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Aaron
Guest
FPS? I just loaded up one of the PC movies and checked its FPS. It's definately 15, as I thought. I am pretty sure that the PSX ones are 15 as well.
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xeriouxi
Guest
Hi!
I'm sorry to cause a lot of anger for the other members. I feel like the blame has to fall with me for being biased, maybe? :-?
The reason I rip then uncompressed is because I can afford the hard drive space. I never mentioned that the PSX movies had a higher frame rate, either. In fact, 15fps is the standard for many PSX games.
Anyway, sorry for upsetting you, Rubicant...
If you need proof of my observations, then I will try to post the 2 diferent versions as .jpg files. And yes, they will both be running from the actual FF7 game.
Oh, and my name 'xeriouxi' is actually meant tostart with a lower case letter. I just thought that I would say that incase anybody thought I was too lazy to do it when I registered! :lol:
xeriouxi.
I'm sorry to cause a lot of anger for the other members. I feel like the blame has to fall with me for being biased, maybe? :-?
The reason I rip then uncompressed is because I can afford the hard drive space. I never mentioned that the PSX movies had a higher frame rate, either. In fact, 15fps is the standard for many PSX games.
Anyway, sorry for upsetting you, Rubicant...
If you need proof of my observations, then I will try to post the 2 diferent versions as .jpg files. And yes, they will both be running from the actual FF7 game.
Oh, and my name 'xeriouxi' is actually meant tostart with a lower case letter. I just thought that I would say that incase anybody thought I was too lazy to do it when I registered! :lol:
xeriouxi.
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Sir Canealot
Guest
Does anyone know how the hell I can get VirtualDub to open FFVII PCs FMVs? It keeps giving me the error it cant open them, I have installed the damn codec. the movies play in normal media players fine.
The FMVs do look diffrent, but I cant really tell in which way till I get the PCs FMVs open in VirtualDub :/
The Psx FMVs SOUND better though. Audio is MUCH cleaner on the FMV from the Psx disks.
The FMVs do look diffrent, but I cant really tell in which way till I get the PCs FMVs open in VirtualDub :/
The Psx FMVs SOUND better though. Audio is MUCH cleaner on the FMV from the Psx disks.
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xeriouxi
Guest
Hi!
I think that VirtualDub can only handle standard .avi files if I remember correctly. I had no problem with the movies from the PSX version when I had them uncompressed. Try to decode one into a pure uncompressed .avi file and try that to see if it works. This is a suggestion, however. I don't really use VirtualDub. I have only used it once or twice!
xeriouxi.
I think that VirtualDub can only handle standard .avi files if I remember correctly. I had no problem with the movies from the PSX version when I had them uncompressed. Try to decode one into a pure uncompressed .avi file and try that to see if it works. This is a suggestion, however. I don't really use VirtualDub. I have only used it once or twice!
xeriouxi.
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Rubicant_II
Guest
That's because the PC ones are in 8-bit stereo, 22050hz, but uncompressed. I would be damn well surprised if they sounded better for a moment. Now, why are they in this format? Well, from my observation, it is the only way the sound will not go out of sync while playing in-game.
So for one aspect the psx files may be worth ripping: the audio. However, IIRC, when you rip the file with PSX-MC(multi-converter) the sound kind of gets cut off at the end. It's been awhile since I've done any ripping, so I'm not 100% it still does this in newer versions PSX-MC. So maybe the audio from the psx fmv's are a few Hz larger in quality....okey dokey. We still won't find a cure to those wretched motion artifacts, unless we break into squaresoft's HQ and steal the originals.
I would have to disagree with you canealot; they had to have gotten the PC fmv's from the PSX version. Why else do all of the artifacts from the psx fmv's appear the exact same way in the PC fmv's? I have tested this out with c_scene1 (comparing both versions), and various other fmv's that have noticable artifacts. Sadly, the reason became clear to me why it matches up -_- . Well, of course Duck Truemotion is a better compression form than the one used on the ff7 psx fmv's. Since it appears the people who worked on ff7pc decided it would be a good idea to just take some badly-compressed movies and compress them with a badass codec, we get a resulting gigabyte of fmv's that could have been decent-looking. Oh, only if someone working on the project realized how bad it looked.
But you see, they fit the entire game (fmv's and all) on 3 entire discs in the psx version. Since the pc version had compressed video anyways and would need to have 4 discs, they may as well have re-rendered the fmv's directly to duck truemotion. So instead, they would have almost zero artifacts, and the movies would look pretty nice (because truemotion is cool). They knew the compressed versions would be larger no matter what. So the entire concept of taking the PSX fmv's and re-encoding them was just one entire bottleneck. Talk about bad planning.
Or else another reason to hate square. As for virtualdub not being able to open ff7 fmv's, I think that's pretty fruity. I just tried it and it says it needs a VFW-compatible codec, not any of the directshow codecs (which I believe TM20 is). However, I can open them up just fine in adobe premiere...
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ficedula
Guest
There *are* TM20 (Duck) VFW codecs - just they aren't easy to find. The FF7 installer only puts a DirectShow decoder on.
I think if you get the Duck developer kit, then that has a VFW codec, but that's probably going to be very hard to find nowadays.
xeriouxi: If you do post screenshots, JPG isn't the best format to compare artifacts so, since it is lossy...
PNG would be better: it'll be bigger, but at least it's lossless so there's no argument over quality.
I think if you get the Duck developer kit, then that has a VFW codec, but that's probably going to be very hard to find nowadays.
xeriouxi: If you do post screenshots, JPG isn't the best format to compare artifacts so, since it is lossy...
PNG would be better: it'll be bigger, but at least it's lossless so there's no argument over quality.
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Rubicant_II
Guest
Yes, I finally got it. You can look at the videos in virtualdub using this package. I actually asked duck for a developer's kit a long time ago, but since it was a trial version I never bothered to mess around with it much. So yes, this file is completely legitimate.
*you didn't hear this from me, but you can still compress videos just fine, as long as you compress using the archiver*. And, you can view them in Virtualdub because it adds in the ability for VFW support.
*you didn't hear this from me, but you can still compress videos just fine, as long as you compress using the archiver*. And, you can view them in Virtualdub because it adds in the ability for VFW support.
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Sir Canealot
Guest
Hmm. Perhaps they ARE recompressed Psx videos. I wanted to check the movies working in virtual dub to conform this :/
Who was responsible for FFVII PC? Was it Square Soft (japan) or Square (USA). I'm guessing it was was Square and they didn't have access to the original masters/data/whatever they hell they are, so they HAD to recompress from the Psx version.
For FFVIII I'm pretty sure they rendered in 320/240 (for Psx/Pc) and 640/480 (pc) as they were making the game. God knows why Square Soft did this, but good on em for one of their few good deads
I'd say the best bet we'd have for decent movies in FFVII PC, is rip them from the Psx disk (for the better audio) and re-encode them to Duck TrueMotion (unless another codec would be better and will work with FFVII PC), but with heavy filters on (not that I know how much you can filter a Duck True Motion encode, I know little about advanced encoding heh). I'm in a fansub group, I could ask our encoder if he knows anything much. Filters from what I know of Mpeg4 could get rid of all of artifacts easily and probebly sharpen the movies up. Colours could be ajusted too. Ajusting the colour and sharpening can work VERY well for anime. Of course, as said, this would be a lot of work...
Of course the movies running in 16bit colour in game also hurts them... has there been any progress on the 32bit patch recently?
Who was responsible for FFVII PC? Was it Square Soft (japan) or Square (USA). I'm guessing it was was Square and they didn't have access to the original masters/data/whatever they hell they are, so they HAD to recompress from the Psx version.
For FFVIII I'm pretty sure they rendered in 320/240 (for Psx/Pc) and 640/480 (pc) as they were making the game. God knows why Square Soft did this, but good on em for one of their few good deads
I'd say the best bet we'd have for decent movies in FFVII PC, is rip them from the Psx disk (for the better audio) and re-encode them to Duck TrueMotion (unless another codec would be better and will work with FFVII PC), but with heavy filters on (not that I know how much you can filter a Duck True Motion encode, I know little about advanced encoding heh). I'm in a fansub group, I could ask our encoder if he knows anything much. Filters from what I know of Mpeg4 could get rid of all of artifacts easily and probebly sharpen the movies up. Colours could be ajusted too. Ajusting the colour and sharpening can work VERY well for anime. Of course, as said, this would be a lot of work...
Of course the movies running in 16bit colour in game also hurts them... has there been any progress on the 32bit patch recently?
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Goku7
Guest
Maybe we're going about this the wrong way.
Has anyone thought about hacking DirectShow itself, similar to how DirectMusic was hacked to allow access to non-DLS synths for FF8?
If possible, we should see if we could write a modified vesion of DirectShow that automatically tries to do post-filtering on the image (Bilinear filitering, for the sake of example), whenever it's accessed, regardless of the codec?
That way, when FF7 tries to access the movies, it'll think its just doing what its supposed to do (and it is, since its not ff7 that's being modified, its the API interface), and not complain when the post-filtering is done.
Has anyone thought about hacking DirectShow itself, similar to how DirectMusic was hacked to allow access to non-DLS synths for FF8?
If possible, we should see if we could write a modified vesion of DirectShow that automatically tries to do post-filtering on the image (Bilinear filitering, for the sake of example), whenever it's accessed, regardless of the codec?
That way, when FF7 tries to access the movies, it'll think its just doing what its supposed to do (and it is, since its not ff7 that's being modified, its the API interface), and not complain when the post-filtering is done.
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Rubicant_II
Guest
(TM20 = Duck Truemotion 2.0)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there some sort of filtering that goes on with TM20-encoded avi's that are being played in ff7? If you play a TM20-encoded avi in windows media player, it looks all right, but not all that great. However, when you play it in ff7, the colors suddenly seem a bit more clear. It becomes a bit dithered, but it looks a lot nicer when it is motion. Here, I have made a comparison. I made one screenshot from a TM20 movie being played in ff7, and the other is a frame export from adobe premiere (of the same video, of course).
Played in FF7
Played in WMP
I don't know...maybe ff7 has a built-in filtering thing for duck truemotion already :-?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there some sort of filtering that goes on with TM20-encoded avi's that are being played in ff7? If you play a TM20-encoded avi in windows media player, it looks all right, but not all that great. However, when you play it in ff7, the colors suddenly seem a bit more clear. It becomes a bit dithered, but it looks a lot nicer when it is motion. Here, I have made a comparison. I made one screenshot from a TM20 movie being played in ff7, and the other is a frame export from adobe premiere (of the same video, of course).
Played in FF7
Played in WMP
I don't know...maybe ff7 has a built-in filtering thing for duck truemotion already :-?
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Sir Canealot
Guest
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't those shots taken from diffrent frames of the movie? Not that it makes *that* much diffrent.
And about the colours, that's the lack of filtering
Filtering blurs stuff over (which is why when encoding anime you'd apply both sharpening and artifact reducing filters for example).
You can see that not only is there less noise in the WMP version, it's also being anti-alised better, something that FFVII PC doesn't of course do much (if at all). If you look closely at the roof of the house in the middle, you can see the idividual pixels... in the WMP pic these details are blured over slightly. The trees are also a good place to look. Most people don't mind a slightly blur though, as you've basically complately removed all the noise from the picture now though.
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Sephiroth2000
Guest
This may be a little off-topic, but does anyone know where to find decent PSX Movie rippers? I have lots but they don't work. Any help would be appreciated ;-)
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Goku7
Guest
Are you sure you have a functioning updated ASPI layer installed? It's necessary to do individual sector reads/rips on PSX discs, from what I've heard.
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Sephiroth2000
Guest
I keep my ASPI layer updated. Then again, i could try ripping individually...
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No, it doesn't work. Any other suggestions?
EDIT
No, it doesn't work. Any other suggestions?
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Rubicant_II
Guest
Ay! Don't mock me!
Yes, they are different frames. It was hard to get it all to line up while taking screenshots from two separate viewings of the same movie, and I was rushed.
Whether the movies are being filtered or not being played in ff7, it still looks unquestionably better. It's a little dithered, but it still picks up TONS of detail, even with such a low resolution. The stills for both look a bit crappy because stills in encoded movies don't always look super-great. But I will have to say that movies are more pleasing to the eye when they look like the way they do in ff7. So I suppose by "filtering" in my previous post I may have meant either "de-filtering" or "filtering" in your terms, but I'm afraid we don't have enough information to assume the correct answer as to whether ff7 filters or de-filters the movies. But what I meant by "filtering" in my post was similar to the option in divx 5.1 to add the "film effect". That can be categorized as a "filter" in my book.
[edit]
Actually Canealot, you are in some respect right. The way the ff7 movies are played with directshow involve the RGB and YUV Offscreen options to be disabled. So I guess if someone wanted to allow the smoothing of the fmv's that can be done with directshow by making a program that can utilize this, it'd be great. I, personally, like the smoothing to be disabled, but it's definately worth a try (just to see if it can be done).
Here's another set of shots comparing the two ways directshow can display the videos. This time they are the same frame
Offscreen disabled
Offscreen enabled
I must say for the purposes of the ff7 videos (with their artifacts), the RGB/YUV Offscreen actually does help improve the appearance somewhat. The artifacts are not pinpointed by the high sharpness with Offscreen paramaters disabled. However, There is a tendancy for the YUV portion to mess with the colors. This may or may not be desirable. However, the previous example I used (the jeep and the guy being chased) clearly shows that more detail can be shown with the Offscreen paramaters disabled. So it's really in the eye of the beholder.
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xeriouxi
Guest
Hi!
I'm sorry I haven't posted the images up yet. You'll all just have to believe me until I post them up. :lol:
Oh, and if you all didn't know, the FF8 movies for the PC versions are the true original ones from Square, encoded into .bik files! Cool, eh!
xeriouxi.
I'm sorry I haven't posted the images up yet. You'll all just have to believe me until I post them up. :lol:
Oh, and if you all didn't know, the FF8 movies for the PC versions are the true original ones from Square, encoded into .bik files! Cool, eh!
xeriouxi.
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Sir Canealot
Guest
*sigh* Here are a couple of pictures, no I got VirtualDub opening FFVII PCs movies. I basically opening theses in VirtualDub (not Mod), set the size to 300% and hit printscreen. That's the reason for the diffrent resolutions and croping. Also, I had VirtualDub set to the default colour output of 16bit, since that is what FFVII runs at. I'm not sure what, if any post processing is running on this. I had hardware display aceleration disabled when making the shots, which I think means DirectDraw shoulden't have filtered at all, but I'm not at all sure. I think there is somefiltering going on, but hopefully the same filtering for both movies. The Psx shot was taken from the movie, ripped from the Psx disk in un-compressed .avi, so there shoulden't be any quality loss between the image on the Psx disk and my riped version.
http://sircanealotshome.homestead.com/files/FFVIIMovPC.png
http://sircanealotshome.homestead.com/files/FFVIIMovPSX.png
I've studied both pictures and I'll share with you my findings:
First of all lets look at the obveous(argh spelling even worse when this tired, sorry). The PC's shot is much darker, better contrast and colours.
Past that, if we look at both images, FFVIIPCs image is a lot sharper. It looks like some form of edge ehancement has been run over the movie. You can see this clearly if you look at the licence plate on the car. Also, Aeris flower basket is another thing to look at. This edge echancement of course, also has it's negative. Look at the pixels near the left hand of Aeiris. There's a bunch of flesh coloured pixels hanging in the air off her hand, which is a artifact of edge enhancement, I think. Also due to the edge enhancement, the jagged edges of on the lines of the grey wall in the top left are more visable. the PC versions picture also has much more blocking to it, which can be seen mostly in the smoke coming from the bottom of the car and the green sky at the top of the image (come to think of it, why is the sky green?). Imo, the Pc version actually looks better, due to the better colours and contrast (the Psx shot is very high on the greens), but it is let down by the edge enhancement artifacts and the blocking. I'm pretty sure the blocking does look worse normally, doesn't it, and you can't see the dithering in my shot, since it's taken from VirtualDub running on a 32bit colour windows desktop. But this at least looks at some of the visual diffrences between the two movies. Not that I can really count on those images for being post processing free.
http://sircanealotshome.homestead.com/files/FFVIIMovPC.png
http://sircanealotshome.homestead.com/files/FFVIIMovPSX.png
I've studied both pictures and I'll share with you my findings:
First of all lets look at the obveous(argh spelling even worse when this tired, sorry). The PC's shot is much darker, better contrast and colours.
Past that, if we look at both images, FFVIIPCs image is a lot sharper. It looks like some form of edge ehancement has been run over the movie. You can see this clearly if you look at the licence plate on the car. Also, Aeris flower basket is another thing to look at. This edge echancement of course, also has it's negative. Look at the pixels near the left hand of Aeiris. There's a bunch of flesh coloured pixels hanging in the air off her hand, which is a artifact of edge enhancement, I think. Also due to the edge enhancement, the jagged edges of on the lines of the grey wall in the top left are more visable. the PC versions picture also has much more blocking to it, which can be seen mostly in the smoke coming from the bottom of the car and the green sky at the top of the image (come to think of it, why is the sky green?). Imo, the Pc version actually looks better, due to the better colours and contrast (the Psx shot is very high on the greens), but it is let down by the edge enhancement artifacts and the blocking. I'm pretty sure the blocking does look worse normally, doesn't it, and you can't see the dithering in my shot, since it's taken from VirtualDub running on a 32bit colour windows desktop. But this at least looks at some of the visual diffrences between the two movies. Not that I can really count on those images for being post processing free.
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Rubicant
Guest
I think there was some sort of image enhancements going on with the pc version shot you made because there isn't nearly as much dithering as there normally would be with that codec. The PC picture you took looks better, no doubt about it. It definately looks better the way it would normally look with that codec, as you can see here:
Same frame, but unchanged from what the codec really looks like
It looks a tiny bit sharper, and the colors may be more accurate, but to some people the dithering can be an eyesore, especially on such a dark scene.
Same frame, but unchanged from what the codec really looks like
It looks a tiny bit sharper, and the colors may be more accurate, but to some people the dithering can be an eyesore, especially on such a dark scene.
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Sephiroth2000
Guest
Hi!
I'm sorry I haven't posted the images up yet. You'll all just have to believe me until I post them up. :lol:
Oh, and if you all didn't know, the FF8 movies for the PC versions are the true original ones from Square, encoded into .bik files! Cool, eh!
xeriouxi.
Can't wait! I've just ripped an entire folder of movies off of the PSX version. God it is that simple...when you have the right stuff, of course :wink: It works really well, i'll give you that! Still, it refuses to link to Mirex's Public Trashbin, or my site, for that matter...argh...So i'm afraid you'll just have to wait, guys.
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Sir Canealot
Guest
As I said, the lack of dithering is probebly from Virtual Dub running in a 32bit colour enviroment. How are you taking shots like that? From the game itsself?
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