Player (62)
Joined: 9/4/2004
Posts: 107
Location: Brazil
Saturn say: "Just WOW! Right, I never thought you can break the 10 min barrier in 1 player mode even with Bisqwits trick and the waterpipes. I was very curious where the heck you could improve 4 whole seconds and made a 1:1 compare of our movies between each Zone... The result in Frames: After Zone...____Genisto______Me____Improving per Zone (comments) * Zone A:________5149______5168______+19 (better route, less lag, Bisqwits zap-trick and faster stone-box throwing) * Zone B:________9499______9567______+49 (I lost 45 frames at the waterpipes, so main improvement is +4 on better route+zapping) * Zone D:_______14325_____14428______+35 (mostly on Bisqwits zap-trick and additional damage-taking of the last bullet) * Zone F:_______17288_____17465______+74 (my biggest error, see description below) * Zone G:_______22987_____23168______+4 (Bomb-zapping and better route) * Zone H:_______26281_____26465______+3 (slightly better route at climbing up the many platforms) * Zone I:________31153_____31337______0 (identical) * Zone J + end:__35830_____36085______+71 (better abuse of the conveyor belt, better enemy-killing to clear a shorter path and avoid lot of lag, better box-throwing on switches) " My question is: Exists some software to make comparison between times and frames, that can be used to compare resulted of 2 speedruns? I made a table in the MSExcel to compare the times of my film "Revenge of Shinobi", but the result was not very elegant. How you it makes to compare these times? EDIT: My table in Excel:
nesrocks
He/Him
Player (246)
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
He has to manually do it on the emulator, playing one movie, taking note of the times at especific points such as "the first frame the screen is black after the end of the level" for all levels. Then playing back the other movie and doing the same.
Player (62)
Joined: 9/4/2004
Posts: 107
Location: Brazil
OK Foda, I know of this, but later that you it wrote down these results, you have that to be comparing manually the times? I want to know if a program exists that makes this for you automatically, and that it shows to the result and the differences of the films... I find that the Excel is the same solution...
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Former player
Joined: 11/6/2004
Posts: 833
It still requires some human intervention, but I've used my dual encoder for comparing some movies. It's not exactly technical but people seem happy with the results.
Player (71)
Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden
I use about the same style as you do Neofix. And I think there will be no other way to do it. Unless you can hardcode breakpoints in the GMV/Rom. But that woulden't be good if you ask me. In a modified version of Gens that my friend made you can set breakpoints for specific frames. So if you decide you wanna compare where V1 of your run is compared to V2, you can tip in a break at 1000 frames for example. Then you can fast forward to that point and see the diffrence. It would be really awesome to have some sort of compare system like you said. One idea would be (as we talked about before I beleive, in the gens thread) to have two windows in the emulator side by side where you can load two diffrent movies, and still have that breakpoint function. Instead of just launching two instances of gens.
Player (62)
Joined: 9/4/2004
Posts: 107
Location: Brazil
DeHackEd You can say more on this method to of dual to encoder? Highness Excellent ideas expensive! But what I need it is of a system that compares numbers! To be more accurate, a method that compares 2 different times, and shows to the "partial difference" and the "accumulated total difference". I obtain to make this in the Excel, but I am looking a software that makes the same thing. My table in Excel convert the time e shows the results in frames... It functions very well, but she is necessary to have a Excel installed in the PC, and he is not everybody that has. PS: Take my Excel comparation times table here: http://rapidshare.de/files/6917835/compare_gmvs.xls.html
Player (71)
Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden
Neofix - Perhaps you could program a PHP thingie to make the chart instead. Because almost every web browser can handle PHP!
Editor, Reviewer, Experienced player (979)
Joined: 4/17/2004
Posts: 3109
Location: Sweden
I use excel too. The only tiresome thing is extracting the frame numbers, the rest is automagic.
Player (62)
Joined: 9/4/2004
Posts: 107
Location: Brazil
Highness Im not a programer... :( Look this video and they say your considerations: http://rapidshare.de/files/6923052/method_to_compare_speedruns.zip.html One is about an overlapping of videos with Fade, using the MS Movie Maker. =P
Player (62)
Joined: 9/4/2004
Posts: 107
Location: Brazil
OK. To compare 2 films graphically, 3 methods exist: =P A - You can see the method "Intercalated" here: http://rapidshare.de/files/6935460/method_to_compare_speedruns_02.zip.html B - You can see the method "Overlapped" here: http://rapidshare.de/files/6923052/method_to_compare_speedruns.zip.html I dont have example of "Side by Side" method, but is very simple to imagine. Tanks...
Editor, Reviewer, Experienced player (979)
Joined: 4/17/2004
Posts: 3109
Location: Sweden
I love the overlap thing. Perhaps you could give the movies a tint of some color so that one is blueish and one is yellow or something, so you can determine which video does what when. I think Dehacked has done a few side-by-side videos for comparisons, for example for Mega Man 3.
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Former player
Joined: 11/6/2004
Posts: 833
This is mostly in reply to Neofix. Example of my dual encoder. More famous example of my dual encoder. It would probably take me all of 5 minutes if you wanted to have something run in interlaced or overlay mode. But it would be harder to distingush each one.
Joined: 10/3/2004
Posts: 138
I believe a better term for what he calls "intercalated" would be "interleaved". You'd also have to double the frame rate, since you're placing two frames in the place of one. Speaking of interlacing, I don't think it'll help much in trying to compare runs - you'll end up with a mishmash of horizontal lines, and you'll lose half the frames from the original (since interlacing is mostly an analog phenomenon, it would really only be useful if you were wishing to compare runs on a TV set). Something that I think would be interesting from an entertainment standpoint (but far too much work for a WIP test) - produce a multi-angle DVD with three angles, maybe four. Run 1, run 2, both runs overlaid, and both runs side-by-side. Of course, this would eat disc space like crazy, since you now have to account for four video streams where before you only had to account for one. Something like this would definitely work better on a DL disc, since you have nearly 9GB. It shouldn't be too hard to do such a DVD, the hard part would actually be authoring the DVD (due to Avisynth kicking so much ass). Also, an idea for the overlay method - make both runs grayscale, then tint one red and one blue. Blend them evenly (50% of each image). I haven't done any testing, but it would seem to me that this would create an interesting video. Or you could go really crazy, turn each run grayscale, stick the now-grayscale videos into the chroma channels, and then figure out a decent luma channel. Maybe this is a little too weird, though it'd be interesting to see what it would look like.