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!)

«‹›2 »

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

I've just uploaded a video to Yt, and while watching it back, I noticed that it got a bit darker. At least enough for me to notice. At first, I thought that was related to mp4 sometimes being a bit darker, but my source is fine and more bright than the upload. I don't think I've ever had that happen so far, did anyone in here observe something like this with their own uploads?

E: Just to provide some basic info. I record with FRAPS, edit in Sony Vegas Pro, and then frameserve to MeGui for rendering in mp4. I honestly never had any trouble with color before :shrug:

Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Dec 14, 2013

# ¿ Dec 14, 2013 02:35

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 8, 2024 15:42

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Hey, folks. I could use a little bit of knowledge when it comes to Skype call recording. I guested on someones video yesterday, and they recorded the call. As we were finished it turned out that my audio had awul quality and also the sound from the video was in it and was hella loud. Now, I personally record with Audacity and never had to deal with Skype much, but I want to prevent that from happening again. I just want to make sure that the error isn't on my side, or rather, find out what the error was because it bugs me.

I use a cheap headphones+mic combo, and never had any issues with it before. It does pick up a bit of the videos when I record, but it's so quiet that it never comes through in the finished video. So I'm really baffled about the audio from the video being in there at high volume. Especially since I had the video play at 50% volume to clearly hear my host.

As said, never really had to mess with Skype, but the settings seem good to me :iiam:

E: Could the mic boost from Skype be the problem? Like, could it amplify the little noise that my mic picks up, and then boost it to hell and back?

Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Mar 29, 2014

# ¿ Mar 29, 2014 17:57

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

ChaosArgate posted:

The best way to do it is to have everyone locally record their audio because call recording is kind of awful.I'm not too sure what can be done about the recorded audio, sadly.

It's already been posted, so it's not so much about fixing that recording :v:

It's just one of those things that bug me because I can't figure it out. And yeah, all the other times I have guested people recorded locally and everything was fine.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2014 18:10

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Hey, folks. I have a little problem with a game that I'm currently trying to record. So far, I recorded all my stuff with FRAPS at 30fps, and never had trouble. But this game slows down hard when I use 30Fps, and the control input lags a lot. When I just look at the Fps counter without recording, the game ranges from 90 to 100something Fps on average. So I tried recording with 60Fps for an experiment, and while the game ran smooth and without issues, the raw footage was rather choppy when I played it back with the Vlc player.

So now I'm kinda stumped, as I never had to deal with funky Fps issues before :eng99:

E: And jfyi, I haven't locked my framerate in FRAPS. The game is kinda poorly coded and somewhat buggy, but I don't really think that FRAPS should conflict with that?

Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Apr 12, 2014

# ¿ Apr 12, 2014 19:29

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Nidoking posted:

Have you tried transcoding the 60ish FPS video to a flat 30 FPS and running that through VLC, or encoding a preview video with the same framerate but a lossy codec? 60 FPS with lossless compression is pretty chunky, and not many programs will handle it smoothly. When I work with 720p video in Avisynth, I always have to export in a lossy codec so I can preview it at normal speed. All the edits are the same, frame for frame, so I can throw away the preview version when I export my final video.

No, I actually didn't. Just saw that is was choppy and scrapped it. I'll try that later though. I also hope that I'm understanding this Fps business right, because this particular game(asian serious sam clone) has the counter going above 160 and more. The game is supposed to be fast, but it seems kinda insane to my uneducated eye.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2014 22:52

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Nidoking posted:

Have you tried transcoding the 60ish FPS video to a flat 30 FPS and running that through VLC, or encoding a preview video with the same framerate but a lossy codec?

So here's my follow up on that. When transcoding the 60fps recording to a 30Fps video, I end up with a video that looks like it has constant max payne bullet time, and an audio track that's shorter than the video :v:

Recording with 60Fps is doable, but I really don't look forward to working with those huge source files. God dammit FRAPS, why do you have problems with an obscure FPS game from 2004 :argh:

# ¿ Apr 13, 2014 20:08

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Nidoking posted:

You did something wrong, then. It's supposed to take the 60 fps video and drop about half of the frames to make it a 30 fps video running at the same speed, not double the duration of each frame.

Well, then the only thing I can think of is not going to 30fps while encoding but while muxing? Like, I frameserve from Vegas Pro to Megui for the encoding, and the only opportunities for changing the Fps are during encoding or during muxing. At least, as far as I can see.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2014 21:32

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

I'm still working on my problem, and gave MSI Afterburner a try. For a free program, it's surprisingly neat. I made a test video with the MJPG compression, and could use another set of eyes to judge if it's okay.

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

Yes, there are artifacts around the HUD elements, but I probably can't help that. For starters, you can already see those artifacts while playing the game. Yes, they are in there to begin with. And Yt's encoding makes it a bit worse, as my rendered video doesn't show the artifacts as much as the upload does. I thought about recording uncompressed, but the videos are larger than the 60Fps Fraps recordings, so gently caress that. Other than that, I think this could work. I recorded an Fps intense section, and the game didn't lag. And as said, Fraps already caused lag when nothing was going on and even on 60Fps it wasn't perfect.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2014 21:58

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Aerdan posted:

Don't use MJPG; its main raison d'etre is permitting camera devices to record without having to implement support for other formats. It is literally a series of JPEGs in a single file, without the frame-by-frame differencing which other video formats do in order to save space. (That is, each and every frame is a JPEG; other formats use what are called 'keyframes' every so often and in between each keyframe a frame stores a compressed set of pixels that changed from the last frame.)

If you can do so, use h264 instead.

Huh, I wasn't even aware that you can use outside codecs with MSI. I'm going to make a test video later and check it out. With that said though, the MJPG test was okay. Both in size and result, so I don't really see why the codec itself is problematic?

JamieTheD posted:

Don't answer that, I'll wait for the actual vid, if that's what you're gonna be doing. Either way, seems alright.

My plan for the thread is having a bunch of guests, so if you want, you can uncover this mystery first hand :v:

Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Apr 15, 2014

# ¿ Apr 15, 2014 14:54

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Gave h264 a try, and while the source is good and all, it turns into a garbled mess in Vegas. Apparently, Vegas doesn't like h264 in an AVI container. So now I have to see if I can change the container to Mp4. But so far I don't see how? Here are my settings

If somebody could give me a protip, I'd be very glad.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2014 16:34

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Suspicious Dish posted:

Don't use x264vfw. VfW only supports AVI, and it's bad. How did you get the video in the first place?

Also, "Kompatibilit�tseigenschaften Videoaufnahme" is hilarious.

Just followed Aerdan's suggestion, because the MJPG codec that MSI comes with is bad for some reason? And I recorded the vid with MSI, which is real easy. The source file is okay when viewed in VLC, just dropping it into Vegas ruins it. But I'm really working on the basis of things that I picked up along the line, so I'm just trying, ya know?

# ¿ Apr 15, 2014 16:41

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

MSI Afterburner is a utility program that also happens to be able to record gameplay. At the top of the page, I posted a test video with the MJPG codec. And it's fine in my book. Except for the artifacts, but those are in the game to begin with, and Yt's encoding is also at fault here.

Aerdan said the codec is bad and I should use h264, so I just gave that a try. But so far, all it seems to do is add more time to my process without any real gains. I'd really rather stick with the MJPG, instead of having to change containers after recording and whatnot. If you wonder why I'm even loving around with this in the first place, Fraps causes harsh lag in this particular game.

Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Apr 15, 2014

# ¿ Apr 15, 2014 16:52

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Suspicious Dish posted:

MJPG is bad and you should not use it.

yes i always wanted my screen recorder to be Winamp.

Why is it bad? Did you look at the video I posted?

Also, my UI doesn't look as silly as that.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2014 16:57

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Xenoveritas posted:

The problem is with the recording MSI Afterburner creates, I guess?

Not exactly. The problem is that the h264 recording can be viewed fine in VLC, but dropping into Vegas makes the video a garbled mess. That's because Vegas doesn't like h264 in an AVI container as the internet told me. Yeah, dish gave me an option to change the container afterwards, and I'm going to try that in a minute.

And while ya'll say that MJPG is trash, and it might as well be, I still think that the video I posted isn't bad.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2014 17:07

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Yeah okay, I just followed a suggestion itt. As said, the crux of the problem is that Fraps does not like this particular game, but Afterburner does. So I'm just testing what codec options can work.

Also, still waiting for a good reason why my MJPG video sucks. Not kidding, I seriously wanna know what I'm missing.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2014 17:19

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Okay, I'm actually not sure about the filesize since I only made a real short test clip, but the MJPG codec in MSI is maybe different than the old stuff ya'll know?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajZ6cELGVQM
This video shows a direct comparison, and it sure doesn't look like an old poo poo codec to me.

Anyway, I'll go back to the drawing board and get back when I've sorted this out.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2014 17:47

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

taiyoko posted:

Have you tried using Lagarith instead of x264 for recording? I'm using it in Hypercam to record, and it doesn't seem to be adding any lag for me. You should be wanting to record in lossless to start with because the more times you re-encode, the shittier it'll become.

Yeah, and Lagarith results in a pretty jittery recording. MSI is kind of a janky program to begin with, so I'm not surprised.

Suspicious Dish posted:

The downside to MJPEG is that we're not going to help you at all in the TSF and continue to laugh at you for still using MJPEG in TYOOL2014.

Lol if you seriously think you can own me for trying a workaround because Fraps won't play ball

# ¿ Apr 15, 2014 18:55

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Nitro Family. It's an asian Serious Sam clone made on the first version of the Serious Engine. It's somewhat janky and not made very well, so while the issue could lay there, I wouldn't know how to bybass it.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2014 19:07

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Niggurath posted:

Well I downloaded the game, booted it up, and started recording with Dxtory with lagarith and this is what I got
So I'm not sure what issue you're having with recording or playing the game?

I used Fraps, and it made the game lag hard. But it seems like a got lagarith to work after all, and I'll make another test.

E: Thanks for trying though!

Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Apr 15, 2014

# ¿ Apr 15, 2014 20:17

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Niggurath posted:

Maybe you got a busted copy of the game or something?

Whoa, now I'm really stumped. I dunno, my copy is quite old so maybe it's busted? I'll look into that too. Thanks!

# ¿ Apr 15, 2014 20:59

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Quick question: Does the priority setting in MeGui influence anything else aside from how fast your video will get rendered?

# ¿ Apr 17, 2014 18:41

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Thanks. I dimly recall reading that it would also influence the final size of the video, but that appears to be bullshit.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2014 18:46

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Quick question for Dxtory users: Does it pick up different games than FRAPS? Like, FRAPS only picks up direct3d/directX. Is Dxtory different?

Shoopuf posted:

So, um, does anyone know why FRAPS stops recording on its own during loading screens? I've tried twice to do test recordings of trying out dungeons but it simply keeps breaking at the point of loading in while the screen goes mostly-black.

Never had that happen myself. But maybe it could be related to what I said about FRAPS above?

# ¿ May 14, 2014 17:37

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Mico posted:

FRAPS picks up more games than DxTory because Fraps can do OpenGL too and DxTory can't.

Thanks! I was thinking about buying it as an alternative but nope.

# ¿ May 15, 2014 15:36

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Hey folks, I got a question for the MeGui users round here.

I just updated to the newest version of MeGui, and a lot has changed compared to what I was using before. I normally do my editing in Sony Vegas Pro 12, and then use the Debugmode frameserver to serve my project into MeGui for the rendering. Now, with the new version I can't seem to render anything anymore because MeGui gives me a fatal error.

It says "Fatal Error, attempted to read or write protected memory". It also says something about it probably being a sign for memory damage, but that's bullshit because it was working fine yesterday. I doubt that my PC memory breaks overnight while the machine is turned off. Also, it would show while I'm doing othr things. Now, I found two threads that discussed that same problem, and the users said they fixed it by removing useless AVIsynth filters, but that doesn't help me because I'm not really using AVIsynth in the first place. The frameserver just makes a signpost that counts as an AVIsynth script and can therefore be used by MeGui. So wtf? I was running MeGui as an admin so it can't be a user control thingy imo. I realize that it's a very specific problem, but it never hurts to ask :v:

# ¿ Aug 16, 2014 21:45

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Thing is I deleted my old MeGui folder because my version was too old to properly update to the new one. And I then got the fresh zip from sourceforge for the current version. Could be that some file somewhere still floats in my system though. Unlikely, but I'll investigate.

E: What could also be a cause is the the "new" way that MeGui now handles the different settings for the one click encoder. Previously, all I had to do was set up the encoder and that's it. Now the tabs have become more complex and maybe one option somewhere fucks everything up? Argh, I hate setting up new software.

Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Aug 16, 2014

# ¿ Aug 16, 2014 21:56

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Short update on the MeGui front: I can almost render something lol

So, instead of just opening the signpost like before, I now have to open it with the AVS script creator that's built into MeGui. Then I have the same options as in my old version, and can set it up. Problem is, at the end I only have input for the video and the audio tab stays empty. Oh, and it also just crashes when I then try to render said video input.

Here's a protip: Never update anything as long as it's still working fine.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2014 23:32

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Wow that's retarded. Okay, one more step down. No I only have to find out why it still gives me the same fatal error as before!

E: Shout-out to judge reinhold for helping me with gettin my old stuff back. gently caress your new version, MeGui

Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Aug 17, 2014

# ¿ Aug 16, 2014 23:50

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

So this is only somewhat related to Lp, but comletely related to video editing.

Let's say I'm rendering a video for a pal on my pc, who then wants it to turn into a dvd on his mac. My usual render(x264/AC-3 in an mp4 wrapper) doesn't work for him as he says. So I'm wondering what formats and codecs are common for mac users?

# ¿ Sep 4, 2014 16:09

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Thanks, I'll try a render with AAC. I kinda suspected that it was the audio codec, because quicktime also refused to play the file on my PC, and the latest Quicktime builds should support the 264 codec.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2014 16:22

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

So I've been loving around with recording tests for a pretty old game, and now I wonder how I can trick Youtube into giving me the better 720p encoding?

The source is 480x640, so I increased the width of my project to 720. This just adds a bit of black to the sides, while leaving the footage intact. The rendered file also shows 720 as width, but Yt is not giving me the HD encoding. Do I have to do some fancy letterboxing so that Yt believes that the video is 720p?

# ¿ Sep 30, 2014 19:00

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

judge reinhold posted:

The height needs to be 720 or more, ie: 720p=1280x720.

Whoops look at me being a huge retard baby that forgets how things work

I'll make a quick test render to see if bars or double are the way to go

# ¿ Sep 30, 2014 19:27

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

After testing, I can say that adding bars looks atrocius and will not happen. Double the size is just fine imo. Also, if any of you has a minute, it'd be neat if you'd watch my test to check if it looks okay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RZiluX8RJg

A few things about this though. Well, since it's an old-rear end game, none of our fancy capture programs that need to hook into the application works for it. I tried a bunch of software, and they all failed except good old Hypercam 2. Yeah I know, lol at Hypercam and stuff but it works pretty good! Doesn't grab the .smk videos, but that is no problem as I can just rip&convert them before I edit them back in. What I don't like that much is that the video is a tiny bit blurry. You can see it in the numbers on the control UI on the right. Dunno if that's just Youtube, but I tried a few different codecs without any changes. So if nobody else spots anything bad about my test, I'm pretty happy with it.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2014 20:49

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Mastigophoran posted:

It could just be youtube, but it could also be caused either at capture, during editing, or in your final encode. Since you're probably using pointresize and multiplying up by a factor of 2, it's probably not from the editing. If you're capturing in something lossless with an RGB colour space, and have your encoding quality/bitrate turned up plenty, it's probably going to be youtube. Basically, check your finished video - if it's not in that, then it's youtube. If it is then go up the chain and find out where it turned up and voila you know what happened.

Also holy poo poo final liberation?! I played that game a lot, brings back a lot of memories.

Memories that it was a terrible game.

After carefully checking my source and render, I'm pretty sure that it's mostly Youtube. It's also not too much of an issue I think now, because it only really shows on two numbers on the UI. The rest of the text and numbers is crisp so whatever.

Also, while this isn't really the place for it, let me say that I don't even know why somebody wouldn't enjoy to murder a sea of orks with artillery, tank battalions and titans :shrug:

_{The serious answer is that it's kinda terrible in the long run, but I'd do lots of editing later on, and let the thread guide the campaign so that we don't have to play every mission.}

# ¿ Oct 1, 2014 13:15

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Yo, has anyone in here knowledge about recording and editing on a Mac? I'm in a weird situation where I'm looking at upgrading my PC, but could basically get a decent Mac for a similar price and also use it for my serious editing jobs that not involve shooting at pixel mans. I never looked into mac that much, but my bud who uses them for years informed me that it's apparently easy to set up a partition for windows on a mac so that you don't have to throw away all your software.

Just fishing for thoughts on the matter!

# ¿ Jan 29, 2015 20:39

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Thanks for your input! I'll take it into consideration. I'm not too keen on learning a new work environment, but then again, having a dedicated video machine for rendering+editing while using my PC for funsies was a huge boon in the past. Would like to have that again. Eh, I'll give it some more thought.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 16:50

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Yo I was wondering if anyone itt has experience with Lightworks? Took a closer look at it yesterday and now I wonder if it's a good alternative to comercial non-linear editors?

# ¿ May 14, 2015 18:56

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

ProfessorBooty posted:

I remember trying lightworks - I think you have to pay if you actually want to render something. I didn't really attempt any further after that mostly because I wasn't a fan of the interface, that, and I fell in love with Blender.

Iirc you can render with the free version, but the paid version is better at it and also includes more tools and options or whatever. I'll probably give the free version a spin in a few days and check it out myself.

Also isn't Blender a animation/3d programm :shrug:

# ¿ May 14, 2015 21:42

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

ProfessorBooty posted:

Yes, but it also has a video editor. The thing that sells me on blender is that you can have multiple sessions open at once, perform multiple renders at once, and if you accidentally suspend your computer during the render it will pick up where it left off as if nothing happened. Variable frame rates can be a pain though.

Oh sweet, I wasn't aware of that. Gonna check Blender out too then because I'm currently curious about programs. Though, how good is the render? Like, I normaly use Vegas Pro but the render in that software is "awful" so I frameserve to MeGui for a sweet and slim render.

# ¿ May 14, 2015 21:58

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 8, 2024 15:42

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Thanks, I'll give that a peek. Oh, and I meant the relation between quality and size of the renders. Like, Vegas is a sweet editor imo, but is hella bad at making good looking videos that aren't hugely bloated for some reason. That's why I framserve to MeGui, and get those slim h264 renders :v:

# ¿ May 14, 2015 22:07

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

«‹›2 »