3:43 AM
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Zack_Niwa
Joined: 11/12/2010
Posts: 5
Well you're my friend too! And I think is the best moment to tell you... I'M THE BIGGEST FAN OF YOUR ENCODE!!! DON'T GIVE UP!
Posted: 11/12/2010 3:54 AM
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mmarks
Banned User, Player (142)
Joined: 8/30/2010
Posts: 500
Location: Argentina Bs. As.
I do not know that to vote, but will vote no, for one reason, because if I'm not mistaken correctly is almost the same as HD encoding, nothing but video resizing (hqx2, 3 or 4). It is very good for me, but in this case not. Sorry Mister Epic
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Posted: 11/12/2010 4:33 AM
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Aktan
Publisher
Joined: 4/23/2009
Posts: 1283
I will have to say no to HQx also as I don't like how it can mess things up. I will shamelessly mention I do like some other type of scaling.
Posted: 11/12/2010 8:05 AM
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moozooh
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Aktan wrote:
I will shamelessly mention I do like some other type of scaling.
You guys are just impossible. :D
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 11/12/2010 8:15 AM
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Flygon
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
moozooh wrote:
Aktan wrote:
I will shamelessly mention I do like some other type of scaling.
You guys are just impossible. :D
It's also very very very slow to encode, and... really... not very practical for HD encoding. At all. I need an actual sadness avatar.
Posted: 11/12/2010 12:36 PM
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Raiscan
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
Dacicus wrote:
HQx looks too blurry to me.
This is because encoders seem to think that stacking HQx to insane sizes is a good thing. It is not. I support use of HQ3x, but nothing more. No stacking. It becomes an ugly blurry mess otherwise.
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Posted: 11/12/2010 12:47 PM
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Flygon
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Raiscan wrote:
Dacicus wrote:
HQx looks too blurry to me.
This is because encoders seem to think that stacking HQx to insane sizes is a good thing. It is not. I support use of HQ3x, but nothing more. No stacking. It becomes an ugly blurry mess otherwise.
Part of the problem is that it is impossible to scale to higher resolutions without stacking the filters... and stacking HQx2 then HQx3, unfortunately, is the only way. Unless we can get people willing to modify the algorithm... Dammit YouTube, why can't Original mode be for any resolution.
Posted: 11/12/2010 2:04 PM
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GabCM
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Joined: 5/5/2009
Posts: 901
Location: QC, Canada
Thank you all for your answers! According to the votes my poll received until the moment I've posted this, I'm starting to think it's a big waste of time. I'm thinking of giving up HQx and doing simple point-resized encodes. Also, there was a guy on YouTube who showed his dislike to the HQx filter in the comments of one of my videos. I'm telling you that to show you I'm not only looking at this community.
Posted: 11/12/2010 2:29 PM
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Zeupar
Joined: 5/14/2007
Posts: 525
Location: Pisces-Cetus filament
Flygon wrote:
moozooh wrote:
Aktan wrote:
I will shamelessly mention I do like some other type of scaling.
You guys are just impossible. :D
It's also very very very slow to encode, and... really... not very practical for HD encoding. At all.
It looks great compared to HQx, though.
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Posted: 11/12/2010 3:00 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Maybe I'm being obtuse here (which wouldn't be really surprising), but I still can't understand what the big idea is with these monster-size encodes. Playing 1920x1280 H.264 video requires so much processing power that even slightly older computers can have a hard time doing it. And this is assuming you are using an optimized player for that. Many of these videos are being watched with a Flash-based player, which isn't what one could call very optimized (if you compare CPU usage between eg. mplayer and the YouTube Flash player for the exact same video, there's a considerable difference). Also HD video tends to require more bandwidth than a normal-sized video (especially since people usually expect HD video to have a higher quality than a normal-sized video, ie. less compression artifacts). The only argument I have heard for these monster-sized videos is that it reduces the effects of the mandatory colorspace reduction. However, if the typical screen resolution of a console game is something like 256x192, do you really need to make the video almost 8 times larger on both axes to reduce the colorspace reduction artifacts? (More precisely, 1920 is 7.5 times as large as 256.) Wouldn't something less be enough for that purpose?
Posted: 11/12/2010 3:38 PM
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Aktan
Publisher
Joined: 4/23/2009
Posts: 1283
I have the same feeling as you do Warp, but this is supposedly only for YouTube. The point re sized encodes are now simple enough at that huge resolution that now the quality on YouTube is actually decent. On Flygon's note that nnedi is very slow, I should mention that there are faster settings, with minimal color loss that I have not tried yet. Might still be feasible.
Posted: 11/12/2010 4:52 PM
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ElectroSpecter
Player (244)
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Voting no. The first time I encountered that type of filtering was when it was possible to do on ZSNES with the whole "2XSAI" thing. I've never ever liked how it looks. I find pixels to be far more aesthetically pleasing than the look that the HQx gives it. I would go so far to say that it looks awful. I guess it's the awkwardness that comes with turning something that was intentionally pixelated into something that pretends its not. However, now that I'm thinking about it, the one big drawback that I encountered with pixels was with Mode 7 graphics in the SNES. When that shit got big and "close" to the screen, it looked like garbage. What would Mode 7 graphics look like in HQx? All of that being said, I continue to appreciate the work you're doing, Mister Epic!
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Posted: 11/13/2010 11:22 AM
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feos
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NES TAS of 2011
can you HQx that: http://tasvideos.org/1251M.html?
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Posted: 11/13/2010 11:36 PM
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mmarks
Banned User, Player (142)
Joined: 8/30/2010
Posts: 500
Location: Argentina Bs. As.
I have a question, hqx encoding will follow in the foot?
[18:51] <scrimpy> Oh, nothing [18:51] <mmarks> oh [18:51] <Nach> I think scrimpy is just jealous of you mmarks
Posted: 11/14/2010 9:41 AM
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MUGG
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Joined: 5/15/2007
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I think HQx looks pretty nice, but it doesn't really make any difference when I'm watching a run (because I'm only watching in Youtube's standard resolution).
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