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Posted: 10/31/2004 4:36 PM
Post subject: faking the re-record count / decreasing file size
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VIPer7
Former player
Joined: 10/17/2004
Posts: 226
Location: Bonn, Germany
As you probably know, the more re-records you do, the bigger your smv-file size will become, because it still saves "everything that was done wrong" (which is not viewable in the actual movie). Now I found out, if you start a movie file, and make a backup of this at a certain point, then continue playing (with however many re-records you want), and at a later point save the game. Then load the old backup and while the movie plays load your savegame (which was done at a much later point). Then you will only have 1 extra re-record for the whole passage, and thus less filesize. Don't know if this trick is actually important, because we're talking about KB size here, doesn't really make a difference if the movie is 100 or 300 KB in the end. And as many people said, it actually looks better if you have a high re-record count than a low one, because it shows that you invested more time to try everything possible out. On the other hand one should always do backups at certain points, so when you have made a 20 minutes movie, then find out that you did a big error at minute 10, then it's kinda pointless to keep all the information of those last 10 minutes which you'll have to redo again anyway.
Posted: 10/31/2004 4:52 PM
Post subject: the government denies the fact
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Bisqwit
Editor, Active player (297)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
VIPer7 wrote:
As you probably know, the more re-records you do, the bigger your smv-file size will become, because it still saves "everything that was done wrong" (which is not viewable in the actual movie)
This is -not- true. It would require a tree structure to contain this kind of information and it simply isn't there. For precise details, look at http://tasvideos.org/SMV.html .
Posted: 10/31/2004 4:58 PM
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Bob_Whoops
Former player
Joined: 3/19/2004
Posts: 710
Location: USA
Yeah, it doesn't work that way. Even if it did, just forget about. Rerecord and file size don't even matter (not that you can affect file size), so don't even bother trying to fake them. I couldn't care less whether your rerecord count is 200 or 20000, as long as the movie is good enough. Yes, you can hack the file in about 20 seconds if you really wanted to, but no one cares.
Posted: 10/31/2004 5:14 PM
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Bisqwit
Editor, Active player (297)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
If you have high rerecord count and your playing looks bad, I'll conclude you are an extraordinary sloppy player. If you have low rerecord count and your playing looks extraordinarily good, I'll conclude that the rerecord count has damaged some way. Either way, it doesn't pay the effort.
Posted: 10/31/2004 6:05 PM
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VIPer7
Former player
Joined: 10/17/2004
Posts: 226
Location: Bonn, Germany
hmm then please explain to me why this file is almost 200 KB bigger than this file, although they contain the same movie. In test1 i stood still and made turbo mode for 100,000 frames, then loaded a savestate before that. So those 100,000 frames are not seen in the movie, but they are still somehow in the smv file and btw please don't misunderstand me, I never intended to fake my rerecord count (otherwise I wouldn't have made this public thread...), actually I just wondered why my smv file suddenly became so big, and the solution was that I had pressed start-button and then went away for a while, and later loaded a savestate before that.
Posted: 10/31/2004 6:14 PM
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Bisqwit
Editor, Active player (297)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
VIPer7 wrote:
hmm then please explain to me why this file is almost 200 KB bigger than this file, although they contain the same movie.
Differences between test1.smv and test2.smv: test1.smv header says re-record count is 304, test2.smv says re-record count is 3. The number of frames is equal. test1.smv contains a long tail of 0-bytes. Explanation: snes9x never truncates the movie file while recording - it just rewrites the header. This means that the "tail" is, like you say, actions that never happened in the actual movie but did happen in some old version. Let's make a hypothesis: You make a 5 minute long movie. Then you load a save that cuts the length to 20 seconds. The file will still contain the data of your 5 minutes long movie, but the header says that only the first 20 seconds of it are relevant. Now you'll continue recording, until your movie is now 6 minutes long. Result: none of the old data is left in the file, because it is overwritten by the new data for the 5 minutes, plus 1 minute extra.
Posted: 10/31/2004 6:27 PM
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Bob_Whoops
Former player
Joined: 3/19/2004
Posts: 710
Location: USA
In other words, the movie file is as long as the point where it was the longest. So, you can delete the end of it if you really wanted to, though I woudn't, because it is too much work, and it doesn't affect anything other than the filesize.
Posted: 10/31/2004 6:41 PM
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VIPer7
Former player
Joined: 10/17/2004
Posts: 226
Location: Bonn, Germany
ok thanks a lot for the explanation, I'm not too experienced with programming and stuff but I think I understood it. So for example, let's take the 2 best SMW-Warp movies: Alexis Neuhaus: 39058 frames, 2343 re-records, 77 KB Volkov: 39145 frames, 3835 re-records, 115 KB so I guess there's also just lots of 0-bytes in Volkov's movie, because he once recorded up to ~ 50000 frames but the loaded an older quicksave. correct? So if I end up with a movie that has too many 0-bytes, it would be possible to cut these off somehow to make the filesize smaller?
Posted: 11/2/2004 2:04 AM
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OmnipotentEntity
He/Him
Player (36)
Joined: 9/11/2004
Posts: 2631
VIPer7 wrote:
So if I end up with a movie that has too many 0-bytes, it would be possible to cut these off somehow to make the filesize smaller?
Yup, open it up in a hex editor and make use of your delete key. (Heck, notepad or notepad++ prolly'll work if you know what you're looking for)
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day, Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.

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