Tech Support Fort - Questions, Comments and Codecs (READ THE OP!)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Tech Support Fort - Questions, Comments and Codecs (READ THE OP!)

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Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011; 2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro; Fun Shoe

If it's rendered to any modern video format that uses P-frames or B-frames, you're poo poo outta luck and you're better re-rendering it. If it's MJPEG, however...

# ? Nov 13, 2014 23:39

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# ? May 10, 2024 05:20

judge reinhold: Jul 26, 2001

Someone please come up with a solution for this, and give me 10% of the royalties, because this is BOGUS.

# ? Nov 13, 2014 23:44

Earnestly: Apr 24, 2010; Jazz hands!

Doing a cool let's play thread for cool posters because Mega64 said "gently caress you, I'm doing Mother 3."

This is the image I took from Dolphin's in-program screen grab. I think it looks really pretty.

Then I did actual research and used Irfanview dropping filesize by 90%.

I think I nailed this whole screen shot thing. Does anyone have any tech issues with this?

# ? Nov 14, 2014 00:13

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011; 2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro; Fun Shoe

judge reinhold posted:

Someone please come up with a solution for this, and give me 10% of the royalties, because this is BOGUS.

Look on the bright side. While your video renders, watch that anime you've been putting off. Do some pilates. Take a nice jog in the park outside. The universe is sending you a message.

# ? Nov 14, 2014 00:16

judge reinhold: Jul 26, 2001

"How about no???" - Dr. Evil.

# ? Nov 14, 2014 00:48

Xenoveritas: May 9, 2010; Dinosaur Gum

I expect it would take longer to figure out a way to do this than it would to just reencode the video.

Besides, don't you use Vegas or Premier or one of those kind of programs? If such a thing were practical, they probably already would.

And if you're doing a two-pass encoding, it really isn't even theoretically possible, because in that case the entire video determines how each individual frame gets encoded. Change one part, and you potentially change everything.

# ? Nov 14, 2014 00:50

judge reinhold: Jul 26, 2001

Xenoveritas posted:

I expect it would take longer to figure out a way to do this than it would to just reencode the video.

Sure, was just wondering if there was a better way.

# ? Nov 14, 2014 00:54

Mico: Jan 29, 2011; A billion dollars.

if it's h264, then no there's not a better way i don't think.

# ? Nov 14, 2014 01:54

Mega64: May 23, 2008; I took the octopath less travelered,

And it made one-eighth the difference.

Earnestly posted:

Doing a cool let's play thread for cool posters because Mega64 said "gently caress you, I'm doing Mother 3."

More like "gently caress you, all my free time is now dedicated to Final Fantasy 14."

Screenshot looks good to me, though maybe a couple with some text and other things would be nice to double-check.

# ? Nov 14, 2014 02:15

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011; 2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro; Fun Shoe

judge reinhold posted:

Sure, was just wondering if there was a better way.

It might be possible if the keyframes are optimal and nothing predicts on that frame. If it's a cutaway gag, it's likely that they'll be one at both ends, but really you can never depend on a specific keyframe arrangement. Some of the stupidest encoders, like the one from Adobe Media Encoder, just emit keyframes every 2 seconds or so, not caring about whether it will predict future frames better than other choices. In that case, you're hosed.

The complexities of temporal compression and intra-prediction are all explained in depth in my new single, "Nuthin' but a B-Frame", feat. Laurent Aimar, Jason Garrett-Glaser and Nate Dogg.

# ? Nov 14, 2014 06:01

bhlaab: Feb 21, 2005

Suspicious Dish posted:

It might be possible if the keyframes are optimal and nothing predicts on that frame. If it's a cutaway gag, it's likely that they'll be one at both ends, but really you can never depend on a specific keyframe arrangement. Some of the stupidest encoders, like the one from Adobe Media Encoder, just emit keyframes every 2 seconds or so, not caring about whether it will predict future frames better than other choices. In that case, you're hosed.

The complexities of temporal compression and intra-prediction are all explained in depth in my new single, "Nuthin' but a B-Frame", feat. Laurent Aimar, Jason Garrett-Glaser and Nate Dogg.

Well, let's say the keyframes are optimal. What exactly would be the proposed solution? Because the whole notion sounds nuts to me.

# ? Nov 14, 2014 07:14

nielsm: Jun 1, 2009

Mico posted:

if it's h264, then no there's not a better way i don't think.

Yep, H.264 makes everything harder. The video would have to be encoded from the start, with segment-replacement in mind.
The problem is that H.264 allows frame references for prediction (P- and B-blocks) across intra-frames, so if you blindly replace a segment the preceding or following segment might suddenly be referencing frames that look different than expected, causing corruption. Then you'd also have to re-encode those segments, and eventually cascade all the way.

# ? Nov 14, 2014 08:27

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011; 2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro; Fun Shoe

bhlaab posted:

Well, let's say the keyframes are optimal. What exactly would be the proposed solution? Because the whole notion sounds nuts to me.

If you have designated keyframes for the beginning and ending of the cutaway gag, and no other frames reference any of them for prediction, then you can just splice in the new frames in directly. They're an independent sequence, since nothing else relies on them.

# ? Nov 14, 2014 08:54

Xenoveritas: May 9, 2010; Dinosaur Gum

bhlaab posted:

Well, let's say the keyframes are optimal. What exactly would be the proposed solution? Because the whole notion sounds nuts to me.

The theory would be you'd copy the entire bitstream up until the first frame you'd want to cut out. Then you'd immediately concatenate the newly encoded frames, and then switch over to the old bitstream past the last frame for the remainder.

In theory, with video codecs that never use prediction past keyframe boundaries, this would work. Hell, in theory, you could conceptually just insert a new keyframe partway after a previous keyframe, so you'd be able to cut in anywhere and it's only the ending frame that would need to be a keyframe. I think VirtualDub even supports this kind of "editing" as long as you do it at keyframes.

It's absolutely not a practical solution and I have no idea if it would work with a "real" codec like H.264.

# ? Nov 14, 2014 08:56

Sevalar: Jul 10, 2009; HEY RADICAL LARRY HOW ABOUT A HAIRCUT

****MIC TO THE WILLY***

Anyone use Handbrake to downscale their videos? I used to use it all the time as it would pretty much half the file size of my videos. But for some reason it has stopped working in recent weeks.

You add the source video like always, but when you hit the Start button it instantly completes (e.g nothing happens). I've tried to google but surprise surprise I can't find any threads with the same problem. Sucks because Handbrake rocks!

iirc I think I got it to work a couple of times by adding the file to the job queue THEN hitting start, but recently it just doesn't want to know my files anymore. FYI my video files are recorded by Bandicam, then put together and saved with Windows Movie maker.

# ? Nov 15, 2014 14:55

ANIME MONSTROSITY: Jun 1, 2012; by XyloJW

I just found a post detailing how to mass upload images to lpix on os x and it ownssss.

# ? Nov 15, 2014 16:12

frozentreasure: Nov 13, 2012; ~

My mic is very close to breaking, so I'm in the market for a new one; the Samson C01U mentioned in the OP is only $60+shipping on Amazon right now. Anyone else have good experience with it and is it worth picking up without the stand/pop filter?

ANIME MONSTROSITY posted:

I just found a post detailing how to mass upload images to lpix on os x and it ownssss.

Feel free to share, y'know.

frozentreasure fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Nov 17, 2014

# ? Nov 17, 2014 09:20

Zeratanis: Jun 16, 2009; That's kind of a weird thought isn't it?

I own that mic and you can get away without the pop filter(I got one for when I need to talk close to it for some things), but you miiiight wanna get a stand just because the one it comes with doesn't support it's weight very well. Otherwise it's an amazing mic, just remember to set the volume in recording devices to 35-40.

# ? Nov 17, 2014 18:32

ANIME MONSTROSITY: Jun 1, 2012; by XyloJW

frozentreasure posted:

My mic is very close to breaking, so I'm in the market for a new one; the Samson C01U mentioned in the OP is only $60+shipping on Amazon right now. Anyone else have good experience with it and is it worth picking up without the stand/pop filter?

Feel free to share, y'know.

oh yeah

code:

#!/usr/bin/env perl

# Perl LPix uploader client
# Requires that the perl LWP module be installed.

use strict;
use warnings;

# *** Change these!
my $user = "USERNAME";
my $pass = "PASSWORD";
my $gallery = "GALLERY";

use LWP;
use HTTP::Request::Common;

my %errors = ('err2' => 'Invalid username/password', 'err3' => 'Not an image', 'err4' => 'File too large' );
my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;

for my $image (@ARGV) {
  my $sz = (-s $image);
  if($sz > 2048*1024) {
    print "$image\n";
    print "  Images have a maximum allowable size of 2048KB, skipping\n\n";
    next;
  }

  # Check file can be opened ok
  -r $image || die "Couldn't open $image: $!";

  # Create HTTP request for file
  my $req = POST("http://lpix.org/api",
          "Content-Type" => "form-data",
          "Content"      => [ "username" => $user,
                              "password" => $pass,
                              "gallery" => $gallery,
                              "output" => "xml",
                              "file" => [$image],
                            ]);
  # Make request
  my $resp = $ua->request($req);

  print "$image\n";

  # Failed?
  if(! $resp->is_success) {
    warn "Upload failed, error: ", $resp->status_line, "\n";
    next;
  }

  # Pick the interesting bits out of the XML
  for (split /\n/, $resp->content) {
    if (m#<err type="([^"]+)"\s*/>#) {
      my $errTxt = $errors{$1} || "(unknown error)";
      warn "  Uploading error $1 : $errTxt\n";
    }

    if (m#<imageurl>([^<]+)</imageurl>#) {
      print "[img]", $1, "[/img]\n";
    }

    if (m#<thumburl>([^<]+)</thumburl>#) {
      print "[timg]", $1, "[/timg]\n";
    }
  }
  print "\n";
}

Credit goes to some dude in the persona 4 LP thread. To use, save this as lpix.pl in the user folder, cd to the folder containing images and run

code:

perl ~/lpix.pl *.png

or other image extension

# ? Nov 18, 2014 22:37

Polsy: Mar 23, 2007

Hey, it's that bad code I wrote years ago, wasn't sure if that still worked

# ? Nov 18, 2014 23:49

ANIME MONSTROSITY: Jun 1, 2012; by XyloJW

It works great, saved me lots of time on uploading pictures.

# ? Nov 18, 2014 23:56

Xenoveritas: May 9, 2010; Dinosaur Gum

Clearly it's time to rewrite in Swift to give it a fancy Mac OS X UI.

Which actually might be a fun thing to do just to learn Swift, come to think of it.

# ? Nov 19, 2014 00:12

ankle: Oct 30, 2010

Could anyone tell me if this video look good or bad? I really don't know what I'm doing. Bitrate is 5,000 kbps, I think. Sorry if this is vague!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8lbiTn1MGE

# ? Nov 21, 2014 01:48

discworld is all I read: Apr 7, 2009; DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?

ankle posted:

Could anyone tell me if this video look good or bad? I really don't know what I'm doing. Bitrate is 5,000 kbps, I think. Sorry if this is vague!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8lbiTn1MGE

It looks fine, though you'd probably be safe with going 2500; 5000 just seems excessive for your final encode. Also it might be worthwhile now to record in 60 fps since youtube allows that for 720p videos.

# ? Nov 21, 2014 01:50

ankle: Oct 30, 2010

Niggurath posted:

It looks fine, though you'd probably be safe with going 2500; 5000 just seems excessive for your final encode. Also it might be worthwhile now to record in 60 fps since youtube allows that for 720p videos.

Awesome, thank you!

# ? Nov 21, 2014 02:24

dis astranagant: Dec 14, 2006

What's the best way to handle the PSP's janky 30:17 resolution that doesn't evenly divide into something Youtube likes?

# ? Nov 21, 2014 13:49

Admiral H. Curtiss: May 11, 2010; I think there are a bunch of people who can create trailing images. I know some who could do this as if they were just going out for a stroll.

Crop off the top and bottom row of pixels and upsize by 4. (480x272 -> 480x270 -> 1920x1080)

You probably want to reverse the two steps if your source is already chroma subsampled. (480x272 -> 1920x1088 -> 1920x1080)

# ? Nov 21, 2014 13:55

dis astranagant: Dec 14, 2006

Admiral H. Curtiss posted:

Crop off the top and bottom row of pixels and upsize by 4. (480x272 -> 480x270 -> 1920x1080)

You probably want to reverse the two steps if your source is already chroma subsampled. (480x272 -> 1920x1088 -> 1920x1080)

I'm recording out of PPSSPP, probably with OBS since that emulator still doesn't do its own recording. So probably something more like 960x544 -> 1920*1088 -> 1920x1080, then. Was trying to wrap my head around the 1440x816 source I have at the moment, that being the biggest output I can get out of the emulator without the window clipping on a 1920x1080 monitor.

# ? Nov 21, 2014 14:07

Sytakan: Jul 26, 2012; Ohyes.

As a test to see if I can take decent screenshots and figure out the basics, I've been using Irfan View to take screenshots of a game through DOSBox.

However, I've noticed that the more screenshots I take, the slower the game starts running, until it's nothing more than a stuttering mess. I use the hotkey CTRL + F11 to take the screenshots, the game is windowed, and the destination folder is my D drive. I only got about 15 screenshots taken before it began to slow down.

Is this a common problem, or am I just a huge fuckup who missed something obvious?

# ? Nov 23, 2014 00:26

discworld is all I read: Apr 7, 2009; DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?

Sytakan posted:

As a test to see if I can take decent screenshots and figure out the basics, I've been using Irfan View to take screenshots of a game through DOSBox.

However, I've noticed that the more screenshots I take, the slower the game starts running, until it's nothing more than a stuttering mess. I use the hotkey CTRL + F11 to take the screenshots, the game is windowed, and the destination folder is my D drive. I only got about 15 screenshots taken before it began to slow down.

Is this a common problem, or am I just a huge fuckup who missed something obvious?

You might be triggering some hotkey within dosbox itself whenever you're pressing F11? You might want to consider using dosbox's internal avi recording ability and using the videos to take screenshots from as it doesn't really affect dosbox when you do that and the avi files are usually fairly small in size.

# ? Nov 23, 2014 00:32

kirbysuperstar: Nov 11, 2012; Let the fools who stand before us be destroyed by the power you and I possess.

Sytakan posted:

Is this a common problem, or am I just a huge fuckup who missed something obvious?

CTRL-F11 slows down Dosbox's cycle-rate, yes.

# ? Nov 23, 2014 00:42

Sytakan: Jul 26, 2012; Ohyes.

Niggurath posted:

You might be triggering some hotkey within dosbox itself whenever you're pressing F11? You might want to consider using dosbox's internal avi recording ability and using the videos to take screenshots from as it doesn't really affect dosbox when you do that and the avi files are usually fairly small in size.

Ah, I didn't even know it had that! Thank you for the advice.

kirbysuperstar posted:

CTRL-F11 slows down Dosbox's cycle-rate, yes.

Thank you, I had a sneaking suspicion it was something like that.

# ? Nov 23, 2014 00:56

Nidoking: Jan 27, 2009; I fought the lava, and the lava won.

DOSBox also has a screenshot hotkey, which I believe defaults to Ctrl-F5. I usually use that if I want to take a screenshot of a title screen or something where finding an exact frame isn't an issue.

# ? Nov 23, 2014 01:24

discworld is all I read: Apr 7, 2009; DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?

So I was reading through Mastigophoran's great DS animation avs script and I seem a bit at a loss as to how to do something. Basically the game during conversations and exploration switches to a vertical, book-type setting and while I can get the images horizontal instead of vertical, I also need the images to rotate as well. Basically I need to use the MDS_SideWays but turning the other direction I think? Or this screenshot:

# ? Nov 24, 2014 01:21

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011; 2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro; Fun Shoe

I don't know how MDS works, but you can use TurnLeft / TurnRight to rotate clips by 90 degrees.

If you want it to animate, you have to use a plugin.

# ? Nov 24, 2014 01:24

Quaternion Cat: Feb 19, 2011; Affeline Space

Niggurath posted:

So I was reading through Mastigophoran's great DS animation avs script and I seem a bit at a loss as to how to do something. Basically the game during conversations and exploration switches to a vertical, book-type setting and while I can get the images horizontal instead of vertical, I also need the images to rotate as well. Basically I need to use the MDS_SideWays but turning the other direction I think? Or this screenshot:

Hi, the most recent version of the avs has some cool kicken rad new stuff that can do this for you - have a look at the This readme is too long! Tell me the most useful things you added in this new version already! section and the MDS_VStackToRotated and related functions in the manual. I used the zoom plugin, rather than spinner, but it's easy enough (I think?) to change.

If these don't service your needs perfectly in every way let me know, I'm more than happy to help out in any way possible.

# ? Nov 24, 2014 03:56

discworld is all I read: Apr 7, 2009; DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?

Mastigophoran posted:

Hi, the most recent version of the avs has some cool kicken rad new stuff that can do this for you - have a look at the This readme is too long! Tell me the most useful things you added in this new version already! section and the MDS_VStackToRotated and related functions in the manual. I used the zoom plugin, rather than spinner, but it's easy enough (I think?) to change.

If these don't service your needs perfectly in every way let me know, I'm more than happy to help out in any way possible.

The readme was mostly super helpful, my problem was transitioning properly in the script from one thing to another.I think I mostly figured out what the problem was, and apparently it's because I wasn't calling up both the vertstack and the verticalmode. I was only using one or the other. So now I've mostly got it working but I feel like I could possibly make my script a bit easier:

code:

import("C:\Users\paul\Desktop\MastiDS.avs")
raw=avisource("C:\Users\paul\Desktop\The_Nameless_Game_en_32_18324.avi")
raw = raw.ChangeFPS(30)
raw

MDS_SmoothSettings()

MDS_VertStack()

MDS_TopVSlide(raw,611,1006)
MDS_ResetLastframe()
MDS_VertStackA(raw,1006)
MDS_SetVerticalMode()
MDS_RotateEffectSub(raw, 1006,2850)
MDS_RotatedToVStack(raw, 2851)
MDS_ResetLastframe()
MDS_VertStackA(raw,2851)
MDS_TopVSlide(raw,3282,4025)
MDS_ResetLastframe()
MDS_VertStackA(raw,4026)
MDS_SetVerticalMode()
MDS_RotateEffectSub(raw,4026,5376)
MDS_SideWaysGap(raw,5377,7017, gap="10")



crop(128,0,-128,0)

I get a feeling like I'm missing something and that I don't need all these resetlastframe functions, but they seem to be needed after every time I switch from a focus on a single panel back to the side by side options.

discworld is all I read fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Nov 24, 2014

# ? Nov 24, 2014 04:24

Maple Leaf: Aug 24, 2010; Let'en my post flyen true

So I learned today that using directshowsource and convertfps makes it so that you can't use the dissolve command at all. You can't even try to cheat by making two scripts, one with the video and the other with the edits.

Example:

code:

a=wavsource("audio.wav")
v=directshowsource("video.mp4", fps=60, convertfps=true)
audiodub(v,a)
dissolve(trim(690,17719), trim(19168,42611), trim(44035,0), 30)

The video immediately flips between clips rather than fading to them, much like a normal Trim. The audio, however, dissolves correctly and remains on sync.

I can't take the line out because otherwise the audio will drift. Any suggestions? This is only a minor inconvenience, really, but I'd like to know my options.

# ? Nov 24, 2014 04:44

Quaternion Cat: Feb 19, 2011; Affeline Space

Niggurath posted:

The readme was mostly super helpful, my problem was transitioning properly in the script from one thing to another.

I get a feeling like I'm missing something and that I don't need all these resetlastframe functions, but they seem to be needed after every time I switch from a focus on a single panel back to the side by side options.

Uhm, well, what you're doing is uh, kinda weird? like if the output that this is giving you is what you want it to look like, then I would write the code to make that happen like this:

code:

MDS_TopVSlide(raw,611)

MDS_SetVerticalMode()
MDS_RotateEffectSub(raw,1006)

MDS_SetHorizontalMode()
MDS_VertStack(raw,2851)
MDS_TopVSlide(raw,3282)

MDS_SetVerticalMode()
MDS_RotateEffectSub(raw,4026)
MDS_SideWaysGap(raw,5377,gap="10")

One of the key features is that you don't need to supply an 'end' point for your effect, eg MDS_TopVSlide(raw,611,1006) - you don't need the 1006 there unless you wanted it to revert to (edit) whatever the last layout was, in this case, VertStack, at frame 1006, to save you from having to type it out, which is why you're having to reset the last frame value all the time, because you're doing a bunch of other stuff at frame 1006, and again at all those other frames.

Is this just what you've managed to get working so far, or the output you're actually after? There's a mix of animated and nonanimated transitions in there, but all of the animated ones are overridden.

double edit: also if you're using the larger rotated layouts you probably want to lose the crop(128,0,-128,0)

Quaternion Cat fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Nov 24, 2014

# ? Nov 24, 2014 04:57

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# ? May 10, 2024 05:20

discworld is all I read: Apr 7, 2009; DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?

Maple Leaf posted:

So I learned today that using directshowsource and convertfps makes it so that you can't use the dissolve command at all. You can't even try to cheat by making two scripts, one with the video and the other with the edits.

Example:
code:
a=wavsource("audio.wav")
v=directshowsource("video.mp4", fps=60, convertfps=true)
audiodub(v,a)
dissolve(trim(690,17719), trim(19168,42611), trim(44035,0), 30)
The video immediately flips between clips rather than fading to them, much like a normal Trim. The audio, however, dissolves correctly and remains on sync.

I can't take the line out because otherwise the audio will drift. Any suggestions? This is only a minor inconvenience, really, but I'd like to know my options.

If you're using an MP4 then I think most people will tell you not to use directshowsource and instead go for FFMS2. Granted it is an external plug-in so you'll need to do a little bit more to get it running, but it's the way to go.

Mastigophoran posted:

Uhm, well, what you're doing is uh, kinda weird? like if the output that this is giving you is what you want it to look like, then I would write the code to make that happen like this:
code:
MDS_TopVSlide(raw,611)

MDS_SetVerticalMode()
MDS_RotateEffectSub(raw,1006)

MDS_SetHorizontalMode()
MDS_VertStack(raw,2851)
MDS_TopVSlide(raw,3282)

MDS_SetVerticalMode()
MDS_RotateEffectSub(raw,4026)
MDS_SideWaysGap(raw,5377,gap="10")
One of the key features is that you don't need to supply an 'end' point for your effect, eg MDS_TopVSlide(raw,611,1006) - you don't need the 1006 there unless you wanted it to revert to (edit) whatever the last layout was, in this case, VertStack, at frame 1006, to save you from having to type it out, which is why you're having to reset the last frame value all the time, because you're doing a bunch of other stuff at frame 1006, and again at all those other frames.

Is this just what you've managed to get working so far, or the output you're actually after? There's a mix of animated and nonanimated transitions in there, but all of the animated ones are overridden.

double edit: also if you're using the larger rotated layouts you probably want to lose the crop(128,0,-128,0)

Yeah, overall it's giving me what I want; I don't exactly need any animations. And I wasn't sure if I needed an end point in all of the functions of not, I'm a bit poo poo when it comes to some things in functions. The only real issue I'm getting now is with the gap function. It ends up staying too zoomed in and it cuts off the image which you might be talking about with the crop. I uploaded the short video for it: http://youtu.be/SpaLM-t1tL0 How does it look to you?

# ? Nov 24, 2014 05:06

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Tech Support Fort - Questions, Comments and Codecs (READ THE OP!)

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