It's also annoying to have to check a topic multiple times before an encode is embedded into the OP
It's not immediately obvious when an encode was added, since the thread isn't marked as new on edits, nor will the "View unread posts"-link tell you about it.
Would it be possible to extend the submission system to mark submission threads that contain an encode? It might be as simple as a two-line heuristic in TVA's forum module:
if (stripos('[video', $submissiontext) !== false)
$posttopic = "(encode) $posttopic";
How far are we from an encoding process triggered by the submission ?
Setting up a box to encode automagically for the older 8 bits consoles, then upload it somewhere...
I'm also wondering if an embedded application (Java Applet or Flash, likely) could run from a server with the submitted movie, thus removing the need for encodes. Yeah I know, it would need some serious development skills to improve existing emulators to work remotely, but many of them already support command line options, especially rom and movie replay.
This would solve (in a not so distant future) the problem.
I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death - NAS
It's also annoying to have to check a topic multiple times before an encode is embedded into the OP
It's not immediately obvious when an encode was added, since the thread isn't marked as new on edits, nor will the "View unread posts"-link tell you about it.
Would it be possible to extend the submission system to mark submission threads that contain an encode? It might be as simple as a two-line heuristic in TVA's forum module:
if (stripos('[video', $submissiontext) !== false)
$posttopic = "(encode) $posttopic";
Yes, this! Also, if someone is watching the topic for replies, a message could be sent to their e-mail saying "Encode has been added to [insert submission name here]!".
If anyone would really like an encode of something, PM me on IRC. I do it for my own sake pretty often. If someone's super stoked on some TAS, chances are pretty good I'd enjoy it too, so go right ahead and ask me. I enjoy a good challenge (so feel free to ask about an encode for any system), and my YouTube will let me post videos up to 10 hours long now (though the few times I've tried posting >3h content, I've run into issues). I can't promise I'll get one done, especially for some of the harder systems, but I'll probably at least try, and have fun problem-solving in the interim.
Joined: 5/13/2009
Posts: 700
Location: suffern, ny
I Am Not a fan of this at all. We have a lot of submissions here and It would slow it down. We are constantly getting newer and newer ones too! Many submissions, Like Mario 64 get alot of attention, I mean it had well over 5-6 pages of responses. While other runs get published and accepted with only few responses and a handful of votes. Not every single person who visits this site is going to watch every single run. I know if it is a run I really want to see I wait patiently, or I download the emulator and the rom and watch it there.
Should We mandate encodes on a submission that only gets 12 or 13 yes votes? Should we Force our encoders to work harder than they do already? I think we need people to be patient.
[19:16] <scrimpy> silly portuguese
[19:16] <scrimpy> it's like spanish, only less cool
Aright, obviously mandating encodes be attached to a submission is a bad idea for many reasons, especially in that it discourages submissions. I didn't realize I'd be striking so many emotional chords in the process, chill out guys.
I stand by my idea that getting TASers to accompany their TASes with a temporary encode should be encouraged. Could be as simple as providing a convenient link to the video dumping section of the encoder guidelines.
Anyway, I guess my first 2 posts could’ve had the tonality of an ungrateful brat. For that I apologize. I appreciate the work encoders do on this site, and I’m amazed how many volunteers this site has garnered. That doesn’t change the fact that I find submissions without encodes annoying, hence why I proposed some solutions. It’s nothing to get butthurt about, and even if you are, some good came out of this topic if this gets implemented:
Would it be possible to extend the submission system to mark submission threads that contain an encode? It might be as simple as a two-line heuristic in TVA's forum module:
if (stripos('[video', $submissiontext) !== false)
$posttopic = "(encode) $posttopic";
Encodes aren't a lot of work once you get everything set up and do the learnings. But hell, when I submitted my movies to the site, I didn't have a half a clue on dumping videos. It took me well over a year to get even something halfway competent done and still longer before I actually started producing encodes for the site rather than just for my own personal testing.
Encoding has a very high barrier for entry compared to making TASes. It's just that once you get past that everything is rather straight forward (way easier than TASing overall of course).
I think even posting a link to the video dumping section of the website is rather rude. "Hi there, thanks for contributing to the site, now make a video."
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
I don't understand why the burden of encoding should be put on the submitter. Instead, the idea could be implemented in a more user-friendly way: Make it a site policy that all submission should get an encode as soon as possible (by some of the regular encoders, it doesn't really matter who).
Ok, this is already a more or less informal policy. Just make it more explicit.
Encoding has a very high barrier for entry compared to making TASes. It's just that once you get past that everything is rather straight forward (way easier than TASing overall of course).
IMO there's a big difference between video dumps (temp. encodes) and quality encodes in terms of technical ability required. A video dump takes pretty minimal effort, at least on SNES9x and VBA.
Pretty much all you need to do is something like tools -> movie -> avi recording. Then you choose a codec (let's say ffdshow), figure out some reasonable compression settings (once you do this you never have to do it again), playback the movie, and you have yourself an encode. I do it all the time now.
I have the sense that most TASers think that video dumping is some highly complicated, intimidating technical task they don't want to deal with, so they defer that responsibility onto our fellow community. But, if it were common knowledge how easy it is to video dump, I'm sure more submissions would be accompanied by encodes. After all, the people here take pride in their work, so would they not want to expose the fruits of their labour to as large an audience as possible, as quickly as possible?
I think even posting a link to the video dumping section of the website is rather rude. "Hi there, thanks for contributing to the site, now make a video."
Why the hell would it be rude? I mean obviously you'd attach a few sentences of explanation, followed by the link. "We highly encourage you to make a temporary encode for your submission (link) as this effort will be appreciated by those who cannot playback your movie file." or something to that effect.
I'll make a note of purposely encoding a video over 2GB in size for any future movies I submit, just to waste your bandwidth when the alternative is perfect quality for a whole 4MB.
I don't really have an opinion on this except that I love the idea of having an icon indicating whether a submission has been encoded or not. Very often I'll find myself refreshing a submission page or workbench thread to see if anyone's posted an encode of a hard-to-watch movie yet.
Rayas wrote:
Dunno if I'm really clear. I need to drink more.
<br>
adelikat wrote:
The idea was to kill off my family to avoid lost time to them getting sick and other inconvenient things.
Making a good encode is a completely different task opposed to making a good TAS. And as long as you don't have 100MBit upstream, it can take quite a long time to upload the video, and it most likely requires you to register at Youtube or Dailymotion or (worse) Megaupload or some other filesharing host. The submitter might not like the idea to be forced to register somewhere else beforehand.
You could possibly just implement a small "link to encode" in almost the same way as the "submission file" thing. This wouldn't require such hacks as the "[video" idea. If no encode is ready, it might be noted in the title of the submission thread automatically.
We highly encourage you to make a temporary encode for your submission (link) as this effort will be appreciated by those who cannot playback your movie file are extremely lazy and would rather just click "play" to get 5 minutes enjoyment out of your 3 months effort. Never mind that all they have to do is wait one more day and they'll be able to do that anyway.
While we shouldn't require submitters to make or even link to encodes, I believe in general that the attitude the TASer has toward his own TAS is reflected in how much importance he places on presenting the submission. While not a defining factor, whether an encode or a link to an encode is there has a lot to do with it.
It is necessary but not much to ask to be patient. While learning to make a good encode is possible, it really requires nothing more than to ask an existing encoder. For the most part, they are willing to encode it.
Vykan12: I don't remember there being 4GB PSX ISOs. Most one-disc ISOs I've seen were 400MB to 700MB.
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I didn't read the entire thread; just skimmed the first page.
I don't like this idea at all. I'm not a tasvideos encoder, but I often watch TASes from the workbench long before there's an encode. Also, I sometimes decide to work hard on creating a good dump to attempt to help tasvideos staff. See Windows Warp and N64 Yoshi's Story for examples of this behavior.
Tasvideos is a community effort. Don't act so spoiled. Expecting encodes on submission is lunacy.
this effort will be appreciated by those who cannot playback your movie file are extremely lazy
Why do you assume it's a question of laziness?
Emulators are not necessarily available for all platforms. (Also, even if an emulator is available, it may or may not work properly.) Also playing the movie file back requires downloading the game ROM, which is technically speaking an act of software piracy and hence may go against someone's principles. (Yes, there are people who abhor software piracy, as incredibly as that might sound.)
Let me grumble too.
Encodes actually kill TASing spirit hidden inside watchers.
When people were forced to watch runs on emulator, they had a chance to tinker about, test whatever parts of the run seemed improvable, or just play this new game they didn't know about before seeing the TAS. And when playing the game people find tricks and glitches. They don't find them when watching encodes.
No wonder that majority of recent newcomers aren't TASers (while in the past majority of this forum members tried to tas something).
Encodes just make people more lazy, not more happy or anything. So no need to further encourage this vicious tendency, soon it will prevail anyway. Because encoding is much easier than TASing, so I foresee in 2012 all submissions will naturally have 0day encode as a norm. And TASers will be all the same people.
The majority of newcomers are not TASers because of the age and popularity of TAS videos. It is not because they are not required to play back movies in an emulator.
The majority of newcomers, combined with the age of TASvideos, the high bars most TASed games have, and the relative requirements to get a movie published are the main factors. I have tried making several TASes, but even with knowledge of how the game works internally, I still cannot even get close to some of the TASes that are out there.
Given that many of the more popular games are very, very well TASed, any newcomer who has an interest in those games will be unlikely to attempt it (and any attempts will likely fall, with further discouragement).
As for the encodes... As a lurker, it is easier to open YouTube and watch a video, than play back a movie file. It is also the only way to watch movies when on a mobile device, so if you want to watch a TAS on your phone or tablet while laying in bed, if it is not encoded, you are out of luck.
That said, I agree wholeheartedly with Bisqwit in that such a requirement is a terrible idea. Submissions are already difficult enough; why force the user to seek out an encoder, or worse, encode the video themselves?
TASvideos has encoders and publishers. I would suggest that they work together to provide encodes for new movies as quickly as possible.
As for automating the process... Remember that TASvideos publications usually go on for a long time after the movie file ends, to display the credits and whatever else occurs. There is no easy automated way to track this. While it could be done by having the submission appended with empty frames and then trimmed in the submission process, that would raise the submission bar again (and be subject to all sorts of potential issues).
@Warp:
Downloading a ROM does not, by itself, constitute software piracy. There's precedent in US courts that people who extracted machine code to other hardware with the purpose of developing a similar product have won the case, so at least emulator developers are allowed to have a ROM for reverse engineering and compatibility testing when they've already bought the original cartridge.
Having a ROM for "personal use" when you have the cartridge is a much complicated matter, there have been cases where the verdict opposed this and others where it was in favor, so we'll probably never know it unless someone gets charged because of that. Or maybe I could go like Richard Stallman and say there's no such thing as software piracy :P
Anyway, when it comes to gaming, Windows is significantly more dominant and looking at the emulator forums, there's not much fervor with portability, and since this site is closely related to emulation, it's unlikely that most users will have philosophical issues with downloading a ROM, so at first glance, it seems fair to assume it's laziness for the most part.
Regarding the topic, there's a good deal of effort to provide people the possibility of enjoying the movies without worrying about copyright and all this boring stuff, but if you're a regular member that checks the workbench everyday, you'll almost certainly end up waiting forever for an encode, no matter what position is taken regarding submissions, so you'd probably need to watch on the emulator.
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Noroi wrote:
As for automating the process... Remember that TASvideos publications usually go on for a long time after the movie file ends, to display the credits and whatever else occurs. There is no easy automated way to track this. While it could be done by having the submission appended with empty frames and then trimmed in the submission process, that would raise the submission bar again (and be subject to all sorts of potential issues).
Since an automatic encode would only serve as a temporary quick look at a new submission before a human got around to encoding, I think it would be safe to make any automated encoding system simply tack 10% of the run's length onto its recording length to ensure the entire run is captured, ignoring unnecessarily long end sequences in short games.
This is all hypothetical, of course.
