[img_right]
http://w-create.com/%7Ebisqwit/glc_hud1.png[/img_right]For a while now I have contemplated on trying out a new format for the subtitles. It bugs me to see such simple and raw subtitles being used on TASVideos publications.
I am talking about the
"<game> in <time> played by <player>; this is a tool-assisted blahblah see blahblah" standard text you see in every movie.
I have been thinking of making it look better. My inspiration was my favourite TV channel,
God's Learning Channel, as seen in this picture on the right.
I wanted to make something similar.
Also, it has been bothering me that the logo blending technique I've been using for years has still not been used by any other TASVideos encoder.
By logo blending, I mean this effect where the video is already playing when the logo starts, and the video and logo are superimposed,
as seen here, below (the bulk of the logo is in the process of fading out, but Milly is still fully opaque until she runs out from the screen). Other logos using the same technique are also shown (each image has a link to a sample publication where the respective logo was used).
The motivation for doing partially superimposed logos is that I can have a logo that is more than 1 seconds long,
without making the viewer wait for the actual content to begin, and also without masking the entire game video content for the duration of the logo. I strived to only mask things like static copyright / title screens, and even them only minimally; at least a glimpse of them can be caught while the logo is fading out, usually much more. In the standard logo (shown for Castlevania above), the TASVideos text begins to fade out at 0.8 seconds and has completely faded out by 2.8 seconds; but Milly continues running until 5.4 seconds when she exits the screen. I had also intentionally customized her running path so that she appears to run on the same surface where mr. Belmont walks.
Since its inception, my logo blending technique has been implemented through terms of an emulator patch. My standard "nesvideos-piece" module reads PNG files from a specific directory, and superimposes them over the emulator's video while the video plays. However, this approach has been used by virtually nobody else than me, and emulator patching is not very convenient either.
To solve the two problems simultaneously, I created a standalone program, which:
-- Renders subtitles into a graphical, visually impressive format
-- Reads a raw encoding (RGB24 video and raw PCM soundtrack)
-- Superimposes it with a number of graphical sequences (the logo sequence and any number of graphical subtitles)
-- Sends it to a dedicated encoder (by the standard "nesvideos-piece" mechanics, i.e. the same as --videolog parameter in fceux).
An example of the end result of this program can be seen in my Rockman 2 encoding, available
here (SD/mkv) or
here (HD/youtube).
It is still in alpha stage, and vital configuration (such as subtitles, video resolution, fps, and logo image locations) are still done in source code only. The source code can be acquired from the Git repository at git://bisqwit.iki.fi/hudmaker.git . I am providing it here in case someone wants to develop it further.
Here is how exactly I encoded Rockman 2 (mandatory details like hudmaker configuration and filesystem paths, and optional details like remote shell and mencoder parameters, are omitted for brevity):
Language: shell
# Set up an encoding script that simply puts audio into a raw file and video into another raw file.
VIDEO="cat s.log > 1.raw & cat > 2.raw"
# Run fceu
fceux --soundrecord /dev/null --videolog "$VIDEO" rockman2.nes --playmov rockman2.fm2
# It produced 1.raw (audio) and 2.raw (video).
# Run hudmaker
neshudmaker
# It produced audio.mp3 (audio) and tmp.avi (video).
# Produce final mkv (or, you can first use x264 to re-encode tmp.avi with optimal settings)
mkvmerge tmp.avi audio.mp3 -o encode.mkv
# It produced encode.mkv (final product).
The end result is a video encoding that has a logo and a subtitle like below:
So there.
I do not intend to make many more encodes for TASVideos (probably only the next Rockman movie), but I made this as a proof-of-concept one. The graphical appearance of the subtitle is not a masterpiece of art (I made it in less than an hour), but still very different from what has been used before, and more impressive.
