Keep trying the FTP. THere are 6 people on it right now as I type this. THe FTP is on 24/7 so maybe when you tried to access it was too busy. Yakumo
BT is also working fine. I'm currently seeding (along with cptn_donut), so if you want any of them you might want to hop on now.
Aaarrg, I was putting in "serverftp" instead of "serveftp" in the address! It works now, after NOT BEING AN IDIOT. EDIT: What are the resolutions/filesizes/etc. of the different versions of the videos?
The screen size is the same for each version but the encoding is different. High is nice and clean with medium being decent but low resolution is pretty blocky so I wouldn't really bother with it unless you're on a dail up connection. Yakumo
I've got teh broadband now, so no more crap for me! The Torrents started working again anyway, so I'm getting them which I believe are the medium quality ones...? I've noticed the first video is 480x480... any reasons to using a square frame?
yes the Torrents are the medium quality versions but they are still quite viewable. There really isn't any reason for the 480 x480 frame on the first version apart from my not noticing the settings :smt030 The later episones are much better. Yakumo
I've just looked at some of the first episode now, and it's pretty cool stuff! I want a Saturn now... :smt022 Just two questions: What did you do the titling with? It looked like a composite video source, so I assume not from a PC. Some funky effects though! And have you considered using an analogue capture card instead of sticking a camera in front of your TV (though I'm still astonished at how you got such a good picture just doing that! :smt023)? It'll be a lot less hassle, it'll look better and you'll get better sound too since you can just plug a mic and the console directly into your sound card. Or have you already done this in later ones?
I used Swish for the titles and all text used within the show. It's a flash animation software. You can actually encode the flash to any codec you want but the problem comes when you start to have many different files and you want to join them together. Virtual Dub is very fussy at times. Even if you encode two videos the exact same way Virtual Dub may tell you that they are different. It doesn't always but sometimes it does. So, I just leave them as Flash then video them. I have a digital MPEG 2 Capture card on my PC but the problem with doing a direct feed is mixing the audio (game and my voice). The capture card only has one input for audio. Besides, capturing the video Via the card wouldn't provide a better picture in the end after encoding the show for the net. Another reason for not using the capture card is because sometimes I'll use an emulator because I can't be arsed getting out all the systems and setting them up. My PC isn't powerful enough to run an emulator and encode video at 5mbps at the same time :smt009 The reason I can get such crystal clear images from my TV is because the video camera I use has digital filters to remove such crap as scan lines or roll bars. You will notice on the Mark III review I do on Volume : 3 that the screen has roll bars but these suddenly vanish. This is because I change the setting on the camera as it's recording. It's a very nice digital video camera :-D Here are the phases Retro Core goes through before you get it. 1. Digital recording on to Mini DV tape. 2. The Mini DV is transferred to MPEG 2 at 5mbps with an audio rate of 192kbps 3. The MPEG 2 file with audio is then converted to highest quality XVID MEPG 4 for editing (Virtual Dub won't accept MPEG 2 data) 4. After editing the MPEG 4 file is re-encoded in to the 3 different resolutions that the show is available in. High resolution is encoded at rate 4, medium at rate 10 and low at rate 20. A lot of work just for one show but it's worth it. Yakumo
Yes, I have also encountered this infuriatingly annoying issue. AAARG. :smt067 It's usually OK if you're using uncompressed AVI's or some lossles compression codec like Huffyuv or PICVideo M-JPEG (which I both highly recommend for post-production, and Huffyuv's free!), though. I don't think joining MPEG-4 video is a viable option at all unless you're willing to re-encode them, which will probably make them look like ass. Oh, that's annoying. Can't you use the sound card for audio imput? I haven't had any experience with MPEG-2 capture cards, but have heard annoying things about them when it comes to sound. With most normal TV cards, they just take audio directly from the sound card, which is kinda handy, and I can choose whatever codec I want, including lossless compression ones so I don't lose any quality until the final encode. They're also damn cheap now - my one (Hauppauge WinTV PCI-FM) was only 50 Euro, but I don't know what's available in Japan. Yes, that is an issue. The only plausible way I can think of to achieve that is with two PCs, using the TV-out on one joined to a capture card on the other (which I found quite successful, but alas you need 2 remotely good PCs); using a digital camcorder with analogue inputs joined to the TV-out on your PC - a lot of newer ones seem to have them these days, but you're talking at least 600 Euro for one; or using a VHS VCR joined to the TV-out, then capturing that back to your PC, but unless you have a S-VHS deck it'll look quite crappy. Then again with old games and low resolutions, e.g. 256x224 for the Famicom, VHS should be able to cope with that adequately. Also, can't you transfer video from your camera via FireWire? That should give much better quality than MPEG-2, especially at 5Mbps which isn't exactly stellar. Though you need a lot of HDD space when dealing with raw DV - you'd want at least 20GB free for it. Yes it is ^_^. All I have is my brother's digital still camera, which can only do about 15fps MPEG1! Ewww. With a capture card you won't get those problems, but instead you'll get a whole new problem - interlacing! Well, it's not a problem for video for TV use, but for internet videos you've got pretty much two choices - use some de-interlacer to get 30fps progressive video from 60Hz interlaced, or use another type of de-interlacer to get 60fps progressive video from the interlaced source, though most of these halve the vertical resolution and then you have to deal with a very large amount of frames! Not very practical. AviSynth is an invaluable tool when it comes to video editing, and has many plugins and stuff including many many de-interlacers! No MPEG-2? VirtualDubMod can do MPEG-2! Go here. It's got some other nice extras too compared ot the normal VDub. I also really recommend AviSynth (www.avisynth.org) - it's a pain to get started off with (you have to make scripts), but it's fooking great for processing video when you get used to it. It's got MPEG support too! Some of the spatio-temporal smoothers made for it can seriosuly help video look good when encoding it to low bitrates, or MPEG-4 in general. BeSweet (+BeSweetGUI) is also great for encoding/transcoding audio if you don't know about it. You'll be able to convert MP2 to MP3 with ease with this, with more options than you'll ever need! Do you use 2-pass encoding? It takes almost twice as long, but you'll get a much better result. There's some guide on how to do it with XviD on the internet somewhere. Damn straight it is! I spent a good month last summer trying to make a promotional video for the UL Games Society (of which I'm the president of). It mostly consisted of some footage of Super Smash Bros. and F-Zero GX that we made ourselves (I pwn at F-Zero :-D), some E3 Trailers I stole off that DVD that came with Edge a while ago, the opening off the Warhammer: Dawn of War demo, and some Battlefield and Counter-Strike videos off the web (I thought we might as well put in games we actually play!). For about half an hour of video, it was a LOT of work! The main problem was we had to use a SVCD cause we knew no one with DVD burners at the time, and I wanted to show it on a TV (mainly to keep the 50Hz interlaced goodness of the GC games), and my DVD player - though it can play the screwiest non-standard SVCDs in the world - it made NTSC look like shit (it does its own REALLY CRAPPY 60->50Hz conversion, for God knows what reason, and YOU CAN'T TURN IT OFF!), so *everything* had to be converted to PAL. The GC games were easy enough - we just played them at 50Hz. The BF:1942 video was just 24fps, so all I needed to do with that was speed it up to 25fps. The E3 trailers were also PAL - thank God. But then came the DOW intro and the CS video which were both 30fps. Thank God for AviSynth, though! And there's also the fact that I wanted to show off the goodness of 50Hz interlaced video, so I insisted on making the intro and credits interlaced as well. The intro was done with Cinema4D, and that was able to render fields - great. But the credits were done in Flash - so I rendered them as 50fps AVI, then with AviSynth I converted it into 25fps interlaced. Then there was the issue that SVCD is limited to 2.5Mbps video, and unless you like big chunky blocks everywhere you *have* to do a lot of smoothing to make it look remotely good. That took FOREVER to get right. A lot of work, but it was worth it too! Also, I highly recommend doom9.org for any help with video stuff. They've got some great guides and forums!
Interlacing won't be a problem. I reccomend a program called FRAPS. I originally used it back in 2003 for recording in-game footage of Battlefield 1942 - I had a stunt team who did some of the most amazingstunts ever witnessed in the game which I thought up & directed, who knows if i route around anough backup CD's 1 or 2 will turn up. I see no reason why it won't work with the TV capture on full screen. The only downside nowadays is the program is no longer free and the trial version is watermarked, but it is cheap to buy and is a lifetime purchase (so you're entitled to any new version which comes along). Anyhow the site can be found at http://www.fraps.com
No, the MPEG 2 card only accepts audio from it's own input Still you can encode the audio up to 360kbps !!! Very nice indeed. 190kbps is the lowest it goes. Wow, that's great !! This will save me a load of time now and end up in better encoding I hope. Plus now I can keep the edited MPEG 2 files and copy them to DVD format for crystal clear versions of Retro Core. Yes I use 2-pass. It does take longer but like you said the quality is much better. I can encode MPEG 2 up to 30mpbs !!! That's crazy though because even at 5mbps you get a good enough (far better than s-vhs or s-vcd) image which looks almost perfect on the PC. Thanks for your help Zilog Jones. I'm now off to download that new version of Virtual Dub :smt023 Yakumo
Just so you guys know, I recently found out my ISP started throttling BitTorrent. :-( As you can understand, I was incredibly pissed off. lol So yesterday, I purchased a dedicated server. Currently, I have everything set up as far as my website is conserned. Regarding Retro Core, I have uploaded the Saturn Shooter special, and I'm currently uploading episodes 1 to 3. The Saturn Shooter special is already available on BitTorrent again. Episodes 1 to 3 should be available in a couple hours from this post. Look on the bright side though, this server has a much faster connection than I did at home. Now, let's all spend a moment in rememberance of the old server... AND HOW MUCH I NOW HATE :smt067 SHAW :angry !!!!! ;-)
I was talking about when capturing stuff with a TV card (sorry if I wasn't specific), even when capturing from a PC's TV-out - they actually output 50/60Hz interlaced video, which is kinda cool as stuff like FRAPS will only go up to 30fps, but useless in the field of internet videos... I thought FRAPS only works with games it's designed for though? I don't think it'll work with emulators from what I recall. Also, I forgot to mention that the NES/FC emulator VirtuaNES can convert its own format of game recordings to AVI, which is pretty cool. It's a pretty decent emulator too, except for the crappy English. I also remember hearing something about some version of MAME which could output AVI, but I'm not sure if it ever got released or whether it was any good. And one more thing - TMPGEnc (which is primarily a software MPEG encoder) can cut and join MPEG1/2 files if you don't have something else that can. The problem with VirtualDubMod is that though it may be able to load MPEG files, it can't save them or anything - it's pretty much strictly for MPEG-to-AVI conversions (or OGM or MKV if you're HARDCORE!!!1). So your plans of being able keep the MPEG2 video may be a bit trickier...
Retro Core Volume : 4 is now available. Yet another improvement over the previous Retro Core shows with the high resolution version being almost 100 Meg smaller in size than volume : 3. Featured in Volume : 4 is an interview with a Japanese Retro Game store owner and well as a quick look around his shop. Of course there's loads of gaming goodies too, including a Final Fight special ! Just which home version of Final Fight is truly the best? Plus PC Engine Power Drift, Master System Phantasy Star, SFC Super Aleste, Saturn Sega Touring Cars, Dreamcast Rent-a-Hero, Neo Geo Metal Slug and Game Boy Turtles fall of the Foot Clan !! Enjoy. Yakumo
Well, it doesn't really matter to me but all of the other torrents are medium quality so I thought I'd stick with it. When I started mirroring I thought about creating torrents for each resolution, but that would just divide the downloaders up. Which means more bandwidth used by the seeds. The episode is currently being uploaded to my server... just 1.999 hours left. :-D Edit: Oh, and I updated the channel information and RSS feed. Everyone can head on over to http://kedora.net/channels/Retro Core/ and start downloading. Although no one will actually get anything until the episode is on the server. Which should take... 1.998 hours! :smt082
*NOTICE* We're having some crazy weather here in Shimonoseki at the moment with thunder that you can feel ! The power has cut off once resulting in the FTP resetting. It may happen again or more likely probably will. I'm off to bed now so I can't keep an eye on it until the morning. Fingers crossed it will stay on. The Bit Torrent downloads won't be affected by this weather though. Yakumo
