I'm trying to record a Sonic speedrun from a Mega Drive emulator (Gens GS and Fusion) to upload on YouTube. I tried to record using FRAPS and HyperCam2 but, no matter what I did, the result was very choppy. What is the ideal setup to record from an emulator?
I'm sure there was a version of Gens that would output to a proper movie file... I can't remember what the hell it was called.. Gens Movie or something like that...
That would be Gens Rerecording: http://code.google.com/p/gens-rerecording/ Another very nice option is to use Kega Fusion's built-in AVI logging. It's explained more in Fusion's readme, but basically you install the video codec included with the emulator, start recording your video in Fusion, then use something like VirtualDub to convert the resulting AVI into a more common codec such as H.264 or WebM or what have you. From there it can go onto YouTube if desired.
Kega, Video menu, Log AVI File. Cut and encode with Virtuadub, upload to youtube. Very complicated process!
Thanks a lot for your help guys. I tried the Log AVI File option of Kega Fusion and, indeed, the result is a lot better. My only complaint is that it gives me a very annoying sound lag, I'm not sure if it's from the recording or from the converting process. Any hints on that?
I'd just go with Delta's suggestion anyway and use Gens-rr for AVI dumping. I've recorded over a hundred AVI files with it with basically zero problem, I'm not the only one that will be able to back up that sentiment. The only problems that happen are A/V desync with very long/large AVI files, but that is incredibly unlikely to happen unless your video spans over an hour (I suspect it has to do with a duplicate video frame being added every time the AVI file is split into a 2 gigabyte chunk, Aktan from TASVideos knows more about this than I do).
Add me to the "fans of Gens Movie" group, too. Most emulators now have a branch that support fors native AVI dumping thanks to the guys at tasvideos.org; before of that, I used to use Camtasia Studio with good results, and I still use it occasionally. From my experience, it is the other way around: when the AVI file is split, a frame is lost. At least that's what happened when I encoded that long Sonic 3 & Knuckles TAS, the AVI was split into two parts, and there was a missing frame between them, so I recorded a third AVI which overlapped with the end of the first part and the beginning of the second part, and with some cut/paste job I got a complete recording. That was quite a lot of work and I did that only because I was encoding a video for tasvideos, in practice 99% of the people wouldn't even notice that a frame is missing (especially if the video is uploaded on Youtube which, as we all know, downscales the frame rate from 60 fps to 30), and no this doesn't lead to A/V desync afaik, since the gap affects both the video and the audio for the same duration (1 frame for video, presumabily 735 frames for audio), and that's why I could cut and paste the three parts of the video above like I said. Of course everything I said might be proven wrong by someone else, but that's what happened to me.
Yeah, sorry about that, but it's the noise growler uses to go "you pressed the record key", with my laptop the "what you hear" option doesn't work, so I used a male to male headphone lead to get it to record via mic input.
Well, does it happen before you convert the video? I only recorded a few things with it, but I never got lag. My only problem was the near impossibility of editing due to no keyframes.
Fusion's codec isn't really meant for anything other than shit-fast write speed with small files and as little effect on gameplay as possible. Ideally, you should convert (to another lossless codec if possible) for editing, and then convert to a lossy format for publication.
It's just during recording. It doesn't effect the recording at all. Really, the slowdown has to so with available RAM and whatever Render plugin you're using. Some Renderplugins seem to require more RAM to use than others. For me for example, 4XHQ Fusion Plugin has a habit of causing slowdown during recording for me. However, if I switch to another less ram consuming plugin, such as say..... Normal or whatever the one with pixels by default is, then you'll get less RAM consumption and the game won't slow down while recording. Changing the render plugin while recording doesn't affect your video. The recording pauses if you open a menu, so you don't have to worry about problems while recording. I use it constantly so I should know. Example of my videos and their quality for those who need one: I didn't really care which one I picked so I just picked a random but very recent one.
I finally managed to upload my first Sonic the Hedgehog Speed Run with the quality being alright: I also used the speed run to upload a video showing the antithesis in level design between the upper paths and the bottom paths in the original Sonic the Hedgehog: Again, I want to thank everyone that helped me.
Loggo, if you're willing to add me to MSN, AIM, or Skype, I am willing to help you get even higher quality output from your videos. 240p mode is pretty atrocious... 480p mode is pretty awesome however.
You're talking to someone from tasvideos who encodes Game Boy videos at 1280x1152. There is a big deal about "HD" videos going on tasvideos these days. I agree with you that 320x224 is more than enough.
Protip: Regardless of system output, Youtube looks like shit at 240p because there will be compression artifacts all over the place. Not to mention, the higher resolution settings on youtube also allow for better audio.
I understand that, but even something as simple as cutting off the beginning and the end can be problematic if you don't pay attention. And what other lossless codec? The ones I know of either don't save the full colorspace (h264 lossless), or they encode at 0.01 fps. Also, colorspace conversion fucks up lossless encoding too.
