pouët.net

So I've been recently interested on capturing my demos, but with lossless video this time and just wanted to share the results here for those people that are archiving demos.

I've googled a bit the issue and this pdf is the best comparison I've found (also suggested by dominator, thx thx!). I also checked wurstcaptures guide but didn't helped much in this case.

So far I've only captured r08028

And the best compression was using Lagarith using YV12 color space - 1024x768 @ 60fps = 5gb

The cool thing is that it also plays fast (on windows media player, vlc doesn't support the format (yet)), specially using YV12 color space.

Another cool thing is that you can encode it directly with kkapture using the ".AVI (DirectShow, *unstable*)" option. Otherwise Virtualdub does the job too.

HDD are quite cheap and big these days so I can just have them lossless on a HD. 5gb x 64 demos = 320gb, not a hard price to pay for having all of them in 1:1 quality.

Well, that's all... hopefully this wasn't something everyone already knew...

lagarith is pretty awesome on multicore machines since it scales properly, which most other lossless codecs don't.

a small niggle is that YV12 isn't really lossless, but it's a no-brainer if you're capturing video to encode with a lossy codec afterwards since most codecs include the color downsampling step anyway. an exception would be if you plan to resize before encoding, in that case it's better to stay with rgb for the first pass.

i used lagarith with YV12 in 1920x1080 60fps for the scene.org awards captures this year. at that resolution and framerate, basically anything is painful, but lagarith did pretty well. lack of widespread support in non-vfw/dshow tools is a problem right now, but that's only gonna improve over time.

If you capture demos using DOSBox, just keep the zmbv-encoded files it spits out. It compresses pretty well at low color depths and old-demo-like content.

@trace: if you've got the hardware to run the demos, then why capture them for personal archiving? they'll take up way less space archiving them as executables.

hardware doesn't last forever.
i think it would be a good idea to start building an archive of lossless videocaptures of demos.

Nosfe has leading.

You can't run the exe if you're not on the right OS too. Or the right platform (I'd love proper videos of a lot of oldschool stuff).

How is playback for HD lossless captures these days? Are hdds and the bus fast enough for playback at 1080p60?

Also, yes: an online archive of lossless demos would rule. It'd also be very hdd + bandwidth hungry unfortunately. I guess it would become a real archive though: something you refer to only if you really need to, because you just wouldn't want to download many GBs just for a quick watch.

@hooverphonique: what nosfe said.

My motivation was the fact that I've captured some of my demos in many formats that get obsolete in 1-2 years. Whenever a new video format gets default I can use the lossless videos as start point (without having to capture the demo again).

On top of what nosfe said, I've been using linux/ubuntu for 2 years already. I barely use Windows now, so I though I better started archiving in video the demos before it gets more complicated. Just look at what the mindcandy guys had to do.

Regarding the online archive, is that something that the scene.org guys can start to consider?

Have you guys heard of bandcamp.com? It's a website for musicians. What I liked from it is that you upload the audio in .flac, and then the website will create different versions of the file for the people to download.

Although on bandcamp you can also download the .flac, I think in this case isn't really needed. So the bandwidth won't be that much (or not as much as it could be), as there will only be upload of huge files, people that want to download/watch the demo will get a h264/theora back from the server.

Maybe could be something for demoscene.tv to consider instead?

Very good idea. Stuff that would be important (to me at least..):

- 1080p (preferably 60fps) supported. I know that's pretty heavy, but a few years back 640x480 was considered heavy too, and now it's the bare minimum.
- The original files are preserved, and available for download. Of course you don't want people downloading the 10gb file when the 100mb mp4 is good enough, but it should at least be available on request (e.g. if you're doing a demo dvd, it makes sense).
- It's properly backed up!

Trace: feel free to start adding the content, that's what the archive is for. :) When it comes to actively doing the capturing, that's probably not going to happen any time soon.

gloom:

So you're saying that scene.org is up for hosting the files on the ftp?

In that case, how should it be sorted? on the same folder?

/pub/parties/2003/breakpoint03/demo/3s_r08028.zip - 9mb
/pub/parties/2003/breakpoint03/demo/3s_r08028.avi - 5gb

I didn't meant that scene.org should do the capturing, capturing should be crowdsourced. We just need one place to upload the files to.

Random people is capturing demos these days, but they are uploading to random sites with random file formats, I'm sure those people won't mind doing captures to lossless hq and uploading to scene.org instead. And then themselves or someone else recompress to mp4 to upload to youtube.

I don't know what the sorting should be like, but if not like you suggest, then perhaps a symlink at least to the higher res version in a dedicated directory (or just some other way to find the leet files). Someone with more insight into the archiving functions of Scene.org would have to take a look at the math of course, but yeah, I'd say it's an interesting idea.

With regards to the crowdsourcing - totally. It would just have to have some sort of easy entrypoint for people who want to upload such files. This would probably include checking for duplicates in some way, as well as provide a list of desired codec and resolution settings. If one is to archive, it's better to do it right than to do it fast.

If somebody intends to do the "import the lossless version and re-encode it"/"auto-upload it to youtube"/"etc" website, the files should all be in one folder with symlinks next to the actual demos. That way a regular scan of the folder is possible.

I'd also like to congratulate you on the incredibly leet topic number - kudos :)

hmm, what kind of diskspace is available for this?

i don't have complete vidcaps for all scene.org awards 2008 nominees anymore (didn't have the space), but i do have a large number, probably around 200gb or so of quality lossless material i just need to enqueue in my ftp client :)

What's so leet about 6581?

Just a guess: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_SID?

Ut-oh, I sense newskool nescience! (no offense :))

I should google more often.

Anyway, gloom, if there are any news from scene.org side and/or guidance of how we should proceed, let us know.

And, specially, if you find out how much space is available ;)

...now if I only hadn't deleted all the raw videos of the captures I have done to make space for pr0n... ;)

*BUMP*

i'd be willing to help doing some captures if there's a designated space where to upload. is scene.org really ready to take that much? (for example the fullhd vidcaps of cognoscere and cannapaceus are about 35gigs each, and that's on 25fps)

also, maybe some decision on the exact codec and such,
1080p@60fps should be fine?

i also think that the fullhd caps dont need to necessarily be available for public download, unless there's really enough bandwith, but on request for people who are doing demodvds/demo screenings/other projects that they need them for.

auto-uploading to youtube/other videosites might be a very nice feature indeed.

one thing that's a bit crap with vidcaps though: they ruin the aesthetic that the creators had in mind, since you can rewind/fast-forward through it. I watched moralhardcandy so many times just for that one particularly brilliant part of an effect, which would be sorely ruined by watching it on video.

oh and it's a little absurd to spend many gigs of diskspace on a 4k :o) - in a world of infinite disk space and infinite transfer speeds, perhaps.

nosfe, scene.org at this point is discussing upgrading disk space not in the next weeks..