Off Topic

[technology4617]

The Xbox One undoubtedly has a better launch library. But I personally don't like to compare launch titles. PS4 has certainly proven to be a more powerful system, Tomb Raider Defintive edition runs around 60 fps on PS4 whileas the Xb1 version only runs at 30, ouch. I don't mind sacrificing a few frames, but that is quite the amount. Anyways, as much hate I had for the 360- it had some good games. And I really am hoping Microsoft can prove me wrong, I really hope they present some really fantastic games at E3, it'd be fantastic to see it have a library as great as the classic Xbox.

I know launch titles aren't everything; I'm more responding to people going "xbone sux," my point being that it doesn't really make a lot of sense to say that, as the PS4 hasn't exactly proven itself to be a much better system. But, hey, neither one has impressed me all that much, so I'm not advocating for either system.

[sonicbrawler182]

So I have a quick favour to ask of some of you guys, but I don't think it needs it's own topic or anything.

I uploaded yet another quality test today on Youtube, and I want some of you guys to give me feedback on how the video quality looks on your side.

Before you watch it, check the video quality options. You'll notice that I've got 2 4K options. You'll probably think "well, why is he rendering in/upscaling to 4K? Nobody owns 4K TVs". I'm not doing it for the resolution, though. I'm doing it for the bit rate.

I'm sure you all know how YouTube compression can butcher video quality. You'll record a video of a native 1080p game (this doesn't exclusively apply to video game footage, I'm just using it as an example since it's what I work with) and play it back in your video player, and it looks just as crystal clear as you remember it looking when you played the game. Then you upload it to YouTube, and wait an hour or so (because it needs time to process after it goes live, so it will generally look like crap for the first while, and may not even have the options for HD resolutions at first), and while it looks solid enough and watchable, it's not as perfect as it looked when you viewed the video before YouTube's compression, from your hard drive. It's especially noticeable when you watch it on the same huge TV you play your games on, where the blurs really show.

This happens because, the lower your video's resolution, the more YouTube will butcher it's bit rate. So you could upload a 1080p video and a 720p video, both having a bit rate of 10Mbps, and the 720p one will actually suffer more from the YouTube compression (and will probably look very mediocre, if not terrible, even at it's highest resolution option in YouTube's video player). This is because YouTube compression damages the bit rate more than the actual resolution.

I know that was rambling a bit much about the technical aspects of things, and it's probably not necessary, but I just wanted to get that out. So essentially, the reason I upscaled this to a 4K resolution is because YouTube's bit rate compression won't really harm the quality. It essentially makes it almost perfectly like the actual game's clarity.

While I could possibly improve the quality even more in the future, this is more or less what I want. It's pretty close to what the game actually looks like. In fact, the difference may not even be noticeable to some (except for the frame rate, but YouTube can't go above 30FPS). Plus, Super Mario 3D World isn't actually a native 1080p game, so it may hurt the bit rate a bit more than usual, which would explain the nitpicks I have myself (also, I may need to adjust colours a bit in the future so it looks a bit cleaner).

So I must ask you guys - watch this video at whatever HD resolution you normally watch HD YouTube videos in, and tell me if it looks alright. And if you can easily watch this on a 1080p monitor/TV, do so. And if you have a decently powerful computer (not some super gaming PC or anything, just something fairly decent), try cranking the resolution above 1080p, and into the 2 4K options, 1440p and 2160p, and tell me what you think then (even if you don't have a 4K display, it will look better for you if your internet connection is fast enough and your system is powerful enough - if not, you either won't see a difference, it will look extremely blurry, or it will not play smoothly, depending on the area you are lacking in).

I got the idea to start doing this as I always thought the quality of cobanermani456's videos was nearly 1:1 with the actual games he plays, and he mentioned in one video how he achieves that quality, and he basically does what I did in this video. So I wanted to see if I could achieve that level of quality (I have the internet connection for it now, since I got an awesome upgrade to my internet's speed - this video took me 20 minutes to upscale, 5 minutes to upload, and then by this point, I think it's fully processed).

The actual video itself is just a speed run of a level in Super Mario 3D World with Rosalina (and I'm pretty pleased with it - nearly half of my previous best, as you can see from the Miiverse post of mine at the end!). It's only a minute long video, so nothing too heavy.

Sorry for the ramble, I just wanted to make sure I explained this situation properly. Also, you may be better off watching directly on YouTube, though I'm not sure about that:

[Shrooblord]

Lol Rosalina looks like a character that inherently has a fly and noclip cheat associated with her - you seem to skip about 80% of the obstacles in the level.

But yeah, the quality is gorgeous, actually. I think your test succeeded. Watched at 1080p and it looked quite professional.

[sonicbrawler182]

Lol Rosalina looks like a character that inherently has a fly and noclip cheat associated with her - you seem to skip about 80% of the obstacles in the level.

But yeah, the quality is gorgeous, actually. I think your test succeeded. Watched at 1080p and it looked quite professional.

There's a reason why I changed my signature to what it is (besides Rosalina being my baby-mama)!

And thanks, I actually have another one going up now, of Wind Waker HD. That game actually runs at native 1080p, so it should look even better since it's been upscaled less (since the raw recording of 3D World is upscaled as is, even before I upscale it to 4K).

[SegaNintendoUbisoft]

There have been rumors of Microsoft announcing a new Conker for Xbox One... let this be true, please.

Do you have a link to that? The closest I could find was this http://www.totalxbox.com/76560/rare-eva ... l-spencer/

[technology4617]

Does that happen even if you render video at a streamable format? I know there's always slight quality loss, but it's usually not extremely noticeable.

[sonicbrawler182]

Does that happen even if you render video at a streamable format? I know there's always slight quality loss, but it's usually not extremely noticeable.

Yeah, it does. I made quality tests earlier in the year that used MP4 format (which is the same one I'm using for these newer videos), and the problem was still apparent. It will obviously depend on your display though. Watching 1080p videos that are compressed too much won't look bad on, say, a laptop or phone screen, but take them onto a 42 inch HDTV or something, where you actually would play your 1080p games, and you will notice that the 1080p YouTube video looks quite blurry and pixelated by comparison. That's why I render in 4K now, as the quality pretty much matches that game 1:1 when I put it on YouTube.

Just compare this quality test to the one I posted yesterday (this is an older one I did a while ago, before I tried the 4K thing):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZKRvTF81Dg

Also, I did another test with Wind Waker HD. This one is perfect, because while the Mario one is a BIT blurry at times due to it being upscaled more, as it runs at upscaled 1080p even before I upscale it to 4K, this game is in native 1080p, so the jump to YouTube is even smoother. I also adjusted my colour settings a bit so everything will look better from now on.

If you don't own Wind Waker HD and want to see exactly what it looks like, and have the means to watch this video at the highest quality setting, watch this video. Since the game runs at 30FPS anyway, this is exactly what the game looks like at 1080p on the Wii U.

[OCG]

How can I upscale videos to 4k?

[sonicbrawler182]

How can I upscale videos to 4k?

To get the videos looking the way I now have them looking, I bring them into a software called "PowerDirector", go to the "Produce" tab, select MP4 file format, and then in the output profiles, there are 4K options. I then hit produce and let the program render them. I also turn the "preview while rendering" option off.

I tried doing this manually in Sony Vegas beforehand but it didn't seem to support 4K resolutions. Plus, I was running into some glitches in general during rendering in that program. Recently, it has been getting stuck during the rendering process at times. Plus, Sony Vegas seems to use up way more resources than it needs to when rendering even at 1080p. PowerDirector's rendering seems way faster, and it doesn't slow down my laptop all that much, even when upscaling to 4K.

I can't actually watch these videos at the highest resolution (2160p) on my own laptop, via YouTube or my hard drive, as my laptop can't handle it and it will basically be a slideshow (I can watch at 1440p and below, though), but I can crank them up to the highest on my brother's computer, which is hooked up to a 42 inch HDTV, and it looks amazing, pretty much identical to what the actual games look like on that TV. My laptop can handle rendering the videos just fine though, which is very convenient. The file sizes are also surprisingly small. That Wind Waker video is just under 4 minutes in length and is just over 1GB on my hard drive. It took 10 minutes to upload on my connection (20Mb upload speed). The rendering process itself takes no longer than 20 minutes.

I'm going to test the PS4 now, since you can now disable HDCP on it, allowing you to record with HDMI. Then I will test the Wii, since I recently got an adapter that converts the Wii's signal to HDMI, making Elgato recording easier for me. After that, I will try messing around with Fraps recordings. Then I can be fully satisfied with my video quality when I eventually start making LPs or reviews or anything of the sort.

[Master]

This all looks very promising indeed, Brawler. Pity my laptop seems to chug when it comes to HD resses, any greater than 720p and I'm watching a slide show.

[OCG]

Awesome to know Brawler. I'll try it out when Let's Playing some more modern game in HD.

[sonicbrawler182]

Not sure if this is fully processed yet, as I can't get on the TV right now to check it out in 2160p, but here's the first 20 minutes of Knack on the PS4. I wanted to test out working with a longer video, as well as the PS4. The rendering took about 2 hours and the upload took less than an hour. It took YouTube a few hours to make the HD resolutions available, but that's not an issue. If I ever decide to make regular content at this resolution, be it reviews or LPs or whatever, I will be uploading a bunch of videos, keeping them as private, letting them fully process, and then making a release schedule for them. Almost like releasing things as "seasons".

The quality here probably won't be quite as crispy as the actual game for similar reasons to Super Mario 3D World, but it's very, very close. And I haven't got a chance to look at it at 2160p anyway.



EDIT: As I suspected, there really is no need to upscale Wii games this much. Upscale it to 1080p would do if you don't want to lose any quality at all, but 4K is not necessary.

[Keane]

Quick change of topic here: Is the lack of Net Neutrality going to affect RPC?

[Adsolution]

Highly, highly unlikely, there's no chance really. It's one of those things that most people could simply not think about, and there wouldn't be any repercussions for them. It's a philosophy with no immediate or definite effect, and will probably not make a remotely noticeable difference to most people were it to or not to be enforced, practically speaking.

[Earth Gwee]

Oh, god. Have the FCC already removed Net Neutrality?

[Adsolution]

The net is still a free place run by itself and not the FCC, it's not very hard to circumvent any imposed restriction or effect, especially for sites like RPC which reside far outside US soil.

[Earth Gwee]

Okay, that's good to know.

[PluMGMK]

There's no reason for any US ISP to have anything against this site, so there wouldn't even be any particular restriction. This place risks loading somewhat more slowly for US users, but it's just a phpBB board, so it shouldn't make that much of a difference.

[Master]

A heads up for those it may affect: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/n ... acked.html

[incognito]

Is the RPC secured ?