Posted: 7/1/2011 7:26 AM
Post subject: Problem with irritating lag while recording
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Vykan12
Player (100)
Joined: 3/20/2008
Posts: 466
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
I'm working on a TAS that's reached almost 200k frames now (might be relevant to problem). Every time I record more of the movie, the framerate gets very annoying, slowing down and speeding up sporadically. However, playback is fine, and so is the emulator with no movie running. Now, the first time this happened my VBA actually crashed, my computer didn't like what VBA was doing and shut it down. I can't remember the nature of the error, unfortunately. I had to re-install VBA and re-name the folder that VBA was contained in, but the frustratingly choppy framerate is still there.
Posted: 7/1/2011 7:30 AM
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Toothache
Active player (279)
Joined: 4/30/2009
Posts: 791
Lucky TAS of 2013
Might be an idea to post your computer specs, since this sounds like a technical issue.
Posted: 7/1/2011 8:00 AM
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Vykan12
Player (100)
Joined: 3/20/2008
Posts: 466
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Posted: 7/1/2011 8:03 AM
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Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
By "recording", do you mean recording an input file or recording an avi? If you're recording an input file, the frame rate changing doesn't make sense, since you're likely in frame advance mode, where the rate of frame advancement is completely manual. If you're recording an avi, then it's likely due to a combination of encoder processing and hard drive write speed, which are both not always constant due to various external factors.
Posted: 7/1/2011 9:23 AM
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Vykan12
Player (100)
Joined: 3/20/2008
Posts: 466
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Recording the input file. The problem is almost a non-issue in frame advance, but when I unpause it becomes more of a nightmare. I can't even use turbo. I'll try and record a video if the problem persists (fraps any good?)
Posted: 7/1/2011 1:49 PM
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klmz
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (2157)
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Were you using the Rewind feature? But first of all, which version of VBA were you using?
<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days <adelikat> no doubt <adelikat> klmz, they still do
Posted: 7/1/2011 2:26 PM
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Vykan12
Player (100)
Joined: 3/20/2008
Posts: 466
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
I didn't know there was a rewind feature. I'm using version 23.5, the one featured on the site this one links to. I'm not sure, but the problem seems to be worse when I run lua scripts.
Posted: 7/1/2011 2:39 PM
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Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Vykan12 wrote:
I'll try and record a video if the problem persists (fraps any good?)
If you enable "Monitor Aero desktop (DWM)" and you have Aero enabled, Fraps can record anything on your screen. If your hard drive is fast enough, you can record at 60 fps and the video will show exactly what you saw during the recording. As long as both you and the viewer don't think that's overkill (performance/encode/upload/download-time-wise), it's the clearest way to explain what's going on. To avoid overkill, disabling "Monitor Aero desktop (DWM)" will cause Fraps to record just VBA, assuming it uses DirectX or OpenGL.
Posted: 7/1/2011 3:14 PM
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klmz
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The Rewind feature is to automatically make save states now and then coresponding to the settings so that the user can "go back in timeline" by loading earlier auto-saves made with it via the command "File->Rewind". However, as the size of the movie grows up, it will take longer and longer times to make the save states (because the whole movie will be stored inside the save state file), and eventually slows down the emulation speed. You may examine this by looking at "File->Rewind": if the menu text is grayed, the feature is not in work; otherwise it is. If this is the case (or you may just skip the previous step), you may click on "File->Rewind Settings..." and type 0 in either or both edit boxes in the dialog to disable Rewind, and see if VBA will run any faster. If this is still unclear to you, there is a quick way to see if this is caused by the settings: rename or backup & remove the config file ("vba.ini") in your VBA directory before starting VBA.
<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days <adelikat> no doubt <adelikat> klmz, they still do
Posted: 7/1/2011 4:28 PM
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Vykan12
Player (100)
Joined: 3/20/2008
Posts: 466
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Disabled rewind, no change :( 30 second Fraps recording on youtube. This should help show my problem a little better. Edit: The problem seems to be with the particular movie I'm working on, if I try and record a brand new movie, it works fine. Maybe I accidentally activated some bad setting?
Posted: 7/1/2011 5:28 PM
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klmz
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (2157)
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Weird... have you tried the way to rename the config file?
<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days <adelikat> no doubt <adelikat> klmz, they still do
Posted: 7/1/2011 5:45 PM
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Vykan12
Player (100)
Joined: 3/20/2008
Posts: 466
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Yeah, I renamed it to "test", no change whatsoever, just made a new config file called "vba".
Posted: 7/2/2011 2:45 AM
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klmz
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (2157)
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Try these: * change "Options->Video->Render Method" settings by checking (ticking) on "Direct3D" or "OpenGL" * check "Options->Preferences->Process Priority->Above Normal" * check "Options->Pixel Filter->Interframe Blending->None" EDIT: I figured out what caused the problem. A fix is upcoming.
<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days <adelikat> no doubt <adelikat> klmz, they still do
Posted: 7/5/2011 5:57 PM
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klmz
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (2157)
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Bump with a (hopefully) fixed version: http://code.google.com/p/vba-rerecording/downloads/detail?name=vba-rr-23.5a-win32.7z
<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days <adelikat> no doubt <adelikat> klmz, they still do