Posted: 7/9/2011 5:07 PM
(Edited: 7/10/2011 11:16 PM)
Post subject: Aspect ratio flags; emulator settings in general
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sgrunt
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EDIT: Rather than try to follow the confusing poll in the other topic, I present a much simpler option covering one of the core issues. Original post below. --- I'm going to spiral this off of [thread 11466]this thread[/thread], as I view it as a significant expansion in scope. As I've stated elsewhere, I view the reason we use the 4:3 flag at all to be that our viewers have expected to see runs as they would be displayed on a CRT. I view this as inconsistent with what I believe to be the primary purpose of providing encodes, which is to help those that don't have the technical skill or patience to configure emulators to play back our runs to be able to view them easily. By this logic, we should be showing the unscaled video. (There are some exceptions that would be need to be made for this - the best example I can think of is PSX, which has the greatest difference between native resolution and intended display resolution, and also has greatly varying resolutions even within runs). If we accept this, we'd need a better guideline in place than "console accuracy". I'd suggest that what we should be aiming for is "maximum video/audio quality, except at the significant expense of console accuracy" (the exception allowing for cases such as Gens' PSG high quality, which is a significant and detrimental difference between the console and the emulator output). Does any of this sound plausible? (And please, keep it cool and calm.)
Posted: 7/9/2011 5:20 PM
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Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I'm all for this. Encodes should be unscaled. If video players can't handle viewing unscaled encodes how the viewer wants, that's the players' fault, not ours. However, YouTube is tricky because it's such a popular way of viewing TASes and has such a featureless video player. Streaming sites could still use their own rules.
Posted: 7/9/2011 5:39 PM
(Edited: 7/9/2011 5:41 PM)
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feos
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NES TAS of 2011
Some time ago I asked the same question as the first post does & was answered that we just NEED to fix resolutions for TV games. Because it pleases the normal vewer. Though not much people still use consoles to play old games, & yeah, the framesize of our actual emulator movies differ from what the viewer is used to see on his TV. So, I don't know... The "law" was once set & now it's questioned. But yes, I'd like to stop "correcting" aspect ratio. EDIT: We shall provide info how to set AR correction in common players.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Posted: 7/9/2011 5:40 PM
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moozooh
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The goal of maximum a/v quality makes sense, and is probably the best. At least it shows care for the viewer over consistency with the rules. Console accuracy is somewhat of a misnomer, not just because the emulators we use are not 100% accurate, but also because the resulting picture (and in some cases sound) just won't look the same as if it were displayed on a TV. I see three options here. The first is striving for authenticity: 4:3 (or a similar) aspect ratio for pre-PS2 systems, a small touch of blur, scanlines, and an NTSC filter, no antialiasing or anything. We could actually go really really close to authentic look this way, purists would be happy. The other option is to go with whatever looks and sounds best, evaluating everything on case-by-case basis. If Sonic fans say disabling PSG high quality is better, then it should be disabled, etc.. Our N64 encodes are also treated much better than they would have looked on the original hardware, but somehow that didn't raise much (if any) of an opposition as it conflicted the accuracy guideline. The third option, which I believe to be the most balanced and least intrusive, is to agree upon the default measures and change them to fit specific games or cases like SGB to follow the same goal as in option 2. By far, most developers know the systems they develop for very well, and take its quirks and usage scenarios into account on the design phase. But miscommunication does occur every so often: for instance, Progear for CPS2 is designed for a 4:3 arcade monitor, and so every gameplay element behaves accordingly, despite the CPS2 resolution being 384x224 (1.71:1 non-square pixel). However, the artists weren't aware of this fact when designing sprites, so they all appear squashed as a result. This, for instance, puts the "choose the best" scenario in a dilemma: either you have asymmetry in graphics, or asymmetry in gameplay. As such, it is entirely unreasonable to account for every such mistake, so I believe, whatever options we pick, we do have to agree upon the defaults to fall back to. And that would probably require a bit more technical study (as was conducted some time ago by, IIRC, Flygon who proved the Genesis's 320x224 do not become 320x240 on the actual hardware) than what we've been going with.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/9/2011 10:32 PM
Post subject: Re: Aspect ratio flags; emulator settings in general
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Nach
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Joined: 3/9/2004
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sgrunt wrote:
I I view this as inconsistent with what I believe to be the primary purpose of providing encodes, which is to help those that don't have the technical skill or patience to configure emulators to play back our runs to be able to view them easily.
I strongly disagree with this.
sgrunt wrote:
greatly varying resolutions even within runs
For games where resolution changes mid game, I believe we should be using the smallest resolution which is able to contain the largest of them throughout the entire video.
sgrunt wrote:
"maximum video/audio quality, except at the significant expense of console accuracy"
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. At face value, it could mean our encodes should be at 2400 (inches) x 2400, because we can.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Posted: 7/10/2011 7:22 AM
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Flygon
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
moozooh wrote:
As such, it is entirely unreasonable to account for every such mistake, so I believe, whatever options we pick, we do have to agree upon the defaults to fall back to. And that would probably require a bit more technical study (as was conducted some time ago by, IIRC, Flygon who proved the Genesis's 320x224 do not become 320x240 on the actual hardware) than what we've been going with.
Just to very briefly elaborate on this, the Mega Drive has screen centering issues (it's always shifted a bit to the right of the screen), making there appear to make a 8 pixel wide border on the left side of the screen at all times for non-modified hardware or television sets that haven't been modified to 'fix' this issue. This is why games such as Shining Force II have a border on the right side of the screen, so that it's not as obvious that the screen is off center. The issue gets even worse with the borders on the top and bottom of the screen, mainly due to being even more dependent on the make and model of the console and television. And honestly, I'm just not going to even poke that barrel. If you want to see a 5 page long thread of technobabble on this specific subject, go poke this forum. One last thing, Master System games do only render at 256*192, but an interesting side effect of this is that there is 16 pixel (approximately) large borders on the top and bottom of the screen for American regions (In Europe, it's around 24 pixels border), basically giving it the same aspect ratio a console outputting a 256*224 image. Most developers didn't really compensate for this, however, probably egged along by the fact that many later Master System games were just ports of Game Gear games (Sonic the Hedgehog comes to mind for being such a scenario where the Game Gear version has unusually skinny or small sprites). This sort of messy situation is why I'm a proponent for per-game aspect ratio correction; discriminate by game, not console. Yeah, my berserk button is aspect ratio correction of Sega based consoles.
Posted: 7/10/2011 9:47 AM
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Dada
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
I don't think we should be making such a major change to our video encoding practices. The reason why the SGB topic became so big and is arguably a good reason to have an exception is that its games all expect a square pixel aspect ratio. That's because it plays GB games. Games that were not built with a TV output in mind. However, all other consoles that we provide encodes for do undoubtedly have a TV output in mind. After all, these consoles were specifically made to be used with a TV. Not providing aspect ratio collection would mean that the vast majority of runs on our site would look wrong. You can't expect people to correct the problem on their end, and not correcting the video's aspect ratio doesn't make it look better. Furthermore it raises some serious questions about encodes that switch resolutions, like Final Fantasy VIII. I honestly don't get why anyone would come up with a solution like this which puts the entire burden on the end user. It strikes me as the kind of autistic "not my problem" ivory tower attitude that's indicative of a highly technical community that, frankly, doesn't care if others can't figure out how to do it. This is specifically something that we should fix on the encoding end.
Grunt wrote:
I view this as inconsistent with what I believe to be the primary purpose of providing encodes, which is to help those that don't have the technical skill or patience to configure emulators to play back our runs to be able to view them easily. By this logic, we should be showing the unscaled video.
I think it's incongruent to recognize that we do these encodes to help people without the technical know-how view the runs, and then expect them to manually do aspect ratio correction every time they view one.
Posted: 7/10/2011 4:13 PM
Post subject: Re: Aspect ratio flags; emulator settings in general
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sgrunt
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sgrunt wrote:
Nach wrote:
sgrunt wrote:
I I view this as inconsistent with what I believe to be the primary purpose of providing encodes, which is to help those that don't have the technical skill or patience to configure emulators to play back our runs to be able to view them easily.
I strongly disagree with this.
This isn't inconsistent with the view you post in the thread you linked to, which was:
Nach wrote:
For our primary encodes, we should make them accurate depictions of their output.
I view it as more or less implicit that our encodes should be aiming to capture the video we feed them as closely as possible - that is practically the definition of "[wiki EncoderGuidelines]good-quality multimedia files[/wiki]" that the site was founded to provide. I am looking at the broader question of why we need to provide these encodes in the first place. The average viewer of our encodes (through the site or through YouTube or any other streaming site) is probably not going to be in a position to immediately view the run in an emulator, and it is therefore by our encodes that they are able to view the runs at all.
sgrunt wrote:
greatly varying resolutions even within runs
For games where resolution changes mid game, I believe we should be using the smallest resolution which is able to contain the largest of them throughout the entire video.
This is, indeed, an approach we take.
sgrunt wrote:
"maximum video/audio quality, except at the significant expense of console accuracy"
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. At face value, it could mean our encodes should be at 2400 (inches) x 2400, because we can.[/quote][/quote] Perhaps I need to amend this to read that the emulator output should be of maximum visual quality (except etc.). It is still in the guidelines that encodes should be done at the resolution of the emulator output, in falling with the "capture the output as accurately as possible" guideline that underpins much of our encoding and that I noted above.
dada wrote:
[SGB-related arguments]
I'm going to direct most of this post to the other thread, except for:
dada wrote:
Not providing aspect ratio collection would mean that the vast majority of runs on our site would look wrong.
This is subjective. I personally think that using the aspect ratio flag looks wrong, because through all my encoding practices I am more used to looking at the emulator output than at a TV screen. Most people probably do not have an old 4:3 CRT these days, remembering the appearance of a game running from them from memory. Further, we don't presently use NTSC filtering, etc. which means that to a purist who wants the run to look as closely as possible to the console, it's inaccurate whether we use the flag or not (not to mention [post 278542]posts Lex has made indicating that 4:3 isn't the correct target aspect ratio[/post]).
dada wrote:
Furthermore it raises some serious questions about encodes that switch resolutions, like Final Fantasy VIII.
Such as? I've already noted that this is a case that would require special care (which it does presently anyway).
dada wrote:
I think it's incongruent to recognize that we do these encodes to help people without the technical know-how view the runs, and then expect them to manually do aspect ratio correction every time they view one.
This assumes that the viewers in question prefer having AR correction (which is exactly what this thread is determine the answer to). It's also unfair to those such as myself who prefer not to view runs with AR correction and subsequently must do exactly what you're suggesting to play back the run in our preferred conditions.
Posted: 7/10/2011 5:36 PM
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Dada
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Let me make this whole discussion a lot less brief by just stating that I can live with not using aspect ratio correction for consoles from before the PSX era. Even if I think it's a bad idea. To me, it's developer intentions that matter the most. I will never be convinced that an entire industry, spanning multiple consoles, was ignorant of how their end users were using their products. Using a console meant using a 4:3 TV: that's how it was for the entirety of console gaming history until the first 16:9 TVs started popping up in the late 90s. And yes, some artwork, such as circles in NES games, look squished when displayed on 4:3, but you must remember that it's close to impossible to make a circle that still looks good after correction at such low resolutions. Later consoles, such as the PSX, did correct circular content because anti-aliasing made it possible at all. So, to summarize: it seems most people that I know of are on board with not using aspect ratio correction, and that's fine with me as long as games that clearly do need it, such as Abe's Oddysee or Medievil, still get it.
Posted: 7/10/2011 9:36 PM
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Nach
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Where's the case by case basis option?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Posted: 7/11/2011 1:37 AM
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sgrunt
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I added an "other" option to the poll.
Posted: 7/11/2011 2:37 AM
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Flygon
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Voted other. Some games look alright with the correction, some just look pretty plain bad. That, and it allows for not scaling games that have a tonne of resolution changes in them. :p
Posted: 7/14/2011 5:17 AM
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Nach
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Some games seem to be made for one look, and some to be made for another. I think we should specify whatever the game seems to be made for.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Posted: 7/14/2011 5:30 AM
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Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I voted "other". My personal nostalgia dictates that Pokémon games (and other Game Boy games) should not be distorted, but SNES games should. Note that I have a Super Game Boy and played games on it every once in a while when I was a kid, but not nearly as much as I played the same games on my GBx, nor nearly as much as I played SNES games.
Posted: 7/14/2011 10:43 AM
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Dada
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
If we're going to not use aspect ratio correction, we should at least allow an exception for when games clearly need it. Like Abe's Oddysee, which doesn't switch resolutions like FF8 does but does have circular artwork in lots of locations that only looks good in 4:3.
Posted: 7/14/2011 12:21 PM
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NitroGenesis
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I voted "other" because some games look good with it and some games don't, plain an simple.
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
Posted: 7/14/2011 12:31 PM
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Bisqwit
Editor, Active player (296)
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I have been under impression that there is really no "no aspect ratio setting" option. If a video does not have an aspect ratio explicitly set, it implicitly means PAR 1:1, i.e. for NES, 8:7 (NTSC) or 16:15 (PAL); for DMG, 10:9; for GBA, 3:2; for SMS and Genesis, 8:7 or 4:3; for PC, 8:5 or 64:35 or 3:4 or 9:5 or 9:10, and so on.
Posted: 7/14/2011 4:43 PM
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Slowking
Joined: 12/6/2008
Posts: 1193
I said it once and I'll say it again: We should just go for what looks best for the particular game. Those encodes are for casual visitors of the site who don't want or can't set up an emulator. Correct? Well those people aren't as major nerds as we are. They won't remember how a 20 year old game looked back in the day on an outdated piece of technology (the 4:3 TV). They will however notice if an encode looks crappy and if you are going for a true-to-console look it often will look crappy. We are TASvideos, we are not SDA. We make movies on emulators, everybody knows that. Trying to visually simulate a console and sacrificing quality in the process is just silly.
Posted: 7/14/2011 5:25 PM
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sgrunt
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"What looks best" is inherently subjective, to a great extent. There are going to be cases where reaching an agreement on the matter is not possible, and I would prefer a more objective set of criteria.
Posted: 7/14/2011 6:09 PM
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Slowking
Joined: 12/6/2008
Posts: 1193
Just let the TASer of the game in question decide. It's his project so he should know best. Problem solved.
Posted: 7/14/2011 9:18 PM
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Dada
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Slowking wrote:
Just let the TASer of the game in question decide. It's his project so he should know best. Problem solved.
That doesn't really fix the problem in the majority of cases. Most players won't know what the "right answer" is, and frankly, most won't care. This is something we're expected to know. If the players are allowed to choose, most of the time they'll just say "you guys decide this".
Posted: 7/15/2011 1:30 AM
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4matsy
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 498
Square pixels look better, I think. I say turn off all the pretty filters and just use the raw output from the emulator and don't bother with this stretchy "aspect ratio" TV nonsense at all. :p They really should've done it that way from the get-go. NES games, for example, look a lot crisper and clearer nowadays on emulators than they do on an actual NES and NTSC TV through that nasty-ass field of grainy artifacts. Ew. D:
Posted: 7/15/2011 4:34 AM
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creaothceann
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4matsy wrote:
just use the raw output from the emulator
Even if it's 512x224?
4matsy wrote:
NES games, for example, look a lot crisper and clearer nowadays on emulators than they do on an actual NES and NTSC TV through that nasty-ass field of grainy artifacts.
Metroid, for example, looks better imo at 4:3. And Kirby's Dreamland 3 pretty much requires a TV filter. Filters are great! http://i.imgur.com/BJTE9.jpg (src) http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/hqpp2/sexy_dot_pixel_shader/ http://i.imgur.com/nJsDR.png http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/hess7/smw/
Posted: 7/15/2011 11:53 PM
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Aktan
Publisher
Joined: 4/23/2009
Posts: 1283
How about not cropping the 16 pixels FCEUX does for NTSC NES games? I know for a fact that some games (like Rockman 2) actually has things drawn in these 16 pixels cropped out.
Posted: 7/16/2011 12:24 AM
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Aktan
Publisher
Joined: 4/23/2009
Posts: 1283
My take on the flags is this. We don't know if the game designers accounted for the stretch or not. So I'd say keep the flag to make it look like TV, since the game may account for the stretch. Now, some may complain that we don't add the scanlines filter. The thing is, the game developers couldn't have done anything to account for that, while for the stretch, something could be done.