Site Admin, Skilled player (1250)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11469
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
So we started doing 10bit444 encodes primarily, and they show little to no loss in colors and audio, thanks to the modern technologies. But there are still cases, where their quality is not enough to produce a highly enjoyable view. This is once again about 3D! With 2D games, one just upscales the SD encode using his player to fullscreen, point-based, and sees the same sharp and clear picture as it is before compression, or inside the emulator. And that's enough to make a feel of a quality encode. But for 3D, the anti-aliasing technique became an absolute sign of hi quality. Watching 3D games at 240p, even without color loss, feels handicapped. It is kind of accurate to the original hardware and stuff, but the notion of a HQ 3D content isn't there anymore. This issue doesn't exist in Dolphin, where the native resolution is already 480p, so all 3D stuff looks quite good. Even though anti-aliasing to HD will still look as an improvement, it's not "bad" without it anymore. It's just good vs. perfect. Aktan (cheers!) has always been the one to boost encode quality as possible. So to overcome the issue of SD encodes looking "bad" he started adding HQ encodes to his publications, which were 2x the SD res, with some additional manual quality boosts, like increasing the bitrate. The latest 10bit444/Opus standard overcame that need (see paragraph 2)... except for 3D games! So, what I'm suggesting, is doing those extra HQ encodes for all non-Dolpin 3D games. But doing it in 100% cases is going to seem too labour-consuming for publishers. So I'll be glad if this task it taken on the basis similar to camhack (or cutsceneless) encodes. Once the game is worth it, why not do an extra pair of great-looking encodes? The way to do it looks like this: you dump at the highest resolution you can, then while encoding, downscale it to some 480p (LanczosResize for example), and then just encode as usual. The picture then doesn't look too blurry, and all the textures look really good. Looks superb, huh? Yes, Crash may be an exceptional case due to all its tricks to look more colorful than all the rest 3D games of that era, but the tendency is pretty clear. The only problem now is, what settings shall we encode with? Regular SD command line can run only at 0.2 fps for me! How to speed it up? How to make it still not grow in size? And to still look lossless?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Spikestuff
They/Them
Editor, Publisher, Expert player (2630)
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6435
Location: The land down under.
Notices something completely different What is wrong with the boss icons.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Btw, I'm wondering if by "antialiasing" you really mean "bilinear filtering". (While I suppose that bilinear filtering could technically speaking be considered a form of antialiasing, it's not what is usually meant by the latter term, so it's a bit confusing.) Bilinear filtering is the technique of interpolation usually used when scaling an image bigger (ie. the color of the new in-between pixels are calculated by interpolating from the four original pixels.)
Site Admin, Skilled player (1250)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11469
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
Spikestuff wrote:
Notices something completely different What is wrong with the boss icons.
That particular plugin has slight flaws, they are transparent. But it was the only open source OpenGL anti-aliaser available, so I had no choice. Warp: Err, what? By anti-aliasing I mean anti-aliasing, the plugin uses higher definition for polygons and they don't look ladder-ish.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Dimon12321
He/Him
Editor, Reviewer, Experienced player (582)
Joined: 4/5/2014
Posts: 1217
Location: Romania
It's a nice idea, but not everyone will watch videos in the highest quality! Firstly, not everyone has high-speed internet to open the video once and watch it without any pauses and interrupts in "ultra" HQ. Secondly, not everyone looks on the quality because TAS is usually supported with fast-moving camera (at least all screenshots shown there were made while camera wasn't moving). Thirdly, it's a giant work for publishers, especially for those who have pure PC configs (was told in the topic, of course)! Fourth, what percentage of users complaining about poor quality or the quality is not enough for them (this is optional, just for interest)?
TASing is like making a film: only the best takes are shown in the final movie.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1250)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11469
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
Wow, good points, Dimon12321! 1. I'm currently making the first try encodes with the settings I described. And I have quite an old computer. So I think my tests of how watchable it is will be reliable. Also, it's not "ultra" HQ in the encode (it is so only in the HD stream) - it's just 640x480. I bet everyone will be able to watch it without problems. 2. Once you taste something really good, you don't want to taste a poor and diluted "version" of it anymore. 3. Yes, it's quite some work, so I'm leaving it to their will (probably I'll even be the only one to do it, but if the trend gets noticed and liked, we can expect more people requesting it and doing it). 4. Not so much. But maybe because of point 2 - they didn't see much? On the other note, --preset veryslow advised by RGamma does quite a good job saving my time, encoding speed is just the same as for our usual settings for SD.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
"anti-aliasing to HD" just sounds like a strange term. What does it mean?
Site Admin, Skilled player (1250)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11469
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
You take a polygon that PSX handles at 320p (making it look ladder-ish) and handle it "yourself" at 720p. Is it really so hard?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Player (146)
Joined: 7/16/2009
Posts: 686
Warp does have a point though. You don't "anti-alias to HD". You render the image in HD, using anti-aliasing. Your use of the terminology (in a sentence) does indeed make it seem like you're not entirely sure what you're saying.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1250)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11469
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
Done! Please test (second pair of encodes and torrents): [2391] PSX Crash Bandicoot by pirohiko in 36:19.85
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Spikestuff
They/Them
Editor, Publisher, Expert player (2630)
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6435
Location: The land down under.
feos wrote:
Done! Please test
feos wrote:
That particular plugin has slight flaws, they are transparent. But it was the only open source OpenGL anti-aliaser available, so I had no choice.
Due to some things being translucent this actually destroyed the way I was viewing this game. I personally would've preferred you used a different game where this issue wasn't the case. Edit: The two levels which made me the most upset were Road to Nowhere and The High Road Edit2: Oh and if you want me to compare both of you. Neither one dumped it on the original resolution of the game (512x240) or upscaled. That's why natt's is like that and yours too but I'm not complaining about it being translucent I'm complaining about the resolution now which you started should be dumped at a large size.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.
Experienced player (643)
Joined: 11/23/2013
Posts: 2230
Location: Guatemala
Does this new Extra HQ thing makes it look more than the actual console? If does, go ahead. If doesn't, well... the videos aren't supposed to look like the actual console? Its just something I'm just saying, I don't really know about the Playstation, so I'm not sure.
Here, my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/dekutony
Site Admin, Skilled player (1250)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11469
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
Spikestuff wrote:
The two levels which made me cringe the most were Road to Nowhere and The High Road
What's wrong exactly? Still transparency? Will pick the PCSX "box glitch" run next time.
Spikestuff wrote:
Oh and if you want me to compare both of you. Neither one dumped it on the original resolution of the game (512x240) or upscaled. That's why natt's is like that and yours too but I'm not complaining about it being translucent I'm complaining about the resolution now which you started should be dumped at a large size.
natt dumped it at original res, but then cropped the picture (no idea why) and applied SAR, so he basically did everything good, hence I'm not touching his SDs. As for which resolution you dump anti-aliased stuff at, it doesn't really matter for 3D elements, only for sprites, which will still be resized in the end. I'm just resizing it to 640x480 manually to avoid the player from doing it, so I lose less quality, than if it's resized by me and then by player.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1250)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11469
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
Kurabupengin wrote:
Does this new Extra HQ thing makes it look more than the actual console? If does, go ahead. If doesn't, well... the videos aren't supposed to look like the actual console? Its just something I'm just saying, I don't really know about the Playstation, so I'm not sure.
You never see direct console input, so it becomes a matter of how close the encode is to what you see on your TV. Which is not our concern either, except for aspect ratio. TVs apply hard-filters by their nature, and even the user customizes them additionally, so it's not just silly to try to look closer to it, but also impossible. 3D content on TV in addition to "NTSC look" gets smoothed, and you don't see polygons on console like on TV. Direct console output is like a plugin would show you at standard definition, and it looks bad. Now please tell me, do my example videos look good or not?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Spikestuff
They/Them
Editor, Publisher, Expert player (2630)
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6435
Location: The land down under.
feos wrote:
Spikestuff wrote:
The two levels which made me cringe the most were Road to Nowhere and The High Road
What's wrong exactly? Still transparency? Will pick the PCSX "box glitch" run next time.
Tisk, tisk. That's kinda cheating isn't it? NOT using PSXjin for something YOU updated. Because all you need for pcsx is a certain location to download it. Also in other terms. I'm updating that TAS.
Spikestuff wrote:
Due to some things being translucent this actually destroyed the way I was viewing this game. I personally would've preferred you used a different game where this issue wasn't the case.
The types of TASes I was talking about were the runs using PSXjin that utilizes 3D fields. Not PCSX-RR. Edit: Yes I was focusing on you first point. The second point about the dumping is fine and understandable.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1250)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11469
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
Spikestuff wrote:
feos wrote:
Spikestuff wrote:
The two levels which made me cringe the most were Road to Nowhere and The High Road
What's wrong exactly? Still transparency? Will pick the PCSX "box glitch" run next time.
Tisk, tisk. That's kinda cheating isn't it? NOT using PSXjin for something YOU updated. Because all you need for pcsx is a certain location to download it.
This thread isn't about PSXjin, so it wouldn't matter what game we try as long as it is PS.
Spikestuff wrote:
Also in other terms. I'm updating that TAS.
Updating as in reencoding?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Spikestuff
They/Them
Editor, Publisher, Expert player (2630)
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6435
Location: The land down under.
Ah shoot, I took it as PSXjin and ignoring PCSX-rr. Wait why didn't you do Mukki's then?
feos wrote:
Spikestuff wrote:
Also in other terms. I'm updating that TAS.
Updating as in reencoding?
Yes... touching all Spyro and all Crash Bandicoot.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1250)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11469
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
Spikestuff wrote:
Ah shoot, I took it as PSXjin and ignoring PCSX-rr. Wait why didn't you do Mukki's then?
Which one? Obsoleted? Crash 2? Some other?
Spikestuff wrote:
feos wrote:
Spikestuff wrote:
Also in other terms. I'm updating that TAS.
Updating as in reencoding?
Yes... touching all Spyro and all Crash Bandicoot.
So you'll be applying my method? Note than SDs are ok in most cases.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Editor, Experienced player (569)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4034
I support this. I remember downloading the Modern HQ MP4 for the Ocarina of Time MST run in July and finding it a little blurry. Not enough to make it unwatchable but it would be nice if there was an Aktan-tier HQ option as well. I would download it. I think it should be on a case-by-case basis though, as it is an additional time commitment to an already time-consuming job. Publishers should be able to make them if they want to (and they can be motivated by popular demand), not because they have to.
Spikestuff
They/Them
Editor, Publisher, Expert player (2630)
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6435
Location: The land down under.
feos wrote:
Spikestuff wrote:
Ah shoot, I took it as PSXjin and ignoring PCSX-rr. Wait why didn't you do Mukki's then?
Which one? Obsoleted? Crash 2? Some other?
Obsoleted Crash 1. But Like I wrote earlier I'll update those two characters.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.
Publisher
Joined: 4/23/2009
Posts: 1283
CoolKirby wrote:
I support this. I remember downloading the Modern HQ MP4 for the Ocarina of Time MST run in July and finding it a little blurry. Not enough to make it unwatchable but it would be nice if there was an Aktan-tier HQ option as well. I would download it.
Maybe I missed your point, but there is that option! It's only in the thread though...
Publisher
Joined: 4/23/2009
Posts: 1283
Back on topic, usually I do lower the settings a ton when doing high resolution encodes. --me and --merange is lowered. Also depending on the the amount of RAM you have, you may also need to lower b-frames or reference frames or rc-lookahead. I'm for higher res downscaling because IMO, even if it's blurry, it actually contains more information than the original. If you guys want I can post a very obvious screenshot in OoT credits where this is very apparent. Edit: Thanks for the cheers feos! =D
Spikestuff
They/Them
Editor, Publisher, Expert player (2630)
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6435
Location: The land down under.
With a recent TAS that just got submitted... kinda went overboard and did it as 960x720 (game size is 368x480) If you haven't figured it out yet why it's small click the image.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1250)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11469
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
Looks great! BTW, I'm pretty sure you can use slightly higher res for 3D primary - dump at 1024x768 and resize to 342x256. Another thought is to dump not at 4:3. Polygons get improved even more, then you downscale to 4:3 SD. That must be discussed with pros though.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Spikestuff
They/Them
Editor, Publisher, Expert player (2630)
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6435
Location: The land down under.
feos, this is for the sake of your OpenGL modification. Is there a possible way to actually do the menu system like pcsx-rr does where it prompts for the plugins but only for video plugin?
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.