Need help: Recording videos using Amarec for SDA submissions

2014-06-29 09:09:51 pm

Okay, so I have a problem. I want to be able to submit good runs to SDA and upload good quality videos of my gameplay to Youtube. I downloaded Amarec and a few people tried to help me through it on stream. I got everything set up with video and sound and it seemed to work nicely, until I watched the videos afterwords. For some reason, the sound gets recorded to be behind the video (although it plays normally during the recording). No one could understand why that happened, and especially not me. There were also settings that made the video go unsmoothly, making the sound "catch up" followed by falling behind again over and over. No settings seemed to work.

When I open Amarec, a few "Error" boxes pops up:

These are pictures of my my settings and the screen:

This is the result I get after recording:
Edit: I uploaded it to Youtube and shit got even weirder. The sound that I had disappeared and the video went apeshit. The video got way worse:

I use a Dazzle DVC 100 to record and my computer has Windows 8 installed.

What else you need to help me out, I don't know. But let me know if you want to see something else. Would really appreciate help to make this work out properly (and yes I would like to be able to stream while recording).

Thread title:

Okay, so I have a problem. I want to be able to submit good runs to SDA and upload good quality videos of my gameplay to Youtube. I downloaded Amarec and a few people tried to help me through it on stream. I got everything set up with video and sound and it seemed to work nicely, until I watched the videos afterwords. For some reason, the sound gets recorded to be behind the video (although it plays normally during the recording). No one could understand why that happened, and especially not me. There were also settings that made the video go unsmoothly, making the sound "catch up" followed by falling behind again over and over. No settings seemed to work.

When I open Amarec, a few "Error" boxes pops up:
[img]http://i58.tinypic.com/28su3jm.png[/img]
[img]http://i61.tinypic.com/346w3ll.png[/img]

These are pictures of my my settings and the screen:
[img]http://i60.tinypic.com/4snv53.png[/img]
[img]http://i58.tinypic.com/30jts2x.png[/img]
[img]http://i60.tinypic.com/wjupu1.png[/img]
[img]http://i62.tinypic.com/2d8p3eo.png[/img]
[img]http://i57.tinypic.com/11bm649.png[/img]
[img]http://i57.tinypic.com/2l8ghf7.png[/img]

This is the result I get after recording:
Edit: I uploaded it to Youtube and shit got even weirder. The sound that I had disappeared and the video went apeshit. The video got way worse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeafPTa9j1I&feature=youtu.be

I use a Dazzle DVC 100 to record and my computer has Windows 8 installed.

What else you need to help me out, I don't know. But let me know if you want to see something else. Would really appreciate help to make this work out properly (and yes I would like to be able to stream while recording).

TheThrillness

2014-06-30 04:27:07 am

thethrillness.blogspot.com

Might be worth upgrading to 3.10 and retrying (It just came out last week). I'm not quite sure of what changes he made but he specifically mentions "compliant" support for 64 bit Windows 7 and 8. I could already run it on 7 but maybe 8 has some problems he addresses to help.

http://www.amarectv.com/download/amarectv310.zip

Dreamboum

2014-06-30 06:27:19 am

I had the same for the two error boxes, I found the answer after a few hours of googling, what you have to do is open the auto_deint.ini and auto_doubler.ini on a notepad and replace the "." by a ",". For example you'll see "59.94", you'll have to replace it by "59,94". Do this for everything and you will never get the error again. It has something to do with the way windows handle the configuration files regarding your country.

Pottoww

2014-07-12 01:10:42 pm

Thank you for the help, I downloaded the latest Amarec version and fixed the files and the program runs without any issues since!

Pottoww

Edit history:

Pottoww: 2014-07-12 05:00:43 pm

Pottoww: 2014-07-12 04:56:38 pm

2014-07-12 04:56:20 pm

Double post: Okay so there is a new issue. According to Zallard1 (thank you very much for all your help) I need to set my framerate in Amarec to 29.97 instead of 28.99 (as it, for some reason, is at right now). Although, neither one of us knows how to fix it, since my framerate in Amarec is set to 30 fps already and, according to him, it should be. Does anyone know how to change the framerate to 29.97?

He noticed the problem when he checked through the info in a small recorded video I sent him.

TheThrillness

2014-07-12 05:14:17 pm

thethrillness.blogspot.com

AmaRec will record whatever you set your frame rate to in the device tab (so if you set 29.97 it will record 29.97). This is one reason the 999 fps option has existed since AmaRec 3.00.

Pottoww

Edit history:

Pottoww: 2014-07-12 05:23:55 pm

2014-07-12 05:22:04 pm

As you can see, it is. So there has to be another issue.

Also, you can download the 4 seconds long test video here: http://www.megafileupload.com/en/file/549574/yo-yo-avi.html

I a sorry if I am missing something here...?

TheThrillness

Edit history:

TheThrillness: 2014-07-12 06:21:45 pm

2014-07-12 06:21:27 pm

thethrillness.blogspot.com

Yeah it's saying 29.000 for me to. I'd have to see the preview and recording tab to make any further suggestions. Very weird issue. I have a slight feeling it could be Lagarith being too hard on your CPU/hard drive so it's dropping frames to accommodate itself which is messing up the internal target frame rate. Very unlikely though. Might be worthwhile just trying other codecs you have though. x264vfw is probably well suited.

Pottoww

2014-07-12 06:58:32 pm

Sure, they are not much different from the ones I had on the previous Amarec version though (that are shown in my main post).

Based on the computer I have it sounds very unlikely for it to have hard drive issues like this.

TheThrillness

2014-07-12 07:18:33 pm

thethrillness.blogspot.com

Yeah nothing I can see is wrong. It might be some super weirdness with Lagarith and Windows 8 possibly? Might be worth trying x264vfw and if that still says 29 fps I have no ideas.

honorableJay

2014-07-13 09:54:59 am

The Dork Knight himself.

Have you tried setting your recording framerate to 999?

Pottoww

2014-07-16 05:52:43 am

I tried it now. Unfortunately changing the framerate in recording does nothing to the video fps, still 28.999 according to Lagarith.

Pottoww

2014-07-21 08:17:46 am

Anyone else who knows what may be the issue? Google is not for help, at least not as far as I can search with my Google searching skills.

TheThrillness

2014-07-21 08:34:49 am

thethrillness.blogspot.com

Looking back I have one more idea for the frame rate which might work (although if it does I would still be confused). In the Graph 2 tab make sure deinterlacing is set to Top field first and "for Retro Game" (if you are still using Starfox as your source that is). Go to the recording tab and set filter processing to "Filter On" (keep frame rate as 999). Try some recordings and if it all went good, your video file should now be 59.94.

Pottoww

Edit history:

Pottoww: 2014-07-21 12:13:35 pm

2014-07-21 12:12:51 pm

The recording ended up being 59.94! Awesome, thank you very much! It feels great to finally get this over with. Although, now it is set on "Retro game", can I have it on that even if I record Punch-Out!! or any modern game as well, or what should I switch to then?

Also, Star Fox 64 is only 20 (30?) fps and played on iQue, would 59.94 still be okay for a recording of that game to be submitted to SDA?

Once again, thank you very much. Smiley

TheThrillness

2014-07-21 12:21:34 pm

thethrillness.blogspot.com

That's great! (Although I am still confused why recording 29.97 failed).

As for what deinterlacing to use, the AmaRec website has a good table for what you can use based on what system you are playing (see picture).

When you are encoding video you can select to encode at what frame rate the game outputs at (so you would select F2). This will produce a 29.97 fps encode. I should also note that your videos are all progressive so you want to ensure you tick progressive in Yua.

Attachment:

amarecdeint.png