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Discussion in 'General Sega Discussion' started by Black Squirrel, Mar 6, 2020.

  1. Asagoth

    Asagoth

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    wiki stuff... and a beer... or two... or more...
    Just select "Match Image Size + Margins" ... and don't touch the other settings...
     
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  2. kitsunebi

    kitsunebi

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    Speaking as someone who scans magazines (and like almost all scanners, releases them an open format as jpgs in a RAR/CBR/ZIP/CBZ container), this image pains me. It's like someone who creates and distributes free indie games watching people come together in an effort to "preserve" their works by adding DRM to them.
    But yeah, converting jpgs to PDFs irrevocably alters them to a degree, but the least you can do is try to keep them as close to the original size as possible (though even I can admit that anything scanned at 600dpi is overkill, and no one should be forced to download a magazine scan that's multiple gigabytes in size.)
     
  3. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Not with that tool - the PDF is just used as a wrapper. The instructions are little more than "render this image here" - no compression occurs.

    You can prove it with the PDF image splitter. The file you put in is the same as the file you get out (except for timestamps).
     
  4. kitsunebi

    kitsunebi

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    I'll take your word for it. I know Adobe Pro can't do it, but it wouldn't surprise me if a 3rd party had developed a way to create lossless PDFs. I have no reason to download two different pieces of software to test it, though. And I would suspect that the average Internet user neither has those particular pieces of software, nor is aware of any practical advantages over every other PDF program which they might provide.

    Regardless, I think more people are familiar with RAR/ZIP than they are with that particular program, so it's a safer bet for allowing people to easily and losslessly access the files. I'm not going to make the mistake of debating the reasons why scanners generally avoid PDFs, though. Most people are pretty set in their ways regarding file format, and it usually boils down to whatever they're most familiar with. I find it easier to just keep the argument simple - whenever possible, preserve the original. If someone releases something as a PDF, I wouldn't convert it to another format for the purposes of preservation. If it was for my own personal use, I would have no qualms converting it to whatever I wanted, of course. Again, not trying to start a debate here or change anyone's mind. Just my 2 cents.
     
  5. Hivebrain

    Hivebrain

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    Storing scans as ZIP would definitely be easier (and also allow for PNG images), but there's no way to show thumbnails for ZIPs. Gerbilsoft tried installing a wiki extension, CBxHandler, but it didn't work.
     
  6. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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  7. Ted909

    Ted909

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  8. kitsunebi

    kitsunebi

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    They're all Chinese. I was about to say I saw one Japanese book in there (for a Theme Park game) since it uses katakana in some of its titles and headers, but all of the text is Chinese.
     
  9. Ted909

    Ted909

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    Just because they're all Chinese does not mean they're from mainland China in the strictest sense, of course - the only one already on Retro as far as I can see, Game Players DC, is from Hong Kong, and I wouldn't be surprised to discover some publications from Taiwan in there too
     
  10. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    https://segaretro.org/Sega_Retro:Todo/Publications/Taiwan

    There's a whole bunch of Chinese stuff waiting in limbo, mostly because of the language barrier. Though looking closely, even though I found most of these on Taiwanese auction sites, their true origin might be from the mainland, and thus a lot of this is mislabled. Fun times.
     
  11. Hivebrain

    Hivebrain

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    The prices should be NT$ and HK$ in Taiwan and Hong Kong. China will be 元, although that symbol is apparently also used for NT$ sometimes.
     
  12. kitsunebi

    kitsunebi

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    Yeah, it's also used for Hong Kong dollars. NT$, HK$, and China's RMB (or I've even seen RM$) are the prices usually listed.
    Another easy way to tell them apart (if they're new enough) is to look for a website or email address (usually on the first non-cover page) and look at the suffix - .tw, .hk, or .cn.
     
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  13. A number of Xbox 360 games had trailers that could be downloaded and played on the Xbox 360. These don't seem to be viewable on the Xbox website's store pages, but it's easy to copy them onto a computer with the steps described here and extract the WMV files using Velocity. Should I upload all of the relevant ones to Retro CDN? They're all free, but are quite large, with the Sonic ones alone adding up to 2 GB.
     
  14. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    The answer is always yes and it's something I've wanted done for YEARS but couldn't do myself.

    Shame about delisted game though.
     
  15. OK, all the Sonic ones I could get hold of have been uploaded, and I'll go through the other Sega titles soon.

    https://retrocdn.net/Category:Xbox_Live_video_files

    This only covers the videos that are available in the UK, though. Some videos appear to be exclusive to the US or Japan, and there may also be variants with different languages and rating systems, so it would be good if someone with an Xbox 360 in those regions could get those as well.

    Is there a list of videos that are known to be missing? I know that the DLC and themes for Sonic 2006 are still listed even though the base game and the demo aren't, so I don't know if that means there were videos for it that were delisted or not.
     
  16. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    Check the DLC pages for games to find out. I know, for example, that Outrun Online Arcade had a video because I downloaded it back then, plus it's there on it's DLC page.

    The same goes for stuff like Developer Diaries and the like, though at the moment I only remember Golden Axe: Beast Rider and MAYBE the Castle of Illusion remake having them?
     
  17. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    https://archive.org/details/@japanese_game_manual_scans

    There are more issues of Game Hihyou than we thought.


    It coincidentally ties into something I was briefly looking at the other day:
    https://archive.org/details/game-hihyou-vol-65-game-magazine-scan-jp/page/n4/mode/2up

    Tokyo Game Show 2005

    I think it's fair to say the Japanese took a while to adapt to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 generation of consoles (Nintendo never even got there), so there wasn't much to show at this point in time. There was Dead or Alive 4 and Metal Gear Solid 4, but Sega also had 4. As in, four separate games:

    - Chromehounds, a pre-Dark Souls From Software game that nobody talks about
    - Full Auto, the vehicular combat game that nobody talks about
    - Fifth Phantom Saga, which never made it to market (and was apparently crap?)
    - Sonic 2006, which absolutely was crap, but was also just a pre-rendered movie at this point so we weren't to know

    In a sense, they had more "next-gen" projects than the rest of Japan combined. In another sense, the half of these projects were stupid, and the other half weren't really theirs.

    So if you were of the impression that Sega stopped being at the cutting edge when the Dreamcast was dropped, you're wrong! Although the problem with being at the cutting edge is it's easy to fall off and hurt yourself.
     
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  18. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    Jack shit.
    Chromehounds fans were rabid, "toxic", and close-knit back in the day.

    Then the servers shut down, which was the whole point of the game. I never saw anyone talk about the single player.

    No one ever talked about Full Auto, though the original videos on the website were really funny. Probably lost to time, though I haven't checked.

    No one even knew Fifth Phantom was a thing until it was revealed that the whole concept was just rolled into Silver for Sonic '06.
     
  19. BSonirachi

    BSonirachi

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  20. Asagoth

    Asagoth

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    wiki stuff... and a beer... or two... or more...
    https://archive.org/details/@gamebookscaner

    And now that you said it... I still have 19 Sega Fan magazines to upload... but the page order needs to be rearranged before uploading them ... so it might take some time...