The Tech Support Fort - READ THE OP BEFORE YOU ASK SOMETHING

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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Let's Play! > The Tech Support Fort - READ THE OP BEFORE YOU ASK SOMETHING

Mastigophoran: Feb 19, 2011; Not exactly immortal...
but close enough

malkav11 posted:

Okay. That works. Any idea why Opera works and Chrome and Firefox don't?

yes:

Polsy talked about it in the old TSF.

Basically it's to do with your user agent, or your referrer, and there's some useful posts on how to deal with the issue (other than 'use opera') following his post.

# ? May 27, 2012 18:52

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# ? May 22, 2013 19:18

malkav11: Aug 7, 2009

Mastigophoran posted:

yes:

Polsy talked about it in the old TSF.

Basically it's to do with your user agent, or your referrer, and there's some useful posts on how to deal with the issue (other than 'use opera') following his post.

Thank you. A bit of research turned up a Chrome extension (User-Agent Switcher for Chrome) that can automatically spoof being Opera for the blip.tv domain. And voila, downloads that work.

# ? May 27, 2012 19:43

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011

malkav11 posted:

Okay. That works. Any idea why Opera works and Chrome and Firefox don't?

Polsy had a post about this in the old thread. blip.tv is starting to block direct downloads for all desktop browsers (they do this by searching for "Mozilla" in the user agent). If you also view either the video watching page or the RSS feed (I forget which) in the last half hour or so it will give you the correct video.

# ? May 27, 2012 23:39

psymonkey: May 22, 2006; This post is full of pretty awesome holes. I like all the holes in this post.

Hi everyone! I'm just barely dipping my toe into Avisynth to crop out some emulator BS I forgot to take out of the capture area. I read Vicas' beginner guide which was helpful, but it didn't answer any questions about what all I can do with a .avs file.

For example, I tried uploading it to youtube and it just uploads the text file. The solution I've come up with thus far is to open the avs file in virtualdub and save it as an avi from there. I'm pretty sure this is the wrong idea. What am I missing to go from the avs file to youtube? Thanks!

# ? May 27, 2012 23:55

Niggurath: Apr 7, 2009; You know what this is?

It's me rubbing the world's smallest set of testicles.

psymonkey posted:

Hi everyone! I'm just barely dipping my toe into Avisynth to crop out some emulator BS I forgot to take out of the capture area. I read Vicas' beginner guide which was helpful, but it didn't answer any questions about what all I can do with a .avs file.

For example, I tried uploading it to youtube and it just uploads the text file. The solution I've come up with thus far is to open the avs file in virtualdub and save it as an avi from there. I'm pretty sure this is the wrong idea. What am I missing to go from the avs file to youtube? Thanks!

Well you want to encode that avs file into a container such as a MP4. To do that you'd want to use MeGui and there's a guide for that in the OP as well, but MeGui should give you an MP4 that you can upload to Youtube.

# ? May 27, 2012 23:58

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011

psymonkey posted:

Hi everyone! I'm just barely dipping my toe into Avisynth to crop out some emulator BS I forgot to take out of the capture area. I read Vicas' beginner guide which was helpful, but it didn't answer any questions about what all I can do with a .avs file.

You need to encode it into a raw video using something like MeGUI. KFJ's Fraps to MeGUI guide isn't too bad, even though you're not using Fraps.

# ? May 27, 2012 23:58

psymonkey: May 22, 2006; This post is full of pretty awesome holes. I like all the holes in this post.

Ah thanks for the quick responses. I guess I was on the right track, but MeGUI is looking like a much better choice so thanks for that!

# ? May 28, 2012 00:12

Spiffo: Nov 24, 2005

Hey guys, I just bought one of those Hauppauge HD PVRs recommended in the OP but it doesn't seem to work. I haven't really configured anything yet, just installed the firmware but the thing seems like a piece of junk. The TV keeps freezing and cutting out, and the preview on my computer is at least a few seconds behind what's happening on screen. That is, when it decides to work at all (sometimes it decides that the entire screen is a few feet to the left so I can only see the right bit of the screen altogether)

Is it supposed to just work when I plug it in, am I supposed to configure it, or did I just get a broken one?

# ? May 28, 2012 02:07

Nidoking: Jan 27, 2009; I fought the lava, and the lava won.

Spiffo posted:

Hey guys, I just bought one of those Hauppauge HD PVRs recommended in the OP but it doesn't seem to work. I haven't really configured anything yet, just installed the firmware but the thing seems like a piece of junk. The TV keeps freezing and cutting out, and the preview on my computer is at least a few seconds behind what's happening on screen. That is, when it decides to work at all (sometimes it decides that the entire screen is a few feet to the left so I can only see the right bit of the screen altogether)

Is it supposed to just work when I plug it in, am I supposed to configure it, or did I just get a broken one?

Are you actually using component video, or are you using one of the SD feeds? What are you trying to record from? What's the resolution of the source video? Are you using the Avermedia software that came with it? Do you have any other recording devices connected? What's your OS?

These are just a few of the questions you could answer that would be very helpful in what little anyone here might be able to tell you about your problem. I had to get a configuration file from Avermedia before I could run their software, but with that in place, I've never had a problem with mine.

# ? May 28, 2012 02:14

Spiffo: Nov 24, 2005

Nidoking posted:

Are you actually using component video, or are you using one of the SD feeds? What are you trying to record from? What's the resolution of the source video? Are you using the Avermedia software that came with it? Do you have any other recording devices connected? What's your OS?

These are just a few of the questions you could answer that would be very helpful in what little anyone here might be able to tell you about your problem. I had to get a configuration file from Avermedia before I could run their software, but with that in place, I've never had a problem with mine.

I'm trying one of the SD feeds - the composite on the front. I'm trying to record from an N64. Source video resolution, the thing says 720x480 (before it freezes anyway). I installed the software that came with it and that's where it's freezing. For some reason the TV portion works fine if I'm not running the software on my computer (although a PVR that fails when you try to actually use it doesn't seem that useful). It only gets all glitchy everywhere when I run the TotalMedia Extreme program that came with it - the one that actually lets me interface with it.

When I ran the software, it wanted to update. I said "Yes" so it should be up-to-date. I have rebooted since.

edit: I just removed the thing from the box so it's brand new

Spiffo fucked around with this message at May 28, 2012 around 02:32

# ? May 28, 2012 02:25

Nidoking: Jan 27, 2009; I fought the lava, and the lava won.

Spiffo posted:

I'm trying one of the SD feeds - the composite on the front. I'm trying to record from an N64. Source video resolution, the thing says 720x480 (before it freezes anyway). I installed the software that came with it and that's where it's freezing. For some reason the TV portion works fine if I'm not running the software on my computer (although a PVR that fails when you try to actually use it doesn't seem that useful). It only gets all glitchy everywhere when I run the TotalMedia Extreme program that came with it - the one that actually lets me interface with it.

I've never tried the HD-PVR for SD video. Virtualdub might be able to handle that, if that's all you want to do with it. I know it recognizes my PVR as a possible source, but I've never run composite video to it. Contact Avermedia and tell them your program's freezing. It took me quite a bit of back-and-forth at something like three days an exchange, but they got to the root of my problem and sent me a new config file that fixed it.

# ? May 28, 2012 02:37

MEAT!: Mar 18, 2008

Nidoking posted:

Contact Avermedia and tell them your program's freezing.

It's Hauppauge, but same difference.

Spiffo posted:

Hey guys, I just bought one of those Hauppauge HD PVRs recommended in the OP but it doesn't seem to work.

The preview is supposed to be behind what you see on screen.

What kind of hardware do you have, specifically the hard drive you're recording to? Are you using the h.264 compression that's built into the software? Why did you buy an HDPVR when you want to record SD footage? Many questions need to answered.

# ? May 28, 2012 02:46

pokecapn: Oct 17, 2003; yeah, galo sengen

What game are you trying to record? If it's one that runs at 240p instead of 480i, the PVR can't do it. In general you shouldn't be recording SD or interlaced footage with it and those front inputs are mostly for show.

edit: Most N64 games run at 240p.

pokecapn fucked around with this message at May 28, 2012 around 02:53

# ? May 28, 2012 02:50

Spiffo: Nov 24, 2005

MEAT! posted:

What kind of hardware do you have, specifically the hard drive you're recording to? Are you using the h.264 compression that's built into the software? Why did you buy an HDPVR when you want to record SD footage? Many questions need to answered.

I'm looking at recording it to my computer, just a regular-rear end hard drive.

I don't know, I just plugged it in and assumed the default settings would be set to "work".

I planned to plug a number of things into it - I have a Roxio which only does component so I figured I'd try the N64 on this new thing before testing out the other consoles. I had planned to use it as a one-stop shop for recording LPs (since it has plugins for everything)

pokecapn posted:

What game are you trying to record? If it's one that runs at 240p instead of 480i, the PVR can't do it. In general you shouldn't be recording SD or interlaced footage with it and those front inputs are mostly for show.

edit: Most N64 games run at 240p.

I didn't buy the extra features "for show" so if that's what the ports are good for then that simplifies my options quite a bit.

edit: it seems to work fine with other sources, I'll try their support to see if they can resolve these issues.

Spiffo fucked around with this message at May 28, 2012 around 03:29

# ? May 28, 2012 03:17

pokecapn: Oct 17, 2003; yeah, galo sengen

Spiffo posted:

I didn't buy the extra features "for show" so if that's what the ports are good for then that simplifies my options quite a bit.

edit: it seems to work fine with other sources, I'll try their support to see if they can resolve these issues.

They can't. It specifically says in the specs that it supports the following:

Recording format:

up to 1080i from component video (YCrCb or YPrPb)
NTSC: 720p60, 1080i60, 480i60, 480p60
PAL: 720p50, 1080i50, 576p50, 576i50, 480p50, 480i50

The N64 only outputs 480i in a select few games. I can think of Rogue Squadron off-hand, probably a couple other games that used the Expansion Pack. Otherwise it outputs 240p or 224p, which the HD PVR 100% Does Not Support And Has Never Claimed To Support.

# ? May 28, 2012 04:11

Spiffo: Nov 24, 2005

pokecapn posted:

They can't. It specifically says in the specs that it supports the following:

Recording format:

up to 1080i from component video (YCrCb or YPrPb)
NTSC: 720p60, 1080i60, 480i60, 480p60
PAL: 720p50, 1080i50, 576p50, 576i50, 480p50, 480i50

The N64 only outputs 480i in a select few games. I can think of Rogue Squadron off-hand, probably a couple other games that used the Expansion Pack. Otherwise it outputs 240p or 224p, which the HD PVR 100% Does Not Support And Has Never Claimed To Support.

Fair enough, thanks for the info.

# ? May 28, 2012 04:14

pokecapn: Oct 17, 2003; yeah, galo sengen

Spiffo posted:

Fair enough, thanks for the info.

One thing that comes up a lot in the thread is people who can't get their PS2s to work. This is usually because they're playing a PS1 game, but also because the PS1 and PS2 have a very versatile range of resolutions they output at, and 480i was rarely picked because you could squeeze more performance out going with fewer vertical lines. The best way to handle this is to go up in console generation and hope it's either backwards compatible or that it's available as a PS Classic / Virtual Console game.

edit: Or emulate

edit2: Additionally, the pass-through only works for component input, so you'd need to split the cables to be able to play the game while you're recording from the SD ports.

# ? May 28, 2012 04:16

AzraelNewtype: Nov 9, 2004; 「ブレストバーン！！」

MEAT! posted:

8.) ENCODE YOUR FINAL VIDEO WITH X264 AND FAAC YOU FUCKS
Because you should.

Why are you advocating use of faac 128kbps (bitrate taken from the workflow image, not the quoted bit, admittedly) when even lame tends to beat it at that bitrate? Nero's aac encoder is free, cross platform, and regularly at or near the top of quality comparisons. Even their own website suggests that it is not particularly good compared with other encoders, and recommends Nero (because Nero hired some old faac developers). You could probably drop down to 96kbps HE-AAC with Nero and still sound at least as good as faac's 128kbps output, in case bandwidth is at a premium.

The workflow diagram also recommends 2-pass x264 encoding, to which I again ask, why? Unless you need to exactly hit a target filesize, a single pass in crf mode will give you the variable bitrate you want for size reasons, without wasting time on the first pass. The output size isn't 100% predictable, but if you're familiar with your content (and a quick test on a small sample like you recommend will let you get there) you can come in the ballpark. x264 is not like xvid where the quality of a constant quality video will be worse than a two pass video using the single pass' bitrate.

# ? May 28, 2012 06:58

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011

As for audio, I just want to let everybody know that Opus is planning on a 1.0 release quite soon. It's a very, very good audio codec for all sorts of mediums. The launch is going to include integration with most major pieces of software, as well as ffmpeg/libav support. I'll talk with people to gauge YouTube's interest. You will want to use Opus going forward, once it's released for good. It's faster to encode and has better audio quality at lower bitrates than the in-development competitor: AAC-HE.

The 2-pass x264 encoding has been brought up before as well. I don't think there's a big distinction between one and a half hours to encode and three hours to encode - once you've passed the half an hour mark, people just leave their computers and don't care about it. Others (including me) have been unimpressed with the results CRF.

# ? May 28, 2012 07:21

baldurk: Jun 21, 2005; If you won't try to find coherence in the world, have the courtesy of becoming apathetic.

As far as the workflow diagram goes, that was mostly to show people how the different steps go together, and get them in good practice like not multiple-encoding. At the time I wrote that, people were recording to xvid, then editing and saving as xvid and then finally encoding to xvid. The important part was to get people doing steps in the right order and lossless until the final encode, the actual final settings aren't really critical for that.

# ? May 28, 2012 08:30

AzraelNewtype: Nov 9, 2004; 「ブレストバーン！！」

Suspicious Dish posted:

Others (including me) have been unimpressed with the results CRF.

Bullshit. You know, unless you're arguing that you know better than the guy who wrote the algorithm. There's literally no point unless you're more interested in the exact filesize than your power bill.

# ? May 28, 2012 09:11

Mico: Jan 28, 2011; I call it Meowthstep.

CRF works perfectly fine. A setting of CRF, 20, and Slow makes videos that are indistinguishable for ones where I manually set the bitrate to an overkill number aside from the filesize.

# ? May 28, 2012 10:11

Mush Man: Jun 25, 2010; Nintendo announces
Project Funké.

AzraelNewtype posted:

Even their own website suggests that it is not particularly good compared with other encoders, and recommends Nero (because Nero hired some old faac developers). You could probably drop down to 96kbps HE-AAC with Nero and still sound at least as good as faac's 128kbps output, in case bandwidth is at a premium.

I can't find where to set a variable bitrate for Nero AAC in MeGUI. The slider only lets me set an abstract quality value, which isn't useful!

AzraelNewtype posted:

The workflow diagram also recommends 2-pass x264 encoding, to which I again ask, why? Unless you need to exactly hit a target filesize, a single pass in crf mode will give you the variable bitrate you want for size reasons, without wasting time on the first pass.

Is there a way to tell what bitrate the constant quantizer will output to without having to encode the whole video? I'd like to encode in one pass, but I'd like to have some idea what the end-result is without having to do a whole bunch of test encodes.

# ? May 28, 2012 12:09

Admiral H. Curtiss: May 11, 2010; I think there are a bunch of people who can create trailing images. I know some who could do this as if they were just going out for a stroll.

Mush Man posted:

I can't find where to set a variable bitrate for Nero AAC in MeGUI. The slider only lets me set an abstract quality value, which isn't useful!

http://www.audiocoding.com/nero_aacenc.html

The graph at the bottom.

# ? May 28, 2012 12:15

Instant Grat: Jul 31, 2009; Just add
NERD RAAAAAAGE

Or just use Adaptive Bitrate, that'll let you set a target value.

# ? May 28, 2012 12:25

Weird BIAS: Jul 4, 2007; This Bird

I might be missing something dumb but I've been fighting with this a bit. My video gets encoded fine, no problems, plays back fine in mpc-hc. I go to upload it to blip and youtube and it just fails to convert. I re-encoded the video last night and that video also failed to convert so I'm assuming there's something wrong with my encoding settings.

E:hahaha FAAC

Weird BIAS fucked around with this message at May 28, 2012 around 21:15

# ? May 28, 2012 14:39

Nidoking: Jan 27, 2009; I fought the lava, and the lava won.

MEAT! posted:

It's Hauppauge, but same difference.

Hauppauge ignored my attempts to contact them. ~~Avermedia~~ Arcsoft worked with me to get their software to stop crashing every time I ran it. I said Avermedia, and I meant ~~Avermedia~~ Arcsoft. Clearly.

Nidoking fucked around with this message at May 28, 2012 around 20:03

# ? May 28, 2012 15:01

Spiffo: Nov 24, 2005

Nidoking posted:

Hauppauge ignored my attempts to contact them. Avermedia worked with me to get their software to stop crashing every time I ran it. I said Avermedia, and I meant Avermedia.

Would they support the product though? So far I've only been using the out-of-the-box software that came with it - why would Avermedia support a Hauppauge product?

# ? May 28, 2012 19:59

Nidoking: Jan 27, 2009; I fought the lava, and the lava won.

Spiffo posted:

Would they support the product though? So far I've only been using the out-of-the-box software that came with it - why would Avermedia support a Hauppauge product?

Argh... ARCSOFT. This is what I get for trying to be helpful when I'm not at home and have neither the software nor the packaging handy. Arcsoft is the company that makes Totalmedia Extreme. Contact Arcsoft.

I'm glad someone in this thread can put two and two together, realize that there's some confusion, look at the program, and figure out what it is I'm trying to say.

Arcsoft.

# ? May 28, 2012 20:02

MEAT!: Mar 18, 2008

AzraelNewtype posted:

Why are you advocating use of faac 128kbps (bitrate taken from the workflow image, not the quoted bit, admittedly) when even lame tends to beat it at that bitrate? Nero's aac encoder is free, cross platform, and regularly at or near the top of quality comparisons. Even their own website suggests that it is not particularly good compared with other encoders, and recommends Nero (because Nero hired some old faac developers). You could probably drop down to 96kbps HE-AAC with Nero and still sound at least as good as faac's 128kbps output, in case bandwidth is at a premium.

Mostly for simplicity. It doesn't require any extra steps in MeGUI other than selecting FAAC scratchpad in the audio encoder setting drop down. Yes, I do think downloading an extra codec and pointing out a file path location in MeGUI is complicated for some people. In my defense, I have always had Nero AAC in the OP under encoding software.

AzraelNewtype posted:

The workflow diagram also recommends 2-pass x264 encoding, to which I again ask, why? Unless you need to exactly hit a target filesize, a single pass in crf mode will give you the variable bitrate you want for size reasons, without wasting time on the first pass. The output size isn't 100% predictable, but if you're familiar with your content (and a quick test on a small sample like you recommend will let you get there) you can come in the ballpark. x264 is not like xvid where the quality of a constant quality video will be worse than a two pass video using the single pass' bitrate.

2-pass encoding still has it's place for videos with lots and lots of motion. You can get a good enough looking video at an acceptable file size instead of a good looking video but with a massive file size. I do agree that crf is often what should be used and if you read a lot of my posts in the last thread I tell people to use single pass crf most of the time.

Nidoking posted:

Hauppauge ignored my attempts to contact them. Avermedia worked with me to get their software to stop crashing every time I ran it. I said Avermedia, and I meant Avermedia.

~~I didn't mean to offend, you'll have to excuse my confusion though: the hardware is made by Hauppauge and the software is made by ArcSoft, yet you called AverMedia for assistance.~~

edit: ahhh hehe

# ? May 28, 2012 20:26

Weird BIAS: Jul 4, 2007; This Bird

Weird BIAS posted:

I might be missing something dumb but I've been fighting with this a bit. My video gets encoded fine, no problems, plays back fine in mpc-hc. I go to upload it to blip and youtube and it just fails to convert. I re-encoded the video last night and that video also failed to convert so I'm assuming there's something wrong with my encoding settings.

Turns out it was the audio codec doing it. In other words I posted about conversion problems due to FAAC right after the thread was talking about how FAAC sucks. Awesome.

# ? May 28, 2012 21:17

PlatinumJukebox: Nov 14, 2011

I recently tried making a short video of some game footage for an ongoing SSLP, but I must've forgotten something in the workflow because it doesn't hold up to earlier videos.

Here's one of the earlier videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V599SYpODQA (skip to about 1:30)

And here's what I managed recently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhL9-GygZQ8

The process I used for that last one was FRAPS (fullscreen, 30fps), making a few cuts and converting it to YV12 in AviSynth, then encoding it in MeGUI with X264 and FAAC. Am I forgetting something? Is there something else I should be doing in Avisynth?

# ? May 29, 2012 03:04

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011

PlatinumJukebox posted:

The process I used for that last one was FRAPS (fullscreen, 30fps), making a few cuts and converting it to YV12 in AviSynth, then encoding it in MeGUI with X264 and FAAC. Am I forgetting something? Is there something else I should be doing in Avisynth?

Does it look like that on your local disk, or is it only when you upload to YouTube?

# ? May 29, 2012 03:09

PlatinumJukebox: Nov 14, 2011

Suspicious Dish posted:

Does it look like that on your local disk, or is it only when you upload to YouTube?

Only the upload; the file itself looks dandy. Maybe I need to turn up the resolution?

# ? May 29, 2012 03:20

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011

PlatinumJukebox posted:

Only the upload; the file itself looks dandy. Maybe I need to turn up the resolution?

What resolution is the file in?

# ? May 29, 2012 03:23

PlatinumJukebox: Nov 14, 2011

Suspicious Dish posted:

What resolution is the file in?

640x480, same as the game.

# ? May 29, 2012 03:31

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011

PlatinumJukebox posted:

640x480, same as the game.

PointResize(960, 720)

# ? May 29, 2012 03:37

Mastigophoran: Feb 19, 2011; Not exactly immortal...
but close enough

Well,

PlatinumJukebox posted:

640x480, same as the game.

does not comply with

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V599SYpODQA

That first video was not 640x480 when it was uploaded to youtube - the aspect ratio is all kinds of wrong, and youtube gave it a 720p quality. I don't know why it would butcher your second video, but, that seems to suggest that at least one of your missing steps was 'upscaling it above 720p and butcher the aspect ratio in the process'

# ? May 29, 2012 03:38

Captain Flame Guy: Mar 11, 2012

I'm trying to put together this extremely cut-heavy video for my Castlevania Order of Ecclesia LP. However, when I finished getting the frame counts for every single cut, VirtualDubMod greeted me with the following error:

Avisynth open failure: Splice: Video framerate doesn't match (C:\Games\DS\Recordings\Episode 8\Episode8.avs, line 37)

I've checked the framerate of the raw .avi files using MediaInfo, and it says that the videos were recorded at 59.826 fps.

However, for the last part of the recording I had to upgrade the emulator in order to fix a graphical bug I was having at a specific point. After comparing the video files of a video that was recorded with the older version with one recorded using the newer version, I haven't been able to find anything that's different.

The .avs script
MediaInfo older version
MediaInfo new version

Any idea what causes this and how to fix it?

Thanks!

# ? May 29, 2012 19:55

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# ? May 22, 2013 19:18

Xenoveritas: May 9, 2010

Presumably, your video framerates don't match.

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.

OK, so the reason this happens is because the framerate in a video isn't stored as a number like 59.826. It's stored as a ratio between two integers. So for 29.97 FPS, that's stored as a ratio of 30000 / 1001. Or 2997 / 100. Depending on the source. Clearly, the two don't match. Well, maybe not clearly, but 30000 / 1001 is 29.97002997002997... and 2997 / 100 is actually 29.97.

Why this happens to you in this case is the ChangeSpeed function, specifically, the .ChangeFPS(c.FrameRate) part. FrameRate converts the value into a decimal, like 59.826. (Actually, it converts it into a floating-point value, but that's not important right now). ChangeFPS gets that decimal and will attempt to figure out an appropriate ratio from it. Clearly the one it creates doesn't match. Fortunately, there is a fix:

code:

Function ChangeSpeed(clip c, float factor)
{
    return c.TimeStretch(tempo=100 * factor).AssumeFPS(c.FrameRate * factor) \
        .ChangeFPS(c.FrameRateNumerator, c.FrameRateDenominator)
}

# ? May 29, 2012 20:13

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