Post subject: Downloading Nicovideo TAS
Joined: 3/5/2012
Posts: 14
Apologies if this has already been answered--I looked around the forum a bit but couldn't find anything. Is it possible to download the actual emulator movie file from Nicovideo? For example, I'm curious how the author of this movie pulled off a particular stunt, but I don't know if it's possible to actually download and look at the SMV file. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
Skilled player (1742)
Joined: 9/17/2009
Posts: 4985
Location: ̶C̶a̶n̶a̶d̶a̶ "Kanatah"
You should ask the TASer to upload it somewhere for you, since it's just an input file; an avi wouldn't help at all how to pull of a frame-specific trick.
Editor, Expert player (2079)
Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 3282
Nope, video uploads are not input files. If the uploader didn't put a link to the input file in the description, then there's absolutely no hope to get it so don't even bother trying. If for some reason you are really lucky, you can find a blog or some other contact outlet that the uploader uses, contact him there, and hope he complies with your request. Nicovideo is not a contact outlet.
Joined: 3/5/2012
Posts: 14
jlun2 wrote:
You should ask the TASer to upload it somewhere for you, since it's just an input file; an avi wouldn't help at all how to pull of a frame-specific trick.
FractalFusion wrote:
Nope, video uploads are not input files. If the uploader didn't put a link to the input file in the description, then there's absolutely no hope to get it so don't even bother trying. If for some reason you are really lucky, you can find a blog or some other contact outlet that the uploader uses, contact him there, and hope he complies with your request. Nicovideo is not a contact outlet.
Alas, this is what I feared. Thank you for your replies. This presents sort of an awkward situation. I have a completely independent run of a game and the run happens to be a few hundred frames off the record. The thing is, I actually do some levels significantly faster than the recordholder (on the order of thousands of frames)--it's just that he gradually makes up the time with frame-precise optimizations in nearly every other level (ten frames here, ten frames there). While I'm confident I can get my movie to beat the existing record overall by making a few obvious tweaks, I know for sure that I will have a slight positive split on the majority of the levels when compared to his. The obvious option in most cases would be to closely inspect what the recordholder did in the input file to make up the time. The issue is that I can't actually access this file (as discussed in this thread), and trying to reverse-engineer every frame of a flash-embedded movie seems a ridiculous proposition. So, the existing record is 37:22. I know I can get my movie below 37:20 or so just by making obvious improvements. To be sure, this breaks the existing record. What's frustrating is I know that the recordholder has about 20 seconds' worth of indiscernible optimizations sprinkled throughout his run, meaning that a theoretical movie which combines his best levels with my best levels would push the final time all the way under 37:00. This raises a question: the criteria for a speedrun's acceptance to this website is that it "breaks all existing records." It is relatively trivial for me to break the overall record for this run, but I know that many of my individual levels are actually run slower. Would the judges still accept my run knowing that I was slightly suboptimal in many levels, provided I achieve a better time overall? If not, then I'm stuck, because there's no way for me to dissect the existing record. Surely I could spend ages trying to replicate every last pixel-perfect stunt the leader did by watching and re-watching a streaming video ad nauseam, but I frankly wouldn't have the patience to do this and my months of effort on this run would be wasted. Any thoughts?
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
If you can't get something better than a video stream from the guy who breaks your record, and you made a good effort to beat it even then, then I'd say you're in the clear. Otherwise there's way too much potential for someone to make a faked video and basically troll the TAS creators with impossible speed.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Experienced player (705)
Joined: 2/5/2012
Posts: 1800
Location: Brasil
nicklegends wrote:
jlun2 wrote:
You should ask the TASer to upload it somewhere for you, since it's just an input file; an avi wouldn't help at all how to pull of a frame-specific trick.
FractalFusion wrote:
Nope, video uploads are not input files. If the uploader didn't put a link to the input file in the description, then there's absolutely no hope to get it so don't even bother trying. If for some reason you are really lucky, you can find a blog or some other contact outlet that the uploader uses, contact him there, and hope he complies with your request. Nicovideo is not a contact outlet.
Alas, this is what I feared. Thank you for your replies. This presents sort of an awkward situation. I have a completely independent run of a game and the run happens to be a few hundred frames off the record. The thing is, I actually do some levels significantly faster than the recordholder (on the order of thousands of frames)--it's just that he gradually makes up the time with frame-precise optimizations in nearly every other level (ten frames here, ten frames there). While I'm confident I can get my movie to beat the existing record overall by making a few obvious tweaks, I know for sure that I will have a slight positive split on the majority of the levels when compared to his. The obvious option in most cases would be to closely inspect what the recordholder did in the input file to make up the time. The issue is that I can't actually access this file (as discussed in this thread), and trying to reverse-engineer every frame of a flash-embedded movie seems a ridiculous proposition. So, the existing record is 37:22. I know I can get my movie below 37:20 or so just by making obvious improvements. To be sure, this breaks the existing record. What's frustrating is I know that the recordholder has about 20 seconds' worth of indiscernible optimizations sprinkled throughout his run, meaning that a theoretical movie which combines his best levels with my best levels would push the final time all the way under 37:00. This raises a question: the criteria for a speedrun's acceptance to this website is that it "breaks all existing records." It is relatively trivial for me to break the overall record for this run, but I know that many of my individual levels are actually run slower. Would the judges still accept my run knowing that I was slightly suboptimal in many levels, provided I achieve a better time overall? If not, then I'm stuck, because there's no way for me to dissect the existing record. Surely I could spend ages trying to replicate every last pixel-perfect stunt the leader did by watching and re-watching a streaming video ad nauseam, but I frankly wouldn't have the patience to do this and my months of effort on this run would be wasted. Any thoughts?
i suppose they wouldn't accept it based on my limited time here(yes,they really want the best possible TAS in most cases),but don't take my word for sure.I hope someone else replies to this.There's the possiblity that if the record is not here on Tasvideos.org,it might not be considered a standard for comparison,since you will have submit something new. You should still show your improvement somewhere or ask for a japanese speaker's help.
I want all good TAS inside TASvideos, it's my motto. TAS i'm interested: Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS? i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.