LP Update/Comment Thread

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Re: LP Update/Comment Thread

Post by IskatuMesk »

I have finished recording God of War 1 and started on GoW2. I have started verifying the first segment of Hunted but it's a low priority in the midst of my other work, like writing and Episode 1. I am starting to use Vegas to record my audio now, as Audition has repeatedly proven that Adobe can't program simple things like recording audio for lengthy periods without risking the program randomly stopping recording or crashing or fucking up the audio. I doubt Vegas is perfect, either, but so far so good it seems.
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Re: LP Update/Comment Thread

Post by IskatuMesk »

Currently, LP videos are being moved to a new host. Hopefully one that won't complain that we aren't completely destroying their bandwidth. ... Yeah. I'll post when it's safe to download.

Okay, I'm having a change of pace from the schedule I was going to commit to before. I should have something presentable relatively soon, but no promises.

I realized I probably shouldn't leave the two GoW sex games in the videos in case some particularly anal employee happens to by accident across them, so I'll probably cut the questionable parts of those out. You won't be missing much, though, just a lot of button mash failing.

Currently, my CTS is severe enough that I cannot play GoW2 and haven't been able to progress on it for quite some time. That and Black Sun takes priority.
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Re: LP Update/Comment Thread

Post by IskatuMesk »

I have made the entirety of the Supreme Commander 2 LP available. I have excluded micro encodes on this as they were not turning out very well - you couldn't see anything going on at all. The base files are not too big as it is.

I structured the video thread a bit more so it seems a bit more organized and easier to follow. However, this forum doesn't currently allow embedded spoilers do that is tougher than I had hoped..
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Re: LP Update/Comment Thread

Post by IskatuMesk »

My monstrous 4870x2, beast that has served me well for for over a year, seems to have finally succumbed to the pain of life. I am regularly bluescreening and the VPU regularly crashes for something as trivial as alt tabbing and watching a video, while tearing from the two GPU's effects my gameplay in most games. I fucked with the drivers to and fro, finally fixing the CCC again. I began my Space Marine LP, only to see a quantity of the videos have this unusual horizontal artifact that is not present in the game. With that, the computer crashed once more. I had no choice but to take my efforts a step further.

I've ordered a 6970, and I hope the unending legacy of my video-related problems solve with its arrival in a few days.
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Re: LP Update/Comment Thread

Post by IskatuMesk »

I have assessed the early stages of the Dante's Inferno LP and begun editing in my offtime. In the process of doing so I have discovered something terrifying.

It seems that the microphone is drifting out of sync with the game audio. I am not sure why it drifts out of sync. Actually, I really haven't the faintest clue why. It is obvious because for some reason during seg 2 I recorded without headphones on, and you can very loudly hear the game audio (which I have to edit out). The echo becomes very severe after a few minutes.

Fear turns to concern, as I must now go back to the God of War 1 and 2 LP's and assess those sometime soon and see if they, too, have issues with the mic drifting out of sync. I really have no possible idea why this could happen. I assume it was Audition 1.5, which I used for Dante, being retarded somehow, seeing as 3 caused much worse problems. God of War 1&2 are recorded in Vegas, which seemed to be effective but I haven't fully verified their sync yet. At least in seg 2 so far the game audio itself does not seem to desync, making resyncing more of an annoyance than a lot of work like it was in Viking and will be in Killzone 3.

When my video card arrives I will probably focus on producing the Space Marine LP as I will likely be able to get it out as fast as I did Supreme Commander due to the simplicity of the involved work and likely short game length. After that, I will turn my attention to Dante's Inferno and Hunted, while aiming to finish playing God of War 2. Currently, my hands hurt too much to use a controller, and Space Marine has absolutely no depth in its gameplay and thus requires very little mouse use comparatively.
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Re: LP Update/Comment Thread

Post by IskatuMesk »

Well, LP's have been on the backshelf for a while as I focus on Black Sun in an effort to stem the tide of damage to my right hand. However, this has been an unsuccessful venture. I am currently too debilitated to play God of War 2.

It is likely I will turn to finish up my unfinished casts before I continue working on my LP stuff, all of which is low priority until Black Sun is done, which will hopefully be soon. Between the time Black Sun is finished and I start the UDK project, if I do start it, I would like to finish my cast material and only have LP material left. I have no particular order in how I'd like to do them, and there's a few more games I want to try out sometime soon, so I can't foresee what will come out first.

The new video card is liable to fix the issues I had with Divinity II, which means it's perfectly plausible for me to go back and finish Professor Snape's adventure sometime in the future.
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Re: LP Update/Comment Thread

Post by IskatuMesk »

I have attempted to begin my resync project of Dante's Inferno but it seems not likely to succeed. The mic drifts out of sync, but at about 2 hours in, it's pretty clear there's other things at work. The game audio also desyncs very abruptly. I suspect that Audition either wasn't reading the audio streams properly (transitions in particular seem to incite weird shit to happen), or the audio data being fed to Audition wasn't sent properly. Really, the mic quality in Dante's Inferno isn't that great, anyway... ugh.

I think I am going to abandon this particular project for the time being and focus on something that will be easier to finish, like Alice or Hunted. I'm not sure how the GoW LP's turned out yet, as I need to do monkeywork to get them to work in vegas for previewing and I am really sore/lazy. But I distinctly remember the audio streams starting at the same points but ending up as different lengths - a tell-tale sign that something is hosed.

Ultimately the easiest way to avoid this problem in the future would be to be able to fraps the entire thing. Instead, because the fucking Black Magic Media Express doesn't give me anything larger than a tiny preview window, I not only have to play in difficult conditions but rely on other software to do my recordings. While Black Magic records the video fine it offers nothing for audio, since no audio comes through the card. And nothing has yet proven it can do something simple like record audio for long periods properly. I suspect there is some latency differences, conversions, or other cockadooky going on that may cause the two streams to desync somehow. Or, I suspect interns. Filthy, filthy interns.

I really have to solve this conundrum before starting a new console LP, or even finishing GoW2.

A possible solution could be as easy as locating an app that can view the card's data. Several apps exist, many of which I tried in the past but couldn't get working consistently. Then, I play using that screen, and fraps it.
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Re: LP Update/Comment Thread

Post by IskatuMesk »

Alright, so here's what my mass of testing has yielded.

1 -

I am 69% sure that Vegas is fixed.

2 -

I am 69% sure that frapsing virtualdub or some other app and recording the audio for console LP's in this manner works. However, this has a hitch.

Virtualdub REALLY does not like hooking to the capture card properly, and other apps (e.g. vegas), along with the fucking updated version of Blackmagic Media Express, either don't let fraps hook or don't have fullscreen. Idiotic that BME has made it this fucking far without a fullscreen option. Google is filled with bitching and no answers.

Virtualdub needs progressive acceleration to not lag to shit, but takes 30+ minutes just to get it to work with these settings. I don't know why; it works fine when it does, but I seriously can't be flipping options back and forth hoping it magically works. I need a better solution.

Recorded 3 hours of Red Dead Redemption (not an LP, XXE material) and I see no desyncing currently, along with a 30 minute GoW2 test that has no desyncing.

At this point I am seriously considering abandoning dante's inferno entirely.
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Re: LP Update/Comment Thread

Post by IskatuMesk »

Alright, so I've just released XXE 7 and I'm basically "caught up" to the point I was previous to Black Sun crunch time.

My priority is turning to two big projects - The BW video compilation and God of War 1. So, Dante's Inferno is considered abandoned at this point, as is Killzone 3, though I will hang onto the files and may reconsider in the future.

I'm considering first editing GoW1 then doing Alice. But we'll see. As for future recordings, I don't know yet. My hands are still very painful - to the point that I cannot sleep because they hurt so much - but I would like to finish up GoW2 before moving on anywhere else. I don't have anything in mind for after that and nor am I really thinking about it right now.

I have created a very long (4:30 hour) AI rant video I may add to the thread in the future, and I am thinking of wrapping up the Black Sun dev video and releasing that as well. There is also a partially-complete second Magicka LP with Pheo and Wibod that is halfway edited although the run was never finished. This will show up on youtube in the near future.

/edit

Magicka videos are up and public, now dealing with the black sun dev video. This should be done tonight.

/edit

God of War, at least the first segment, doesn't actually seem to have desynced despite being recorded in Audition 1.5 like Dante's Inferno was. What the actual fuck is going on here?

Also, Dev video is done. Now I'll probably fool around with gow1 and the BW videos.

Since I am unsure of our host, I'll probably cut out the sex games from gow for the releases. Not that you're missing much besides me failing at button hammering.
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Re: LP Update/Comment Thread

Post by HelpMe »

Omg you LP'd Earthbound... one of my favorite games ever. I'm dl'ing it for sure. :]
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Re: LP Update/Comment Thread

Post by IskatuMesk »

Symmetry had this to say about my Earthbound LP;
Graeme: watching you play earthbound is akin to watching a flailing platypus bash its face against a cheese grater
Graeme: hilarious, albiet tragic
/e

I am currently on break from any video or other related work due to my CTS. If it keeps getting worse I may have to take more extreme measures than just "taking a break".
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Re: LP Update/Comment Thread

Post by IskatuMesk »

Work has begun on editing the BW compilation to revise all of my existing edits and to tackle the rest of the production. However, I've discovered that I recorded much of this footage in Lagarith. As Black Sun and XXE taught me, Vegas cannot handle Lagarith. Simply undoing commands on unrelated video in a project containing lagarith files results in insane delays, much less actually editing the lagarith files. Of course, it's not even the files themselves being edited, so there's no encoding or anything going on, just references to these files. Which makes this all the more idiotic.

However, re-encoding the videos to something like the blackmagic mjpeg codecs results in titanic filesizes and time wasted. So, this project is going to take some doing to get anywhere near finished. I also plan to make it FTP-only.

Verification of Alice has begun. I am still not sure how I plan to do the syncing of my new recordings yet.

I have begun preliminary editing of God of War 1. I believe I may have been experimenting with a new mic setup in terms of positioning for that recording, but whatever I did the mic recording isn't too great still. Regardless, I am perfectly audible and the quality is decent. I've yet to find any desyncing. Continued progress is on hold until I catch up on some minor work. Which is now.

The following videos are now available in the LP thread -

* HoMM6 Games 1&2 for around 10 hours or so of viewing material. Game 1 isn't really anything amazing other than the stupid AI bugs, but game 2 is pretty lulzy.
* Black Sun's direct mkv links are available in the thread.
* A four-hour AI rant has been added to the thread. This was a video done via request and touches on Blizzard's five-star design ethics across three titles: Brood War, Warcraft 3, and Starcraft 2. I did this very much on the spot so it's not very coherent and is missing a lot of data/stuff to bash, but it is a good primer if you want to laugh at someone else's expense (including my own).

I attempted micro encodes for the HoMM6 videos but for some reason they turned up as gray. So those are not available at this time as I have no clue what is wrong.
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Re: LP Update/Comment Thread

Post by IskatuMesk »

Notice - it seems in my sleepiness I screwed up the mux of segments 5-6 (which just became seg 5) for game 2 of HoMM6. The file still contains both files but they aren't appended, they'll show up as different streams. Depending on your player this shouldn't be a tremendous issue. In either case, I've deleted the broken file and in about an hour from this posting a new, fixed file will take its place.

riba riba

/e

I would have made everything working by now if dreamhost would freaking connect. I think the DNS exploded or something.

/e 2

There, fixed. All is as it should be.
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Re: LP Update/Comment Thread

Post by IskatuMesk »

Work continues at a staggered pace due to CTS pain and lethargy. I am nearly done Alice, and I suspect my next post will be to announce that it's available - hopefully in 1-2 days. Uploading will take a long time and I doubt micro encodes will be immediately available, depends if I can get it to not display a gray window instead of actual video.

As I detailed oh so many months ago when I first finished this game, the recordings suffered considerable damage due to the old microphone randomly losing power and the subsequent bullshit fraps/windows did as a result. During the videos you will note the damage by several portions jumping abruptly back to the logos for no reason (followed by rage), and several segments in particular were severely damaged and required some monkeywork to get around. Ultimately, the viewing experience should be fairly stable except for the unusual transition from recordings during play to the one overcast section in Zone 2 and the entire re-recording during the last stretch of the game.

I realize that my cast during this LP wasn't as good or energetic as I thought it was, but the gameplay was decent (except for segments 1-3 holy shit I am bad, but I get a bit better), but letting this go would be a huge waste of energy and time and deprive my challengers of the opportunity to eat their shoes as I beat the game on Nightmare.

The Alice LP serves as a breakpoint between the point where I began to become deeply engrossed in Black Sun's production and the point I actually finished it. I was pretty exhausted during the gameplay but I do put on a spectacle of rage at some points.

Ultimately the reason I choose to go through such extraordinary lengths to fix and finish this project is because I felt the game was good enough to get this out the door even if I felt my performance wasn't the best it could have been. I think in normal circumstances most people in this position would ditch or re-record entirely. I say, screw that. Half the glory is watching myself fumble around like an idiot in front of plainly, blatantly obvious shit. Ropar knows people don't watch these because I know what I'm doing.

Meanwhile I am freeing up space bit by bit and organizing my drives for what will be a hilariously wasteful re-encode of the Brood War source material to get that project done with as well. That's my goal for the last of 2011. My work is slow and very physically painful, and not terribly exciting. I really didn't want to get backlogged like this, so I am enforcing my new release model now.

I will only release LP's when they are 100% finished and verified. This is for the following reasons;

1 - Above all, it's to encourage me to keep the work up until the end. During EB verification I got lazy and segment releases slowed down. I know this is annoying to the viewer to be stuck on cliffhanger material and be waiting.
2 - To extend 1, I'd rather empower the viewer to watch at their own pace instead of mine. Some people burn through stuff very fast, others very slowly. I'd rather release all at once so you can choose how you want to watch precisely.
3 - Easier for me to keep track of stuff.


Some people asked what Verification is; in short, I am interrupted incessantly and like to remove these interruptions from the recordings. I also run into occassional recording or encoding issues. For example, during the HoMM6 videos I had issues with mkvmerge making files bluescreen my computer. Yes, it managed to make the videos fuck up DXVA and crash the video card completely, resulting in bluescreens. Less severe but still bad, sometimes files at certain points would jump ahead 5-10 minutes for no apparent reason. Currently, I blame these issues on the new mkvmerge versions, so I switched back to my ancient version. If I didn't watch each files end to end I would have missed these issues and caused major issues for you. I forgot to check HoMM6 game 2 seg 5 after I merged it and what do you know, I fucked it up.

I rather get stuff right the first time even if it means it takes a bit longer to get out.
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Re: LP Update/Comment Thread

Post by IskatuMesk »

I figured out why my micro encodes weren't working. It was actually because avisynth didn't know how to read h264 files in the new windows. To get around this without using the lardy whale that is ffdshow I installed LAV video and set windows to use that for decoding. This allowed me to then access those files through avisynth and in turn megui to rescale them for micro encodes.

I think the guide I link to in the LP thread might be talking about 10p videos right now, which isn't what I'm using, so at some point I'll find the old guide and re-link if this is the case. While I kind of want to switch to 10p the process for setting up players for it is a bit convoluted and wouldn't be a smooth transition for most people who aren't familiar with the concept. When MPC natively supports it I'll probably switch due to the quality gain and file size improvements.

Also, Alice: Madness Returns is available and all that. I think I might run the original sometime, I took a quick dip and got thoroughly drowned in green burning shit and it was kind of lulzy, so it could be something to watch for sure.

The amount of work to get this done was immense and a lot of sacrifices had to be made. Several portions saw multiple re-recordings and the quality varies. But the game was worth it, easily one of my top 2011 titles despite the bugs, the locking system, and the save system. The game gave me a challenge, one I didn't feel was too cheap or annoying like most games e.g. dante's inferno. The casting quality isn't my best, but it should be most certainly worth a watch.

Please let me know if there's anything I missed in these files or if anything is broken. The assortment was kind of a mess when I put it all together.
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