[Captain L]

So, I just joined an LP group, and I recorded Mega Man 1 for them. I used the Wily Wars version running on Kega Fusion from my PC just to do something different, and the whole LP is recorded. I know Kega uses a special video codec that VLC can't do anything about, so I downloaded Microsoft Expression Encoder to convert the AVI to a WMV (because it's a free version and can't convert to anything else). Doesn't look as good, but at least it plays now. Once that file was done, I brought it to my dad to convert to a different video file that iMovie could open because the Mac is the only computer I can use with video editing software. However, his conversion only changed the wrapper, and iMovie still can't open it.

So, I come back to the PC and use VLC to convert the WMV to a different format from here (I didn't do it in the first place because I have bad experiences transcoding videos with VLC, turns out that's just the Mac version), and I can make it an MP4. Except, for some reason, the MP4 it creates doesn't have audio. The audio checkbox was checked in the converting window, but there's still nothing.

And now, I have no idea what to do. What's the simplest way to convert the AVI file Kega makes into something workable in iMovie?

[Covarr]

I'm assuming you already have Fusion's proprietary codec installed to your system?

Easy mode: use Handbrake to convert it to a H264 MP4. I know for a fact iMovie can use these.

Harder (but more versatile) mode: If you wanna get a little more complicated, VirtualDub can export as AVI with any VFW codec you have, and it's pretty much a must if you want to nearest-neighbor scale your video (most traditional editors fail hard at this).

This post has been edited by Covarr: 07 July 2015 - 04:06 PM

[Captain L]

Covarr, on 07 July 2015 - 04:05 PM, said:

I'm assuming you already have Fusion's proprietary codec installed to your system?

Easy mode: use Handbrake to convert it to a H264 MP4. I know for a fact iMovie can use these.

Harder (but more versatile) mode: If you wanna get a little more complicated, VirtualDub can export as AVI with any VFW codec you have, and it's pretty much a must if you want to nearest-neighbor scale your video (most traditional editors fail hard at this).

I have the codecs installed just fine, the video plays, I just can't do anything with it because it only works here. Handbrake, I'm still running Windows XP here, so I don't know what the most recent version that still supports XP is. And I have no idea what the harder point is talking about.

EDIT: Okay, I know what VirtualDub is, but I don't see a way for it to make any video file other than an AVI, which iMovie can't open. I don't really see the point of this.

This post has been edited by Captain L: 07 July 2015 - 04:44 PM

[DigitalDuck]

Covarr, on 07 July 2015 - 04:05 PM, said:

VirtualDub can export as AVI with any VFW codec you have

VirtualDub works with Fusion AVIs? I'd never been able to get it to play nice; it refused to open (yes, I did have the codec installed) so I always edited in Vegas instead.

(That said, I've used Gens to record videos for the last few years so I have no idea how/if things have changed since then.)

[Shadow Hog]

DigitalDuck, on 07 July 2015 - 04:20 PM, said:

VirtualDub works with Fusion AVIs? I'd never been able to get it to play nice; it refused to open (yes, I did have the codec installed) so I always edited in Vegas instead.

My experience is literally the opposite. Vegas flat-out refuses to acknowledge Fusion AVIs, even with the codec installed properly, so I have to convert them to a format it'll play nice with in VirtualDub (which reads Fusion AVIs flawlessly) first. I tend to opt for a lossless compression codec, as I'd prefer to only do lossy compression after editing, although the resulting files are absurdly large as a result.

This post has been edited by Shadow Hog: 07 July 2015 - 06:23 PM

[Covarr]

Captain L, on 07 July 2015 - 04:10 PM, said:

EDIT: Okay, I know what VirtualDub is, but I don't see a way for it to make any video file other than an AVI, which iMovie can't open. I don't really see the point of this.

My fault, I wasn't clear enough. I was more recommending this as an intermediary step: run it through VirtualDub first to scale it to the resolution you want THEN run it through handbrake. Thing is, most video editing software I've used forces scaling filters that look good with traditional camera-on-subject content, but absolutely awful on emulated games. This is what happened when I let Adobe Premiere upscale my Fusion footage to 1080p instead of running it through VirtualDub with nearest-neighbor scaling first. It looks terrible.

Captain L, on 07 July 2015 - 04:10 PM, said:

Handbrake, I'm still running Windows XP here, so I don't know what the most recent version that still supports XP is.

That would be 0.9.9: http://download.hand...686-Win_CLI.zip

Since it seems like you aren't especially experienced with video nor trying to do anything too complicated, 0.9.9 should be plenty good enough for your purposes. Newer versions of Handbrake have features and improvements that will benefit more advanced users, but are by no means necessary.

This post has been edited by Covarr: 07 July 2015 - 06:21 PM

[Captain L]

Well, I'm trying it, but I don't think VirtualDub is going to work. I tried making an AVI through VirtualDub out of the playthrough, and it ran out probably like 1/5 or something through, because my hard drive ran out of space. I have 60GB of free space on this computer.

[Shadow Hog]

Did you remember to set what compression algorithm the output is supposed to use? Generally speaking, you're not going to get 60GB AVIs unless you're doing completely uncompressed video (which, incidentally, is the default).

[Captain L]

Shadow Hog, on 07 July 2015 - 10:02 PM, said:

Did you remember to set what compression algorithm the output is supposed to use? Generally speaking, you're not going to get 60GB AVIs unless you're doing completely uncompressed video (which, incidentally, is the default).

Yeah, that'll do it. I didn't touch any of the settings, both because the program's Sourceforge page boasts making an AVI in two simple steps without altering settings, and because I still can't believe it's possible to take a 55 min file that's only 800 MB large, and convert it into a 60 GB file that isn't the hole video. What settings would you recommend?

[winterhell]

If you have GeForce 650 or newer, you can directly record (for free) into h264 with ZERO performance impact. You can even play your video fullscreen and record it like that. 1080p60fps no problem

This post has been edited by winterhell: 07 July 2015 - 11:52 PM

[Shadow Hog]

Captain L, on 07 July 2015 - 11:10 PM, said:

What settings would you recommend?

Any codec you feel comfortable with. Mostly because I am not well-versed in codecs.

I think H.264 is available from the list, if you wanna jump straight to lossy compression. Good, but still lossy.

[Captain L]

Okay, I managed to get a good video out of it with a large, but possible, file size of 13GB by using Microsoft Video 1 codec and making it 30fps. But only the second time, it fucked up royally on the same settings the first time. It's now going through Handbrake a second time to H.264 because it cropped the image the first time, where it finishes looking worse but at 500MB.

[InvisibleUp]

From my experience I've had the best luck just using ffmpeg from the command line. It's not as hard as it sounds. I'm not sure what formats iMovie will take, but it's probably a safe bet to assume it can handle Apple's Quicktime .mov format. You'll want to run ffmpeg with a command like

ffmpeg -I [inputfile.avi] -b 1000 outputfile.mov 

By default it'll output lossy, but with the bitrate set to 1000 there really shouldn't be any noticeable ugliness. (And if there is, just bump it up to 2000.) If you need lossless (or the default codec isn't compatible with iMovie for whatever reason), you can set the video codec with the -vcodec flag, followed by a codec. I'd opt for "qtrle" as the codec in that case, as it'll be smaller than uncompressed video. The command would look like

ffmpeg -I [inputfile.avi] -vcodec qtrle outfile.mov

The filesize will also be huge, so unless you've got gigabytes to spare I'd just go for high-bitrate lossy. (A 2 minute video I was testing was 7MB at a bitrate of 500 vs. 544MB using qtrle, just as a benchmark). Hopefully this will work better than Handbrake has been.