[FF7PC-98/Steam] Replacement FMVs, footage from AC/CC (2017-2-18)

[Colonel Ramsay]

They are ALL 15 fps.  Even if they aren't reported as it by whatever means you are using.  Every single ff7 video is 15 fps.

They all play at 15 frames in 1 second.  The PSX was designed to play at 15 and 30.

I would prefer somehow you just tell the media file what to use or allow us to set it, because otherwie it means us having to change the header manually.

 

[m35]

They are ALL 15 fps.  Even if they aren't reported as it by whatever means you are using.  Every single ff7 video is 15 fps.

They all play at 15 frames in 1 second.  The PSX was designed to play at 15 and 30.

Oh really?   Sorry my friend, but the last 3 years working on jPSXdec have led me to conclude otherwise. Try Tekken 3 in PSmplay for yourself if you don't believe me (20fps movies). jPSXdec just reports what is on the disc. If you have any technical information about this topic, I would certainly be interested in it.

 

[Colonel Ramsay]

Well I do know 1 thing.  FF7 are all 15 fps, and if your program cannot differentiate simply give us the option to manually enter it.

There is no such thing as .83 of a frame a second.

http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=17898

 

[obesebear]

Now I know nothing of this stuff from a technical standpoint.  But I do know that the program SUPER allows for 5.994, 11.988 14.985, 23.976, and 29.97 fps.   So however it works, fractions of a fps is possible.

 

[Colonel Ramsay]

Ok I admit, I was wrong on this, I should know better than that as I do video edit and I know full well that NTSC is 29.97 so why I said that is anyone's guess... (still notice though that it was intended to be 30 and was reduced slightly for techincal reasons).  But I have been diverted here.,

The PC movies are all 15.000 fps as far as I can see.  And 15 fps is the correct playback rate.  I can't see any evidence that they are meant to be played at 18.93 or 14 or changing from place to place.

boogdown.avi = 15.000fps

canonht0.avi = 15.000 fps

opening.avi = 15.000 fps.

All of these movies are running at 15fps which is a standard frame rate for animation.

If you look at the standards:

Animation: 15fps
Movie 24 fps
Pal 25 FPS
NTSC: 29.97
HD: 50, 60 (or very close once again for NTSC)

None of these are whacky 18.34 or changing from place to place.  There simply is no way the creators decided to use different frame rates for these movies, and even if they did the PC itself uses 15.000 regardless and that seems to work fine.  I don't think you can get away with changing that anyway, the movies won't run properly otherwise.

 

[sl1982]

Most frame rates are based on a number/1.001

ie 24fps is actually 23.976

No idea if this applies to the fmv's or not. If it does it would be 14.985

 

[Colonel Ramsay]

The problem is that the FMV in PC are all set to 15 regardless....if that is so, wouldnt that pose a problem in using that frame rate inside PC?  And that difference is too small for the human eye even notice, so why not just leave at 15?

And wouldn't the audio go out of sync?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate

and it seems most are definately set to whole numbers, with some changing for NTSC or certain cameras.

Pal seems to be 25 and 50 spot on.  

When transferred to NTSC television, the rate is effectively slowed to 23.976 frame/s, and when transferred to PAL or SECAM it is sped up to 25 frame/s

originally is it shot at 24

 

[Colonel Ramsay]

Well, yv12 is a colour space, and I had to install divx to get that working properly...

Any case, I am just waiting now to see if this latest FMV extract program is going to get better in the coming revisions with regards to quality...

I don't want to start extracting and encoding only to find it could have been even better

 

[m35]

Any case, I am just waiting now to see if this latest FMV extract program is going to get better in the coming revisions with regards to quality...

I don't want to start extracting and encoding only to find it could have been even better

I've spent the last week looking very closely at colors and how they should be handled. It is very complicated, and there won't be any useful update to jPSXdec for some months.

I really need a used, early generation (darker gray color) PlayStation, along with an Action Replay or Gameshark that plugs into the debug port. That will give me the critical information I need to continue.

 

[Colonel Ramsay]

So only colour could be improved?

Therw ill be no improvements to anything else?  I can deal with that....I am not fussed wrangling over a small difference in colour.

I may wait though until there is an option to choose frame rate, and a GUI again rather than command line.  If the quality is likely to remain mostly unchanged, I may go ahead and start converting.

 

[nikfrozty]

Any case, I am just waiting now to see if this latest FMV extract program is going to get better in the coming revisions with regards to quality...

I don't want to start extracting and encoding only to find it could have been even better

I've spent the last week looking very closely at colors and how they should be handled. It is very complicated, and there won't be any useful update to jPSXdec for some months.

I really need a used, early generation (darker gray color) PlayStation, along with an Action Replay or Gameshark that plugs into the debug port. That will give me the critical information I need to continue.

It would be really hard to find that PlayStation because it is the oldest version. But if you have the money try Ebay.

 

[m35]

So only colour could be improved?

Therw ill be no improvements to anything else?  I can deal with that....I am not fussed wrangling over a small difference in colour.

I may wait though until there is an option to choose frame rate, and a GUI again rather than command line.  If the quality is likely to remain mostly unchanged, I may go ahead and start converting.

I find it interesting that the PC and PSX versions use different frame rates. I would be interested in learning why the developers chose to do that. The frame rate you want to use in your re-encoding efforts is up to you. I don't assume to know all the details about what you have to do for that task.

I appreciate your jPSXdec feature request (I can count on one hand the number of feature requests I've received), but allowing the user to specify a frame rate that is different from what is on the disc is something I see no demand for beyond your one case. Additionally, jPSXdec will know the PSX frame rate better than the user (in fact, now jPSXdec usually does a better job of it than even I can do by hand), so I don't want to introduce a feature that will most likely just shoot the user in the foot.

In the extremely rare case someone else needs to change the frame rate, there are plenty of other programs out there that can do it (like VirtualDub). In your case, the trick I suggested to search-and-replace in the index files will actually be much easier and faster than having to manually specify the frame rate of every single movie using any GUI, whether jPSXdec or VirtualDub.

Right now perfecting the colors is my top priority, but I can't promise you will see very noticeable improvement. I've also made a little progress on the new GUI, but it's not much a priority since theoretically anyone with Java programming skills could help with that.

I really need a used, early generation (darker gray color) PlayStation, along with an Action Replay or Gameshark that plugs into the debug port. That will give me the critical information I need to continue.

It would be really hard to find that PlayStation because it is the oldest version. But if you have the money try Ebay.

I saw exactly what I wanted on Craigslist a month ago, but it's gone now   I keep hoping something will pop up again.

 

[DLPB_]

yes but what you have to understand is the speed it plays at on your TV when you play FF7 on a playstation is the exact same speed as it plays on PC with monitor.

I know that the frame rates of these videos report differently, but the fact is they really do play perfectly at 15 fps, and if it is anything different on the pc version they simply will not play correctly as the video length will be altered.  The PC works properly by having the correct frame rate.  If the opening movie is 17 fps, it will not line up correctly with the music or with the transition back to the 2D game.

15 fps is definately the correct frame rate for the PC, regardless of what those videos report.

 

[obesebear]

I still don't understand the problem.  The first post in this thread has altered FMV's that play just fine.  And Aali's driver can play videos over 15 fps (depending on resolution).  So whether or not it's right or wrong, I really don't see the big deal about 2 extra frames per second, or even 15 extra.  It will just look better

 

[m35]

Let me clarify that I think replacing the PC FF7 videos is a great idea. I applaud the work of the people trying for the best quality, and I hope my support might help with that.

It sounds like the PC version really needs the videos to be 15fps. If that is the case, then I think the videos on the PC should be 15fps. I don't think this would reduce the quality of the PC version at all. I hope we can agree on this.


What I am having an issue about is the claim that all FF7 PSX videos must also be 15fps. I initially brushed off this idea by simply pointing people at all the research and documentation I've studied for years. Yet for some reason people are still emphatically asserting this bizarre notion, while never supplying any empirical evidence.

I have put a great deal of work into understanding these things so jPSXdec could be the best tool out there. People continuing to stress the PSX 15fps claim are indirectly suggesting that jPSXdec is somehow not getting it right, which undermines the programs credibility. As such, I would like to defend it.

The method one uses to determine if a PSX movie is 15fps, 20fps or 30fps is the same method I used to determine the 15.000/1.001fps and 18.75fps. While I have supplied all the related documentation, I get the feeling people haven't read any of it. Please do. But if that isn't convincing, here is an example: put the final PSX FF7 movie in VirtualDub and tell it to adjust the frame rate to match the audio length. The resulting frame rate is even less than 15.000/1.001. If you try to play the whole thing at exactly 15fps, you might notice the audio become out of sync a tiny bit toward the end.

I would appreciate it if people would stop presuming you know so much about the PSX frame rate without providing any evidence of it. If you do have any evidence you can share, I would be happy to consider it. For example, you might consider the following:

How did you determine the exact PSX fps on the TV? Do the frame counts of all the PC movies match the PSX? Have you compared the PSX and PC movies frame-by-frame? Clearly the audio sample rate is different between the PSX and PC. Have you compared the audio duration between the two? Do the equivalent audio clips line up?

 

[DLPB_]

I still don't understand the problem.  The first post in this thread has altered FMV's that play just fine.  And Aali's driver can play videos over 15 fps (depending on resolution).  So whether or not it's right or wrong, I really don't see the big deal about 2 extra frames per second, or even 15 extra.  It will just look better

Those from the first thread are all at 15 fps aren't they? I know that psmplay and all the others I have used convert to this frame rate and it seems to work perfectly.

and as I have said, since people will be using this program primarily to use on the PC and inside ff7 PC, I do not see the issue in allowing people to manually assign the frame rate of 15 fps as these other programs do...and which the ff7 PC programmers themselves used.  I mean are we actually saying here that they used 15 fps for nothing on all these video's inside the PC version?

The alternative is simply downloading a program and manually changing it which just adds to the work load.  Anyway, this is a cool program and a step in the right direction.  I won't bring this up again , it is a small point anyway

 

[obesebear]

Those from the first thread are all at 15 fps aren't they?

Honestly I don't know anymore.
But I do know that my nivlsfs video runs (albeit choppily) at 23.976 fps just as long as I keep the resolution low.  Once Aali figures out a better way to decode these videos it will work just fine in HD.

 

[nikfrozty]

I tried increasing some of the videos which are 320x224 to 1280x960 and they still run good with 15 fps but when I increased the frame rate the game will just skip the video because of Aali's driver. So why is it that can't go higher??

 

[DLPB_]

because, as I have been saying, the frame rate PC uses is 15 and when you try to go against that there will be a change to the length of the video file.  When I did some tests before there were strange effects at the end because it didn't end when it should.  Take for example a video that is 1000 frames long.

If it is 15 fps it will be 1000/15 seconds long.  if it is 17.98 it will be 1000/17.98 seconds long.

I am doing some proper tests now and I will find out what is going on with this video issue but since the PC uses 15 fps on all video's-  personally, I see no issue whatsoever keeping it that way and that is preferable to 50 different frame rates imho.

Also, codecs like h.264 were designed with proper frame rates in mind, NTSC and PAL mainly, not 17.35 and other strange numbers.

Also note, that there is absolutely no gain in making these video files full HD (50-60 fps).  All that would do is make the video file larger than it needs to be.  Outputting at 4X the original size at 15fps is as good as it is ever likely to get from the PC point of view of stability vs file size vs quality.

 

[DarkFang]

Those from the first thread are all at 15 fps aren't they?

Honestly I don't know anymore.
But I do know that my nivlsfs video runs (albeit choppily) at 23.976 fps just as long as I keep the resolution low.  Once Aali figures out a better way to decode these videos it will work just fine in HD.

I was wondering why the FMVs kind of... well... sucked. lol