Topic by arkiandruski

Posted: 2/11/2019 3:27 AM

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arkiandruski

Reviewer, Active player (277)

Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717

I prefer to download the video to my computer and to watch in a media player. That really makes the best experience for me.

My favorite movies

Posted: 2/11/2019 7:25 AM

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JosJuice

She/They

Editor, Emulator Coder

Joined: 7/3/2010
Posts: 193
Location: Sweden

creaothceann wrote:

JosJuice wrote:
The YouTube embed on the site is too small, in particular for TASes of 3D games.
You can make it fullscreen.

Yes, but it isn't uncommon for me to switch tabs and do other things while I'm watching, and I find it more convenient to use the size that's on the YouTube page than having to go in and out of fullscreen every now and then.

Posted: 2/11/2019 9:55 AM

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Radiant

Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam

This is probably a site design issue, but a link like "Watch on Youtube" is immediately clear and obvious to everyone, whereas a link labeled "Mirror archive.org (MKV Modern HQ)" contains several jargon terms and probably reads like gibberish to laymen. So I'd expect almost everybody who uses this site to click the "Watch on Youtube" link instead of anything else. If that's not what we want, well, maybe it's time to make the publication page clearer to the general public.

Indie game developer

Posted: 2/11/2019 10:31 AM

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Nach

Emulator Coder

Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers

Radiant wrote:

This is probably a site design issue, but a link like "Watch on Youtube" is immediately clear and obvious to everyone, whereas a link labeled "Mirror archive.org (MKV Modern HQ)" contains several jargon terms and probably reads like gibberish to laymen.

How about neither.

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: 2/11/2019 12:13 PM

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Radiant

Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam

On my screen, a YouTube icon appears next to those two archive.org icons. I'm not sure why that's not in your screenshot. Or did you mean that it should be removed from the interface? But yeah, the publication screen offers about eleven separate links or buttons that each show you a movie (two from bittorrent, four from archive, two from youtube, two that show the submission text which commonly includes a youtube encode, and one emulator recording file). I'd say that eleven such options is a bit too much :D

Indie game developer

Posted: 2/11/2019 12:18 PM

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TheCoreyBurton

He/Him

Joined: 10/14/2013
Posts: 335
Location: Australia

Radiant wrote:

I'd say that eleven such options is a bit too much

I know it's not directly related, but I've had a think about this in the past. I feel a drop-down selection containing labelled encodes could be a better solution, with the current MKV and MP4 labels being the default available options. This would also leave the option to have publishers add additional encodes with custom labels should the game require it. Right now, if we add a few extra alternate encodes for these infrequent cases, it becomes hard to distinguish what encodes is what and often leads to confusion on the publication page or links being posted elsewhere, such as in the discussion thread.

I'm not as active as I once was, but I can be reached here if I should be needed.

Posted: 2/11/2019 12:22 PM
(Edited: 2/11/2019 12:24 PM)

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ThunderAxe31

Any

Judge, Skilled player (1288)

Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy

I use YouTube almost all the time. My favorite way to access YouTube videos is by watching them via the Android YouTube app on my Samsung S5 Mini, as the screen resolution is 1280x720 pixels and thus fits perfectly with the 720p60 option. I don't care that the screen size is relatively small compared to most nowadays smartphones. It's also worth mentioning that it allows to me stay on sofa while watching. Less often, I watch YouTube on my pc. It's a bit of a problem since my pc is more than 10 years old and can't really reproduce video streams at 720p or higher.

If I need to watch only a short movie or a short section of a movie, I use the embedded player option. Watching on YouTube.com is horrible due to the annoying video suggestions and the additional weight of all the javascript garbage behind the scenes.
If instead I need to watch the movie from start to end, I download the YouTube stream by using youtube-dl, which I equipped with a macro for downloading the 480p stream only. I prefer this over the MKV downloadables because youtube-dl has insane download speed.
While my pc is able to reproduce MKV downloadables at full fps, I only download these for few TASes that I really love, since I'm more likely to watch them again and again in the future.

my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"

Posted: 2/11/2019 12:24 PM

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MESHUGGAH

Other

Skilled player (1889)

Joined: 11/14/2009
Posts: 1349
Location: 𝔐𝔞𝔤𝑦𝔞𝔯

Voted for youtube stream. Movie file in an emulator - Only when I want to investigate submission MKV Modern HQ - no MP4 Compatibility - no Youtube stream - yes, pixel analysis Some other method - no I don't watch published TASes - only long ones

PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...

Posted: 2/11/2019 12:34 PM

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YaLTeR

He/Him

Joined: 12/2/2011
Posts: 129
Location: Moscow, Russia

Alright, so this is a little complicated. If I'm not interested in a TAS too much (I am not familiar with the game but the TAS sounds promising enough that I want to watch it anyway), I usually open the YouTube page and watch from there (highest available quality). This used to not be a real option before 60 FPS on YouTube, but since that got introduced, I'm much more likely to give a shot to a TAS of a game that's new to me. It's very convenient because I'm one click and zero delay away from watching, which is minimal time loss in case I end up not interested. If I'm interested in a TAS, I usually go for the MKV. I'd really like to always watch MKV since it offers accurate framerate and color (no chroma subsampling and 10-bit), however sometimes I have to fall back to YouTube because: - the YouTube encode may offer additional editing not available in the MKV (example: [3530] DS Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time by Migu in 3:21:09.92, although Spikestuff posted MKVs with editing in the forum thread for that one); - the YouTube encode may offer additional HUDs not available in the MKV (example: [3497] PSX Crash Bandicoot: Warped "item glitch, gate clip" by pirohiko in 05:40.77, this one has HUDs in the author's encode, which is usually the case, so I end up watching that, even if the quality isn't the highest); - the YouTube encode may offer commentary (example: [2711] PSX Spyro: Year of the Dragon "117%" by Nitrofski in 2:27:54.15, commentary in the author's encode). Sometimes if the quality of the YouTube video with commentary is bad like in [3592] PSX Crash Bandicoot: Warped "105%" by The8bitbeast in 1:54:18.52 I may even open the MKV and the commentary video side by side to watch the MKV with the sound coming from the commentray video (yes I know I can ffmpeg the two together but it's easier to just sync two video players manually than having to deal with audio discrepancies). That said, I wish the MKV encodes used a lower CRF since video compression artifacts are frequently easily noticeable, especially on encodes of lower resolution consoles.

Pushing Half-Life to its limits.

Posted: 2/11/2019 12:39 PM

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Nach

Emulator Coder

Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers

My point was that Archive.org is listed as "Watch" on the left side. You said earlier that only YouTube said "watch" on it. Which is true on the list, but not the left. As for why my screenshot doesn't include the YouTube watch option, the privacy/anti-tracking plugins I have in Chrome block YouTube, so it doesn't appear for me in that browser.

Radiant wrote:

But yeah, the publication screen offers about eleven separate links or buttons that each show you a movie (two from bittorrent, four from archive, two from youtube, two that show the submission text which commonly includes a youtube encode, and one emulator recording file). I'd say that eleven such options is a bit too much :D

I'm not crazy about it either. It's the #1 thing that I want to rewrite.

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: 2/11/2019 2:04 PM

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Radiant

Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam

Nach wrote:

My point was that Archive.org is listed as "Watch" on the left side. You said earlier that only YouTube said "watch" on it. Which is true on the list, but not the left.

My point is that the youtube link is clearer and more inviting than the archive link. This is true for the buttons as well: even though they both use the word 'watch', the Youtube button is more eye-catching due to its coloring; and Youtube is the better known brand; and it's not clear why there are two identical archive buttons. I'm not sure if the site keeps usage statistics; I would expect at least 90% of users to click on the YouTube link or button. ...and I don't see that as a problem, myself. I get the impression from this thread that the staff prefers that users download the MKV, but I'm not sure why they prefer this, and the poll shows it's not what the users prefer.

Indie game developer

Posted: 2/11/2019 3:46 PM

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creaothceann

He/Him

Editor

Joined: 4/7/2005
Posts: 1874
Location: Germany

ThunderAxe31 wrote:

YouTube [...] javascript garbage

Try this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-classic/

Posted: 2/11/2019 4:03 PM

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Nach

Emulator Coder

Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers

Radiant wrote:

I get the impression from this thread that the staff prefers that users download the MKV, but I'm not sure why they prefer this, and the poll shows it's not what the users prefer.

I don't think the staff has necessarily any preference. We provide different options to ensure the videos are accessible to different people with different needs. This thread gives us some insight into what is and isn't used to help us focus on what needs more attention and what is wasted effort.

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: 2/11/2019 4:30 PM

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DrD2k9

He/Him

Editor, Judge, Expert player (2070)

Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1012
Location: US

The poll does seem to show YT as an overwhelming preference by voters. And while some members may prefer to use the other methods for various reasons, I'd be surprised if many guests/visitors to the site watch runs using any method other than YT (whether that be embedded or on YT site).

Posted: 2/11/2019 6:10 PM

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Sand

He/Him

Player (125)

Joined: 6/26/2018
Posts: 154

I use the archive.org MKV download, because it says "modern." Otherwise I don't know what's different between the MKV and MP4 and probably couldn't distinguish them. Prefer not to use YouTube because we all need a little less Google in our lives. NoScript is set to disable JavaScript for non-https sites, so I usually don't even see the buttons shown in Post #481181 and forget that that option exists.

Posted: 2/11/2019 6:34 PM

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FitterSpace

Active player (416)

Joined: 3/30/2012
Posts: 404

I use YouTube because I don't have much of a reason to use anything else. I downloaded the MKV video for one of my TASes to compare it to other TASes and RTA runs of the same game, but the quality is really bad. The same is true for the MP4 file, but at least I could see that in the browser without having to download it. In the end, I just downloaded the YouTube video because that was much better looking. I haven't downloaded anything via BitTorrent but I assume that's just a different way to download the same MKV and MP4 files. The only time I've downloaded an input file is when I was trying to compare my own work to a previous TAS, but I couldn't get it to sync after the first level so I just compared to the YouTube video. It was really easy because you can advance frames with the , and . keys.

Finished projects: 007: Nightfire 007: Nightfire "All Tokens" Goldeneye: 007 (Wii) Feng Shen Bang (Famicom)

Posted: 2/11/2019 9:16 PM

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Tremane

Active player (463)

Joined: 1/28/2008
Posts: 140
Location: Germany

DrD2k9 wrote:

I primarily watch in-browser using YouTube (via link from the publication page direct to the YouTube video page) for two reasons: 1) I'm usually just interested in what the run looks like. 2) It doesn't require downloading a file. My secondary method is 'Movie file in Emulator' when I'm specifically interested in the input side of how some strategy was performed.

same here!

2-do: Smurfs Nightmare, The (EU) GBC 10% fin : Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge improvement: submitted Mega Man II Improvement: submitted Mega Man IV Improvement: submitted Mega Man V Improvement: submitted future plan: -n-

Posted: 2/12/2019 9:32 AM

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Warp

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland

Stupid question: Does "youtube stream" simply mean the YouTube video? It's a bit confusing to use the word "stream" there, because it usually refers to live-streaming in these contexts. (Sure, technically speaking "video stream" does not in itself refer to live-streaming, but it's just that most commonly when people talk about online video services and "streaming", they are talking about live-streaming, not just an uploaded video.)

Posted: 2/12/2019 9:59 AM

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Masterjun

He/Him

Site Developer, Skilled player (1970)

Joined: 10/12/2010
Posts: 1179
Location: Germany

Warp wrote:

most commonly when people talk about online video services and "streaming", they are talking about live-streaming, not just an uploaded video.

Nope.

Warning: Might glitch to credits I will finish this ACE soon as possible (or will I?)

Posted: 2/13/2019 1:16 AM

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KusogeMan

Active player (434)

Joined: 2/5/2012
Posts: 1690
Location: Brasil

very rarely i get the movie file, and i think some version of video download should be available but mostly all i care is youtube or any other encode you guys put out online

TAS i'm interested: megaman series: mmbn1 all chips, mmx3 any% psx glitched fighting games with speed goals in general

Posted: 2/14/2019 5:15 AM

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jlun2

Skilled player (1706)

Joined: 9/17/2009
Posts: 4952
Location: ̶C̶a̶n̶a̶d̶a̶ "Kanatah"

1. I usually use Youtube. 2. If I'm interested in the game for whatever reason, I may also watch it on emulator. 3. If for some reason the Youtube link is copyrighted, and the ROM just seems to have also disappeared from the web, I'll download the video. Edit: mk4 file shows up as blank video with audio only in the default media player for Windows 10. The mp4 works however.

LLCoolDave wrote:

This seems to be competing for the "Worst looking TAS of 2011" Award.

Posted: 2/22/2019 8:58 PM

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ThunderAxe31

Any

Judge, Skilled player (1288)

Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy

Now that I think about it, I would gladly use the archive.org embedded player if there was the option to watch it at exactly x2 or x3 resolution, because watching game boy TASes at x1 resolution is just unbearable.

my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"

Posted: 2/23/2019 5:49 AM

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BigBoct

He/Him

Editor, Former player

Joined: 8/9/2007
Posts: 1692
Location: Tiffin/Republic, OH

I use the Youtube streams most of the time these days, about an even split between the embeds on the site and the site's channel on Youtube.

Previous Name: boct1584

Posted: 3/1/2019 6:03 AM

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FractalFusion

Editor, Skilled player (1939)

Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 3247

In the past, I would watch MP4/AVI downloadable files, as at the time they had the highest quality. Nowadays, Youtube encodes are of high quality (thanks to the TASVideos encoders), so I watch it there instead. Sometimes, if I expect to rewatch or jump around a TAS (especially if it is a long one), I would download the Youtube video using youtube-dl. With a batch file, it is easily customizable so I can choose which resolution to download, etc. I used to watch by movie file in emulator 10 years ago when it was popular to do so, but I don't do that anymore because everything since then has changed towards making it harder to use emulators for watching TAS replays and at the same time making it easier to watch a video. I only download movie files if I actually need to use emulator features to analyze the game/TAS.

Posted: 3/2/2019 10:03 AM

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tuvok302

Editor

Joined: 12/27/2018
Posts: 7

In order of frequency: 1) Real hardware 2) Movie File in an emulator 3) twitch: dwango or TASAttack 4) YouTube - dwango mostly 5) MKV download In order of preference: 1) Real hardware 2) MKV 3) twitch 4) YouTube 5) Movie File 1) I generally only watch NES and SNES TAS's, and since building a replay device I've watched TAS's on actual hardware when possible; mostly because I can. 2) I download the movie file and watch it, usually when dumping the inputs and troubleshooting lag frames, and I rarely watch the whole video using this method. This is possibly the most frequent way I watch movies though, because I end up rewatching runs (and parts of runs) over and over again comparing them to what's happening on hardware. This used to be the only way I'd watch runs, but after getting fast enough internet to stream video on YouTube and twitch, coupled with sometimes having to hunt around for particular versions of emulators so the run doesn't desync, I have moved away from movie files aside from when necessary for console verification related reasons. 3) After that comes watching them on twitch: either dwangoAC's console verifications, or back when the TASAttack channel was still active I'd have them on in the background while working or studying. 4) I watch on YouTube occasionally, mostly twitch content dwangoAC has uploaded or TASVideoChannels when I'm introducing people to TAS'ing or showing them cool TAS's. As for the embedded player option, I didn't realize that was a thing that existed. I keep noscript set to max and only allow scripts if it's strictly necessary for the site to work, or if I have time to make sure they're open source licensed and not for tracking related purposes. 5) I download in MKV format, and after real console playback this is my favourite for enjoying movies due to the quality and not having to worry about emulator desyncs or my computer lagging and interfering with my enjoyment of the run. If I'm not attempting to console verify the TAS this is generally the method I use to watch the movie, however new runs for games I'm personally interested in don't get published that frequently and I've been working on console verifying runs of games I own lately so I haven't been downloading movies too often lately.

Discord: TheDot I built my own replay device, using an arduino uno connected to some shift registers. I've been making heavy use of the dump scripts in dwangoAC's github.