Kryten Presents: The Videotape Doesn't Lie

[Starkist]

How's that title eh?

[Kryten]

So yeah, it's been a month and I finally got off my lazy ass and made the video. It's avaliable in 2 sizes ( ):
320x240, 81MB
640x480, 212MB
Both are encoded with the XviD codec, which fcf has posted a link for below. DivX-encoded versions to come...

Actually, I was waiting for my new TV tuner to arrive. It's one of those with a brand new chipset that can capture much higher quality. Unfortunately, that also means that it isn't compatible with all those nice VfW drivers and the programs that rely on them. The best they could get from it was a craptastic 320x240 which is only half the actual resolution (vertical, at least). The capture program supplied with the tuner can make use of the card's full quality, but it does a horrible job of compressing. After a bit of jerry-rigging between the tuner's drivers and a capture program for another card with the same chipset, I finally got it to capture how I wanted, be it only 2 minutes at a time (grrr...). After much splicing and 6 hours of encoding, it's done!

The videos I've linked to are pretty large, so if you have the bandwidth, please post a link to it after downloading to lighten the load on my already limited (60KB/s) bandwidth.

Despite the size, I actually had to sacrifice a good bit of visual quality in compression to get it that small. I am currently considering burning CD copies of the full-quality video for everyone that attended and sending them out to those that want it. If you're up for that, lemme know and give me an address and whether you'd like it as an AVI (best quality) or SVCD (not as good quality, but you can also play it in your standalone DVD player just like a DVD!).

[EDIT]
Oh, and no fancy intro or music. I'm gonna get with Jemsee and see what can be made from combining the two videos. Expect that in... another month or so . [/EDIT]

[fatcatfan]

You've got a decent upload rate, about 256 kilobits, or 30 KBytes. My cable is capped at a measley 128 kilobits. Anyway, once I've downloaded this at work, I'll put up a temporary server for it. The u/l cap here is... well, it's a stinking lot.

[Jemsee]

Using Opera I'm getting about 5-7kb/s.
It says it may take 8 hrs.
I'll let it run over night and see it I have the whole thing in the morning.
I was thinking about sending you a copy of mine but have not quite figured out the best way to copy onto a CD.
I do not have a DVD buner but have been looking at them.
But if I could copy the actual capture of each segment it would be better than a compressed version. The biggest segment is over 2gigs and another is 1.5 gigs with the smallest at 437meg.
More than a cd can handle anyway.
The copys I have posted have been compressed twice.
I could use the program compressor one time maybe and see how that looks for size and quality. The other compressor is that Dr. DivX thing.
I still have your address, kryten, so I'll send somthing your way soon as I figure out the best way to copy.

Edit:
Hay- I'm getting 17KB/s now, woo-hoo! 2hrs to go.

Edit 2:
At the end I was getting 25KB/s only took a couple of hrs.

But I can not get the video to work.
Tryed every player and I get this message.

Went to XviD.org website and looked around and DLed a codec but to dumb to know what to do with it.
Suggestions or is there a player that will work with this I can get.

[Rainman]

4% and about 30kbs. 170mb? This should be good.

[fatcatfan]

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/f...3.exe?download

Get that file and install it. Should run nicely in media player afterwards.

And anyone else can *try* to download the video itself from here:
http://cedinc.dyndns.org/conv_small.avi

[Kryten]

Jemsee: Yeah, I encoded this with XviD because the DivX encoders I have are sucky.
Don't go worrying about getting a DVD burner just for me. :O Besides, my DVD drive can't play DVD-R discs. The real bottleneck is your capture card which appears pretty dated, as it can only get a semi-decent framerate at 160x120. I'm sure that your camera tape can produce much better quality than that, so I'd like to try running it through my own capture card. I'm guessing that your camera uses 8mm tapes, so if you could either send me a copy of it on a regular VCR tape or the original 8mm, whichever you prefer, I'll see if I can't get a decent resolution off of it. Compare your video to mine. My camera is a fair bit older than yours, so yours can produce at least that good an image; it's just the capture card that's hindering it.

Rainman: It's actually only moderate quality (to my eyes, at least) because the nature of the tape itself introduces a lot of video noise that makes compressing much less efficient. Still, I think it looks pretty good for a "home video."

FCF: Muchos gracias for the alternate link!
Because of the constant beta nature of XviD, I'm not quite sure that the XviD codec supplied with ffdshow will work with this video. If any of you who install ffdshow still have problems playing the video, download and install this copy of the XviD codec off my server. It's a little dated, but it's the same version I encoded with, so it shouldn't have any problems playing the file.

[Jemsee]

Originally posted by fatcatfan
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/f...3.exe?download

Get that file and install it. Should run nicely in media player afterwards.

And anyone else can *try* to download the video itself from here:
http://cedinc.dyndns.org/conv_small.avi

Don't know just what that ffdshow did from sorce froge but it worked just fine.
The viedo looks real nice, Kryten got a lot of good footage of the Zelda games.
Thanks for the link fatcatfan.
--------------------------

Hay Kryten, you must have posted whyle I was writting this.
And yes, I could make a videocasset, that would be easier I guess then messing with the CDs.
And as I said above, fatcatfans file did the trick for viewing in mediaplayer.

[fatcatfan]

I'm trying to do a re-encode, halfsize, with DivX. If it turns out well, I'll add that as an alternative download.

Kryten, if you use a noise reduction filter (dunno, you may have) on the source before encoding, you should get a better compression ratio. All the speckles give DivX or XviD a tougher job to do.

[Kryten]

Unless you really have the time, fcf, don't worry about that. I can do that from my original and spare a lot of quality loss. I wasn't aware that there were noise filters, but now I've looked into one and it works really well. I'll make a re-encode of the XviD one, with the noise filter, as well as a smaller resolution one. Which DivX encoder are you using? I'll make DivX versions as well. No sense double-encoding.

Edit:
Okay, I've re-encoded with a noise filter, as well as added a half-resolution version.