Deus Ex quality test

Prentice

Edit history:

Prentice: 2010-05-02 04:44:46 am

2010-04-25 03:26:36 am

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Hey everyone,

I'm doing a single segment of Deus Ex located here: http://speeddemosarchive.com/forum/index.php?topic=10401.0

I'm finishing up the run this week, but I need to get the go-ahead for my quality test to see if my final video will be accepted. Here's my info:

Windows 7
Fraps
Deus Ex - PC

Here's the video: https://www.yousendit.com/download/OHo3NnFJNHZRYTljR0E9PQ

It's pretty sloppy, just a minute long of two different scenes of me running (very poorly).

So, is this good? Quality wise? Too bright? Too dark? This is my first run so sorry if I missed up something obvious.

Thanks!

Edit: Updated mp4 version - https://www.yousendit.com/download/OHo3bUpjNnlVVG52Wmc9PQ

Thread title:

krael

2010-04-25 06:58:07 am

Verified verifier and hangaround :)

Im no techie or anything, but for me it's a definate go on the audio/video quality. Very good picture with a very good sound as well.

ballofsnow

2010-04-25 10:46:32 am

Windows Media Video (WMV) isn't accepted at SDA.

How to post a video quality test.

Try running your source files through Anri-chan.

Is your video really 1920x1080? It looks like 4:3 aspect ratio with pillarboxing.

nate

2010-04-25 06:47:34 pm

rotfl, one of my favorite things is when people who have no clue post "yeah that looks great!" in quality test threads.

Prentice

2010-04-25 11:57:52 pm

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Sorry - it didn't say that .wmv wasn't accepted in that thread. Fraps puts them out as avi's, I just spliced them together with Windows Movie Maker for the quality test. I'll try Anri-Chan out.

And that's not the resolution I have on my monitor, so I don't know why it does that. Does it have to be a certain resolution to be accepted?

Mystery

Edit history:

Mystery: 2010-04-26 11:10:51 am

2010-04-26 12:51:13 am

Just high enough. I mean, there's no use coming here with a 10x20 video.
And it's common knowledge that Microsoft's tools are the devils tools. Especially so when it comes to video.
You could just put up one of the segments, as long as it's long enough, I suppose.

krael

2010-04-26 06:23:59 am

Verified verifier and hangaround :)

Quote from nate:

rotfl, one of my favorite things is when people who have no clue post "yeah that looks great!" in quality test threads.

He asked about quality and I answered about quality. Smiley

ballofsnow

2010-04-26 07:37:04 am

I'm not going to list every codec/container/whatever that isn't acceptable. "Required: LQ/MQ/HQ mp4" is enough.

Quote from Prentice:

And that's not the resolution I have on my monitor, so I don't know why it does that. Does it have to be a certain resolution to be accepted?

WMM doing some funky stuff? For resolution, not really, and Anri will handle the resizing for each quality version.

Quote from Mystery:

And it's common knowledge that Microsoft's tools are the devils tools. Especially so when it comes to video.

I don't know if I'd call them devil's tools, but they usually don't fit in with SDA's formats.

Quote from Mystery:

You should just encode them a good tool and then use mkvmerge to merge them. Or you could just put up one of the segments, as long as it's long enough, I suppose.

I'm pretty sure I've never used mkvmerge... Does it handle mp4 as well?

Mystery

2010-04-26 07:52:03 am

Quote from ballofsnow:

I don't know if I'd call them devil's tools, but they usually don't fit in with SDA's formats.

For containers, video and audio formats that are pretty poorly supported or not at all in a wide range of tools, including popular ones, I'd say they are devil tools.

Quote from ballofsnow:

I'm pretty sure I've never used mkvmerge... Does it handle mp4 as well?

mkvmerge basically muxes into mkv and supports all common formats.
It's pretty much THE best muxing tool out there, but it's still limited to mkv.
mkvmerge does NOT support Microsoft containers or audio formats, I believe, so that very much explains how they are devil tools.

ballofsnow

2010-04-26 10:58:52 am

Quote from Mystery:

It's pretty much THE best muxing tool out there, but it's still limited to mkv.

Why are you recommending this tool, however great it may be, when it doesn't support mp4 which is what SDA uses? (I haven't scoped out mp4 support for mkvmerge, relying on your word)

I think I get where you're coming from, judging from some of your posts in these forums. You're using this great tool and want to share your experience with others and I totally understand that. But man, take a step back! You'll only confuse people when you start mixing mp4 and mkv in your discussions; not everyone is knowledgeable about these things, they may not know that there is a difference.

Mystery

2010-04-26 11:00:50 am

Actually, I was suggesting that you use mkvmerge to put your video together before feeding it to anri-chan for further encoding.
Using Movie Player creates the result that we see.

ballofsnow

2010-04-26 11:05:09 am

Quote from Mystery:

Actually, I was suggesting that you use mkvmerge to put your video together before feeding it to anri-chan for further encoding.

Except that doesn't work. See I know this right away (and I should since I do part of the coding...), but Prentice (or whoever else) might not. I can just picture someone going through the trouble of using mkvmerge as you suggest, only to realize later that this simply doesn't work. Please, don't lead people down these paths.

Mystery

2010-04-26 11:06:51 am

o_O
That I must lack some understanding of anri-chan. Why, exactly, does it not work?
I need information so as to not read people astray.
Movie Maker is obviously a bad choice, so what would be recommended instead?

ballofsnow

2010-04-26 11:17:55 am

It's simple, we don't support MKV. The exact reasons I don't know; like I said I haven't used mkvmerge. But if you're expecting to throw some random MKV at Anri, it won't work.

Does mkvmerge imply that you're encoding the source files to a lossy codec? If so, we don't like that either. Either run the source files through Anri, or some version that uses a lossless codec. If not, I still don't see the point, Anri can append your files together and allows you to trim out what you don't want. If mkvmerge doesn't do an aligned splice whereas Anri does, definitely do not use mkvmerge.

Mystery

2010-04-26 12:39:51 pm

Mkv is a container, as you know. A very flexible one at that. It can handle lossless just fine.
It seems that I know very little of anri-chan, though. Any encoding tool I know of would accept mkv, just like any other format, just fine. Which is why I suggested it in the first place. Unfortunately, that seem to have been a mistake.
The reason why SDA doesn't use mkv, I believe, is hardware compatibility since all hardware except a select very few stubbornly refuses to support mkv.
So you would just feed them to anri, let it encode and merge them?
I don't really know what aligned splice is, though.

honorableJay

2010-04-26 12:49:02 pm

The Dork Knight himself.

Aligned splice from what I understand is when the audio and video are sync'd properly during merging and cutting. If an editor doesn't support aligned splices you'll get audio/video desyncs during playback (which is why I switched from using vdub to avidemux).

nate

Edit history:

nate: 2010-04-28 06:10:02 pm

2010-04-28 06:03:48 pm

snow, we need to talk about allowing .avs as well as .avi if you go into input avi mode. that way people can do directshowsource("urmom.mkv") or whatever or do aligned splices or other crap and get their weird crap into anri. last time i checked all it would take is a modification of a single line to check for filename ends with .avi OR .avs.

the reason sda doesn't accept mkv is because we accept mp4. if you're fighting a war or killing a bunch of insects or something you don't want to press lightly on one area or a whole bunch of insects at once - you want to kill one insect absolutely dead at a time. so if everything on sda is mp4, you can either play everything ever posted to the site, or you can't. my job is to make sure you can. as was previously said, mp4 has better support both in software and (much more so) in hardware than matroska. so that's why it was chosen over mkv. and the insect thing is why we only accept one format. hope that makes sense.

from reading this you can probably guess how i feel about the firefox lol not supporting h.264 thing. sda isn't about the technical aspects of videos or politics or anything like that, it's about creating and watching speedruns. everything follows from that. so if a browser is like lol let's not support by far the most common format for some political reason then it makes me think they care more about politics than helping people get stuff done, helping people have fun. if money ever enters into the discussion then it's already too late - you have lost focus.

snow, we need to talk about allowing .avs as well as .avi if you go into input avi mode. that way people can do directshowsource("urmom.mkv") or whatever or do aligned splices or other crap and get their weird crap into anri. last time i checked all it would take is a modification of a single line to check for filename ends with .avi OR .avs.

the reason sda doesn't accept mkv is because we accept mp4. if you're fighting a war or killing a bunch of insects or something you don't want to press lightly on one area or a whole bunch of insects at once - you want to kill one insect absolutely dead at a time. so if everything on sda is mp4, you can either play everything ever posted to the site, or you can't. my job is to make sure you can. as was previously said, mp4 has better support both in software and (much more so) in hardware than matroska. so that's why it was chosen over mkv. and the insect thing is why we only accept one format. hope that makes sense.

from reading this you can probably guess how i feel about the firefox lol not supporting h.264 thing. sda isn't about the technical aspects of videos or politics or anything like that, it's about creating and watching speedruns. everything follows from that. so if a browser is like lol let's not support by far the most common format for some political reason then it makes me think they care more about politics than helping people get stuff done, helping people have fun. if money ever enters into the discussion then it's already too late - you have lost focus.

ballofsnow

2010-04-28 07:32:47 pm

Quote from nate:

last time i checked all it would take is a modification of a single line to check for filename ends with .avi OR .avs.

Indeed. Already made the change, will appear in 3.1 as individual avi/avs input.

Mystery

2010-04-29 02:08:24 am

Yeah, I understand why you chose MP4 over other containers. Perfectly understandable.
mkvmerge does support aligned splices from what I understand.
Anyway, it's great to see anri getting avs support. That means it's possible to use almost whatever means to get the video together before finalizing with anri...

I also agree with you on H264 and Firefox. I think it's silly, but it's not like we can a lot about that.

Prentice

2010-04-29 06:52:22 am

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Ok, so I should record it with fraps, and then use what from there? Anri-Chan? Or does that not work?

Fraps records .avis - how do I convert them to mp4s?

Sorry I am unexperienced at this.

Mystery

2010-04-29 06:54:42 am

Anri supports avi input as far as I am aware, so just recording them and then using anri should suffice.
(I think. I hope.)

nate

2010-04-29 12:52:05 pm

yes. you may need to dump the fraps avi to a raw avi first by opening it in virtualdub and hitting f7.

Prentice

Edit history:

Prentice: 2010-05-02 04:43:10 am

2010-05-02 03:59:17 am

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Ok, I figured out how to use VDub and Anri-Chan. How would I merge the videos together? Fraps splits the clips every three minutes or so. What program should I use to merge them all together?

The quality test is encoding now, so I'll upload that as soon as it's done.

Here we go: https://www.yousendit.com/download/OHo3bUpjNnlVVG52Wmc9PQ

High quality version

I did wide-screen mode, did that mess up the aspect ratio? Or am I just imagining that?

ballofsnow

2010-05-02 11:12:57 am

Anri can merge the videos. When you specify avi input, you can choose to enter the videos individually, or automatically which will scan a folder and load videos alphabetically.

Did you play the game in widescreen? I doubt that you did, judging from your first video in the topic. Say no to that question.

You should make an IQ version.

Prentice

2010-05-03 02:50:56 am

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Here's an XQ version: https://www.yousendit.com/download/OHo3V0ovcGt3NUpjR0E9PQ

Is this good?

And a few questions:

1. Should I include the SDA card at the beginning of the final run?

2. How would I do a embedded flash version (like dex's version for DX on this site)?

3. How should I edit out the loading screens on the final version?

Thanks for the help, everyone. Sorry about all this noobieness.