Video Quality for Video Files For Warzone 2100

[cybersphinx]

Hm, I recreated the AVIs via rpl2avi, and got a ~440 MB devastation.avi. That plays fine in mplayer, but doesn't work well after encoding with ffmpeg2theora. That procedure worked for the German videos (where devastation.avi was ~230 MB). Not sure what is wrong there, I don't think I changed any important components (maybe ffmpeg, but ffplay does work, just the encoded video hangs in Warzone).

Could someone download my devastation.ogg and test if it works ok in Warzone on other systems? (I hope the torrent works, it's the first time I actually created one myself.)

[Avestron]

Perhaps this is a silly question but if, hypothetically, the sequences were to be redone in flash, could flash be made to work with WZ? I might be wrong but I suspect it would really shrink file size issues.

[cybersphinx]

Perhaps this is a silly question but if, hypothetically, the sequences were to be redone in flash, could flash be made to work with WZ? I might be wrong but I suspect it would really shrink file size issues.

Short answer: Yes, it is a silly question.

Longer answer: What do you mean with "flash"?

FLV videos like on youtube? For platform independent playback you'd need e.g. ffmpeg, and then you can use about any video format you like. This isn't difficult, basically all you need to do is replace the libogg/vorbis/theora calls with the corresponding ffmpeg calls. The problem is that most of the useful codecs in ffmpeg are not free, so not all ffmpeg versions include those. Among the free ones are Theora and Dirac, where Dirac uses way more processing power, and I'm not sure if it works well with our source material, since it is mainly designed for high-quality HD videos etc.

Flash as in the vector animation thingy? Now this is really silly and I don't even want to think about how that could be made to work.

[Thyranim]

Hm, I recreated the AVIs via rpl2avi

ok, found and downloaded rpl2avi ...
but is it pehaps possible for someone to compile it for me? please?
can only find source-files ...

edit: downloading torrent
Update:
WTF
played perfectly in VLC
ingame the first 3 seconds are ok, than it hangs one short time and continous as ... slideshow O_O

[cybersphinx]

ok, found and downloaded rpl2avi ...
but is it pehaps possible for someone to compile it for me? please?
can only find source-files ...

edit: downloading torrent
Update:
WTF
played perfectly in VLC
ingame the first 3 seconds are ok, than it hangs one short time and continous as ... slideshow O_O

Yes, same here. Works perfectly in external players, but hangs in Warzone. And I encoded the German video again to see if my ffmpeg2theora is broken, but that one works.

What system are you using? rpl2avi compiles fine on Linux with 32-bit wine.

[Thyranim]

Yes, same here. Works perfectly in external players, but hangs in Warzone. And I encoded the German video again to see if my ffmpeg2theora is broken, but that one works.

would try encoding here and testing possible parameters etc etc etc ... but the the downloaded avi-files are broken so it doesn't make any sense to try it on defect files

What system are you using? rpl2avi compiles fine on Linux with 32-bit wine.

see signature

[zeland]

Greetings,
Here are some re-encoded videos of the Devastation AVI provided by Buginator. The videos have been encoded using the Thusnelda (libtheora-1.1beta2) codec using constant quality mode.

The nopp (No post processing) files are direct re-encodes while the uspp72 files were passed through MPlayer's ultra simple post processing filter using Quality 7 & QP 2.

dev_q8_nopp.ogg
dev_q8_uspp72.ogg
dev_q10_nopp.ogg
dev_q10_uspp72.ogg

[cybersphinx]

Here are some re-encoded videos of the Devastation AVI provided by Buginator.

Hm, the dev_q10_nopp.ogg has the same problem as my files, the other three work. Can you give me the exact commands you used to make the four files?

[zeland]

Can you give me the exact commands you used to make the four files?

For the nopp files:

Code: Select all

# ffmpeg2theora --no-skeleton --optimize -v 10 -a 10 -o devastation.ogg devastation.avi

For the uspp files:

Code: Select all

# mplayer devastation.avi -vf uspp=7:2 -vo yuv4mpeg:file=dev_uspp72.yuv -ao pcm:file=dev.wav
# oggenc -q 10 -o dev.oga dev.wav
# ffmpeg2theora --no-skeleton --noaudio --optimize -v 10 -o dev_q10_uspp72.ogv dev_uspp72.yuv
# oggzmerge -o dev_q10_uspp72.ogg dev_q10_uspp72.ogv dev.oga

[zeland]

I tried re-encoding the nopp files using fixed bit rates and noticed that when I set my bit rate to around 2000K, the video starts to stutter around the 8th second into the into in game.

Going back to fixed quality encoding, I noticed that at q10, the encoder status line shows that the bit rate peeks to about 2296K around the 8th second. At q8 the encoder peeks at about 1024K around the same time. While encoding the uspp file at q10, the encoder peeks to around 1329K at around the 8th second.

I'm inclined to say at this juncture that the in game video decoder might be broken in the sense that it cannot handle bit rates of more than 2000k.

[Zarel]

The framerate and audio bitrate should be no higher than the original framerate and bitrate of the RPLs.

Someone publish the original framerates and bitrates, so we don't have people upsampling for no reason. <_<

[cybersphinx]

I'm inclined to say at this juncture that the in game video decoder might be broken in the sense that it cannot handle bit rates of more than 2000k.

I tend to agree, I did a bit of profiling, and hacking the YUV2RGB conversion that came second after the decoding, but that didn't help.

Someone publish the original framerates and bitrates, so we don't have people upsampling for no reason. <_<

Ehm, usually the conversion keeps the framerate. The audio bitrate should not matter, video bitrate seems to be a problem even at lower than the original.

[cybersphinx]

I'm inclined to say at this juncture that the in game video decoder might be broken in the sense that it cannot handle bit rates of more than 2000k.

I've fixed that in r7979/r7981.

I've also converted the RPLs to AVI, and the AVIs to Ogg/Theora/Vorbis (with libtheora 1.1 beta 1 using "ffmpeg2theora --optimize -v10 -K65536 --pp de/tn:64:128:256 -c2"). Those files will stutter in 2.2.1 (and trunk snapshots before r7981)! I hope we can release 2.2.2 very soon.

Edit: Updated torrents below.

[Giel]

My upload sucks, be patient and seed.

Fetching to 3 boxes with 5 MB/s upstream connection now, I'll seed further from there.

[Powzone]

Got them both & seeding as much as I can!

They do look way better that the standard cut scenes from the "old" sequences.wz. Nice work!