Amiga recordings

[Circo]

Great work! Gonna have to add amiga to my rig soon

[bLAZER]

I've uploaded them now. I can also mention that I still have the avi's compressed with TSCC (non-destroyable) and WAVE sound, they're about 30-50 mb each. So either I convert them to xvid or I upload them so you can encode them in what quality you desire.

[Circo]

I've uploaded them now. I can also mention that I still have the avi's compressed with TSCC (non-destroyable) and WAVE sound, they're about 30-50 mb each. So either I convert them to xvid or I upload them so you can encode them in what quality you desire.

Oh thats cool, they are like masters. I may just do the same going forward. Having a backup master set would be very handy great idea.

[Brenry]

Is there a team working on this or blazer going solo? I have been getting into this system very much the last couple of weeks and would really love to see Amiga movies developed. There are well over 5000 games on Gamebase and I think WHD has around 2000 listed.

If you would be interested in coordinating a team with setting specifications I would be willing to help knock them out. I noticed you had the game pan into the title screen on Mr. Driller. Very nice.

[bLAZER]

No there's no team, but it would be awesome if you could help out with the recording. It would speed up the process a lot, so if you're interested here's basically what you should do:

Start the game (with winuaeloader/whdload).

set the outut in WinUAE to audio: CM 48000 khz, 16, stereo. Video: TechSmith Screen Cature Codec (TSCC) 50 fps (60 for NTSC games, but not common at all - otherwise sound lags)

Let the title show for a moment so you know you have at least a good 10 seconds shot of it.

Play the game so you have a nice interesting 30 seconds shot.

Start up VirtualDub.

Cut out everything unnecessary (about 15 seconds of title, 40 seconds of gameplay).

Set Video and audio to "Direct Stream Copy"

Save as avi.

Upload file somewhere to Emumovies FTP to start with.

Do a couple of tests and I'll see if all's good. Any questions just ask.

A couple of issues to think of:

I use Killergorillas WHDLOAD-set. Some games runs way to fast. If that's the case, change cpu settings to see if it helps.

WHDLoad skips the title screens way to fast on some games (since originally they showed the title during loading from floppy) so those games have to be recorded with ADF.

I've got sound lags sometimes on the recorded video, so a quick check at the end of the video file to see if the sound is in sync is good.

By the way "I noticed you had the game pan into the title screen on Mr. Driller". Pan into the title screen? You mean fade? Mr Driller? What's that?

[Brenry]

What would be the possibility of cooperating with http://recordedamigagames.ath.cx ? Snipping a segment of their longplays? They have over 600 titles done already.

[bLAZER]

Those movies are already encoded with quality loss. I only want pure non-destroyed videos/sound to work with. Otherwise the result will get worse and worse each time you edit the video, normalize the sound etc. Unless they still have the original videos.

[Brenry]

blazer: I noticed in Espontaneo's dir he has a bunch too. Are you redoing them for quality purposes or just working around his? Could you throw a directory list of the roms onto a google live spreadsheet so they can be checked off, the way Hyperspin did for the theme renaming project.

Something I had noticed when tweaking my emulator is the wonky video settings. And have noticed this on some of the video sets. By default the video rezing is turned off in Filter. If you use Null filter and auto it will stretch the video to the 4:3 ratio when changing interlace modes. Otherwise these videos are turning out with a large letterbox on the bottom part of the screen.

If you can assign me a batch I'll get cracking on it.

[bLAZER]

Yes I know he did a few, but those were not in good quality at all, so yes that's why I'm redoing those as well.

Well the settings (I'm not sure if these settings are in the WinUAE Loader/WHDLoad games, but I think so...) should be:

Dislay:

Windowed: 720x576

Line Mode: Double

Resolution: Hires (normal)

No centering, or filter etc.

Sound:

Enabled: 100% accurate

Channelmode: Stereo

Stereo searation: 70%

Interpolation: Disabled

Audio filter: Always off

Obviously no floppy drive sound

This way you get whe whole screen, which I will automatically crop correctly.

Well, the games to do is all WHDLoad that's not on the FTP and not the following:

AlfredChicken_v1.0_0422

Amegas_v1.0_1655

BuggyBoy_v1.2_0465

JoeBlade2_v1.0

JoeBlade_v1.1_0514

MegaTwins_v1.2_1863

Prehistorik_v1.3_0557

Starglider_v1.0_0174

TieBreak_v1.0

Also if there's an AGA version and an ECS-version, just do the AGA-version for now.

You could do a couple of them and upload them on the FTP, so I could check if they're good. Then we can organize the list for real.

And be sure to use WinUAE Loader and KillerGorillas WHDLoad-Pack which will simplify the process a lot, and only use ADF:s with manual settings when there are problems.

[Brenry]

.

[bLAZER]

Oh just answered here AND in a private message...hehe

OK, as I wrote there we should try to first filter out the alternative versions, different languages etc. (As WinUAE lanuches does).

I'll see if I can find some more people to contribute.

[Brenry]

For this system since it changes res modes from low to high, and the built in recorder (including latest beta) goes off the beginning resolution. Even by changing to full screen mode, and the video scales to fill the screen; the videos are coming out with that large letterbox on the bottom.

I would recommend using Fraps or another screen recorder so the 640x480 resizes come out fine. Unless you can think of another way around that, any games I come across as I work up from Z that is in that bad proportion I will be redoing.

[bLAZER]

I'm not sure what you're talking about here. I've recorded all videos with those settings, and several games which use both 320x256,640x256 and 640x512. There WILL be a big black area that I will crop. No reason using fraps.

[Brenry]

I made a sample of Toki, compare it against yours. You have large letter boxes on the bottom, left and right. Regardless. Also if you are going to rely on stretching in vdub filters, aren't you going to be adding smudged graphics? I'm not getting letterboxes using fraps and getting full screen res.

Also on the list how do you want to work out all those dupes? I'm going off the same filter as you in WHDLoad, and as I go along have just been deleting the rows that don't show up otherwise (like a previous game version, etc)

[bLAZER]

Ah, now I understand what you mean. Well, there will be black borders vertically on most (NTSC) games. I will not crop that since that's how they would look on a real (PAL) Amiga. I will not stretch anything in Vdub, just crop. So make that Toki video so it looks like mine, but with a bit more black around the whole screen.

Sure, we can remove those lines manually as we go.

[bLAZER]

I might add that I use WinUAE Loader to launch the KGWHD's and set these settings:

Windowed

Screen: 720x576

Resolution: Hires (normal)

Line Mode: Double

That's it.

[Circo]

Ah, now I understand what you mean. Well, there will be black borders vertically on most (NTSC) games. I will not crop that since that's how they would look on a real (PAL) Amiga. I will not stretch anything in Vdub, just crop. So make that Toki video so it looks like mine, but with a bit more black around the whole screen.

Sure, we can remove those lines manually as we go.

My apologies for not being involved in the discussion as this is just the worst time of year for me

Ok to set the record straight we don't want any letter boxing. Normal systems should be 4:3 NTSC or PAL. Yes that may involve some stretching, it's ok. Final vids should be 640x480 it's the standard for HiQ vids. There is a reason behind this and that is they will look good in all front ends. The key here is consistency.

[Brenry]

My process for Amiga files for future people picking up on project:

At current time, WinUAE's internal recorder will not register screen resolution changes from hi to low. An external capturer, such as Fraps, will give you perfect full resolution into your videos. Some people recommend 720x576 resolution, but for purposes of these videos, 640x480 32bit color will let your card do the math to give you crisp vibrant graphics instead of putting an additional step for resizing and adding software filter artifacts. Using the internal recorder will give you unsightly pixel letterboxes, if you leave them in for a virtual dub crop you will be left with a muddy video after stretching.

Another issue I have noticed when using the internal recorder is screen elements do not line up. You may find wide gaps on the left and right portions of the screen, while say a score graphic on the lower fills the entire width. Fraps will record the video proportions of all elements correctly.

Internal recorder (this has also had the lower letterbox removed, Notice the loss of detail on the scorebox. overall picture is blurry, and colors dulled after stretch)

Fraps -- no post editing, cropping, resizing needed.

In Vdub I have been aiming for around 2000 frames or 40 seconds at 640x480 res. For the time I just use a lossless codec like TechSmith Screen Capture or the Fraps codec for fast saves. Just dealing with editing here, all my encoding gets done in a batch.

I then run them through a batch process in Format Factory for Xvid with 30 FPS conversion. No to two passes. I found that 2 passes actually increases the size by nearly double. Both of these factors will yield you between a 3-7 meg avi vs 15 meg if you use full 50 frames. Be considerate to others and produce a master .avi file first. If you make a .flv file, these cannot be directly edited in Virtual dub, must be washed through a batch encoder (which is very time consuming because you start dealing with gigabyte files) and lowers the quality of the video / adds artifacts.

After creating this set I run the AVI Gain EmuMovies Custom inside this dir to normalize audio.

This biggest time saver I found is working with a txt directory file for fast copy/past to rename Fraps videos as they pop out. Everything else down the chain will use the name automatically. A dos command of "dir /b > roms.txt" will create this file. Just streamline and do batches, it wastes too much time processing each file as it comes. With this workflow I can average around 50 videos an hour.

[Brenry]

k. I'll post both versions. If you happen to know of any video recorders looking for a project send em this way

[Circo]

That was exactly my thought process 5 years ago when I started this project, back then you were hard pressed to get a computer to run video files at that res. So all of the original sets are SQ or 320x240 but much has changed in 5 years. #1 Hard drives have become dirt cheap, a 2tb drive costs the same as a 150GB drive did back then. And computers have become much much faster. Working as closely as I do with Front-End teams 320x240 videos are primarily for those running older hardware or low res arcade monitors. The MAME video set was the first set that I honestly embraced HQ or 640x480. That has become the most popular and most downloaded video set off of the FTP and got people to start crying out (I can't wait for the other sets to come out in HQ. In order to future proof the project if we start with HQ sets and then at the end resize and encode an SQ set for those with different needs then everyone is happy. Thats why I got this new server with gobs and gobs of hard drive space and bandwidth. What you have to look at is the target audience is no longer just arcade cabs, and even many of the new cabs have LCD's.

I have a great example for you. I am working VERY closely with bill on the new HypserSpin release, one of the new features will be a screensaver mode in which whatever system you are on will be playing the videos full screen for whatever system you have selected. Using HQ vids looks great, using SQ vids looks well not great.

Official EmuMovies sets must meet this standard

AVI - HQ (640x480) 4:3 aspect ratio

FLV - HQ (640x480) 4:3 aspect ratio

once sets completed we do a lower bit rate encode for SQ its a batch process so not that big of a deal

AVI - SQ (320x240) 4:3 aspect ratio

FLV - SQ (320x240) 4:3 aspect ratio

That's the vision for completed sets, but I don't want to detur anyone from helping, I have been doing this primarily solo since 05 and it's great to have some help! I just want to avoid any more double work if I can help it, there are already something like 8000 videos that have to be redone for HQ.

[bLAZER]

300 videos done.

[Brenry]

300 videos done.

that's dedication.. grats !

[headkaze]

Hey guys just got a PM from Brenry regarding this Amiga video set. I'm very interested in this project. It's nice to see WinUAE Loader is coming in handy

Brenry asked me about creating a spreadsheet with the foreign games removed so he could check them off. You can already do this in WinUAE Loader, I will give a set of instructions here.

1. Run WinUAE Loader and select the "Settings" tab

2. Under "GameEx Options" take the tick off "Remove Missing Games" and put a tick next to "Filter Games". This will remove the foreign games from the list.

3. Click "Generate Map Files"

4. Take a look in the "Data\GameEx\MAP FILES" folder and you should find the generated map files which are just text files.

5. Copy the map files to the desktop and rename the extension to .txt

6. Open up Microsoft Excel and select Open->Text Files.

7. Select "Delimited" then click Next, select "Other" and enter the pipe (|) symbol.

8. Select Finish, now you should have two columns, one with the filename and the other with the friendly name.

If I can be of any more assistance let me know

[Brenry]

I'm not sure what you're talking about here. I've recorded all videos with those settings, and several games which use both 320x256,640x256 and 640x512. There WILL be a big black area that I will crop. No reason using fraps.

Your 3rd batch still has large black areas that you are not cropping out.

[bLAZER]

Yes, as i I wrote before, I'm NOT cropping the original screen. The videos look how they look on a real Amiga. Do you think it's a good idea to crop every game so that the aspact ratio is different for every game? That wouldn't be a good idea if you want to show the video in a front end. And you also screw up the resolution/filtering, and that's why you have all those problems.