I have made a TAS of a N64 game and it is a little under 2 hours.
I was wondering if anyone could let me know the easiest way to make it into an AVI that will be a reasonable size and good quality.
I have Windows XP as my OS and I don't have extreme computer knowledge. I have made AVIs before by going "utilities > capture AVI" when I did that I used xvid but the movies weren't long.
I have heard good things about something called H.264 but I am a little confused about how to use it and where to get it.
Go easy on me I am little bit of a noob. Thanks in advance.
I am not good enough at TASing for my video to get accepted. This is only the 2nd TAS I have made. I am getting better though.
Even if it did get accepted I know there are 2 people on this site working on making a TAS of the same game and they are both amazing and I am sure they will obsolete my video.
Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3517
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
DaShiznawz wrote:
Even if it did get accepted I know there are 2 people on this site working on making a TAS of the same game and they are both amazing and I am sure they will obsolete my video.
You are working on Ocarina of Time! :)
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
I'm sure you could post that movie file in the OOT thread. Even though it's not the best (as you said it yourself), I bet many people would be interested in watching it anyway.
Some people (like myself) have a lot of spare time these days and are desperately looking for something to watch :)
It is faster than the current published run by quite a bit but it uses reverse bottle adventure so it would be pretty bad if it wasn't.
But again my speed run isn't what this post was about. I still need the answer to my AVI question.
To the above poster maybe I will post the movie file in the OoT thread. Or submit it on the off chance it will get accepted and if not it will go to "Gruefood"
Again I appreciate the interest in my run but I need the answer to my AVI question.
Thanks a lot.
DaShiznawz, you should dump the avi first, and then take a video editor, and try various settings to lower the quality to be acceptable.
Usually, the videos on this website are made with linux using the emulator and a little software. But for the windows version, I think your best bet is to dump it and try various settings.
I've been known to make AVIs for people's WIPs on demand, if it's a game other people woud be interested in. The only requirement is that it must run in Glide64 or glN64. No Direct3d plugins allowed.
H.264 is a wonderful codec, but like so many others it's best in multipass mode. The best strategy is to save to some kind of lossless AVI (H264 has a lossless mode, set quantizer=0 when configuring it) and then run a proper video encoder on the result, like ZeXr0 said.
Usually, the videos on this website are made with linux using the emulator and a little software. But for the windows version, I think your best bet is to dump it and try various settings.
What does Linux even have to do with video capturing? It just allows some more automatization, but nothing drastically different. Also, most of the active encoders are using Windows.
First you turn on AVI output in your emulator, then you choose a codec (usually x264), read a bit about its settings (for the first time, you only need to set the quantizer to around 26-27), set them, press ok. Then, after the movie stops, you open the video in VirtualDub or something like that, set video to "direct stream copy", set audio to mp3 with whatever bitrate you like, save.
There's also another way that yields better quality but requires a bit more knowledge. Basically you start the same but set some lossless codec instead (huffyuv is fast but eats a lot of disk space, x264 lossless compresses well but is rather slow). Then you learn how to make two-pass encodes with VirtualDub or MEncoder, get them and run the lossless capture through them twice, compressing audio as well in the process. For that purpose, it makes more sense to use target bitrate instead of quantizer, and some other settings as well.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Two passes takes ages and doesn't affect the quality that much in my opinion, so I usually just use x264 with quantizer at 26, and later encode the audio in virtualdub.
Ok I installed K-Lite Codec pack which had the x264.
My question is. When I goto "capture avi" what should my settings be. I tried default and it looked perfect but the file was to big if I let it go for the full 1 hr 56 min it would be over 4GB which I heard won't play.
Let me know thanks.
Usually, the videos on this website are made with linux using the emulator and a little software. But for the windows version, I think your best bet is to dump it and try various settings.
What does Linux even have to do with video capturing? It just allows some more automatization, but nothing drastically different. Also, most of the active encoders are using Windows.
It was only informative. Anyway I'm the first to try an answer to his question, as no one before me did . . .
If I were to make an avi for a 2-hour video, I'd capture it in 640x480 at quantizer 20. without sound. That would be a bit under 1GB (about the limit before a mupen-made avi becomes useless). Then I would run through the game again and save the wav, and recompress to mp3. I would then encode the video using 2-pass to be about 400MB at 320x240 or perhaps a bit bigger and add the mp3 into it.
You know, if you post the m64, and it gets accepted, someone else will encode the video so you don't have to :v
To add to bkdj's post, OOT often desyncs for many users. So we often get avis from helpful encoders (and the ocassional dj) before the movie has even made it to the workbench.
I would really hope you could share your progress, if not now, eventually, in avi form. You would have a nice shot at it being published, even if it was slightly unoptimized. The other guys are very slow (cough*CF*cough) and you'll potentially have your run up for a while! :)
Ok I will try and upload it today only reason I am hesitant is because I need to write the comments part.
If I submit it will someone on this site who knows what they are doing make it into an avi for me I would really appreciate it.
On the comments and explanation part how well does that have to be written?
I will try uploading soon. Thanks for the help/support you guys make me wanna keep TASing and try to get better.
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
I would recommend something along the lines of "THIS IS A TOOL-ASSISTED SPEEDRUN" along with some explanation as to what that means. (this run uses savestates and frame advance, etc.)
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
Two passes takes ages and doesn't affect the quality that much in my opinion
Your opinion is based on incorrect information, sorry. Multipass encoding always makes noticeably better results when the bitrate is low enough to make the difference noticeable (at DVD bitrates it won't matter, yeah). And two passes aren't necessarily much slower than a single pass, either, if you use turbo for the first pass.
DaShiznawz wrote:
On the comments and explanation part how well does that have to be written?
As well as you deem necessary. There's a FAQ page with submission guidelines, too. Other FAQ pages are also a good read.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Your opinion is based on incorrect information, sorry. Multipass encoding always makes noticeably better results when the bitrate is low enough to make the difference noticeable (at DVD bitrates it won't matter, yeah).
if i do a multipass i also don't know which bitrate is optimal because all movies are different. some may only need like 150 kbps because they're so dark and simple, some need much more.
You'd need to estimate bitrate in either case, be it one pass or many. Though if you go with constant quality, the difference between single- and multipass would lie more in the filesize domain, rather than quality (by definition), that is true. Still, multipass will be beneficial in this case as well, and probably yield better image quality/filesize ratio than a single pass at heavier processing settings.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
