Remastered Video Comparison
What are the odds?! The same weekend I decide to try out my 60 fps capture device, YouTube announces support for 60 fps video!
After a bit of compression trial and error, I've figured out what to do to get a truly full quality video uploaded. This is a great comparison of the best in 2014 consumer video capture technology versus the same thing from 2007.
Back in 2007, the best I could do was record 480i video at 30 fps through an analog capture device, deinterlace it, and heavily compress it using the very early h.264 algorithms.
The new setup allows an all-digital, 1080p up-rezed 480p capture at 60 frames per second using 60 mbps. The video is (slightly) zoomed to fill the whole screen, making it conform to modern video aspect ratios. I also ran a color enhancer that will pull out some of the details from the game's rather dark rendering style. (The latter two changes help mitigate some of the artifacts of the way old video game consoles output analog video.)
Check it out! Be sure to select the highest quality setting available in the gear menu.
Pretty good, huh? Compare that to the original upload garbage.
The change is so drastic that I've decided to remaster all the Krystal cutscene videos from both Adventures and Assault. This is THE best quality you can get without emulating the games to run at a different resolution. I've already recorded almost all of the Adventures cutscenes. It's just a matter of cutting up the parts, compressing them, and uploading them to YouTube. As always, the full quality versions will be available for download here. That way, you can see the video's quality before YouTube recompresses it to a lower bitrate.
Finally, I am planning on doing a midnight stream of the Star Fox parts of Super Smash Bros. Wii U once I get it on November 21st. More details coming soon.
Update
I've made an image comparison of the same frame using different capture techniques. After looking at it again, I think I'm going to go with the Remastered (widescreen) version.
Comments
Oh my god, the diffrence is amazing!
So what is the aspect ratio supposed to be? 16:9 filled? 4:3 with letterbox? Because this looks like a 4:3 video with a 16:9 image that was stretched, making it look like 16:9 widescreen with a 2.35:1 letterboxing.
@Dogman15
Good catch. So the original game ran at 480p in 4:3 aspect ratio, but the game itself allows you to pick whether you use ‘Normal’ or ‘Widescreen’ in one of the options. When picking Widescreen, the game’s camera has a wider aspect ratio, but the image itself remains the same width in the signal. I experimented with both.
The game’s camera positioning was built for a 4:3 ratio. When you widen it, you can see more on the sides, but there is never anything going on over there, the game doesn’t make use of it. Widescreen mode also makes all the character look a little more proportional (not as wide). However, we’re using a low resolution source that can fit only so many details in so many horizontal pixels. By telling the game to render in a slightly stretched mode, you get more details on the characters and scenes, since there’s something like 20% more horizontal pixels to work with. The stretching is a small price to pay for this. While it is noticeable, it’s essentially how most of us played the game back then, because we all had 4:3 tvs when the game came out.
As for the letterboxing, the game itself does that for cutscenes. In other cutscenes you see the black bars moving out of frame at the end of the sequence.
I have plans to re-do these again once I get access to the HD frames from an emulated version. That’s been in the works for years, just don’t have them yet. That should fix all issues, I think.
my usb capture device could captured better than the 240p and it could use s-video, I got way back then when gamecube came out, but its discontinued.
I want to play this game at this quality now… though it looked like it struggled in frames when Krystal absorbed the spirit… still i want to play in 1080p and near 60 fps, especially this game
the emulated (widescreen) look good.
all these numbers are hurting my brain…
I will agree that the emulation screenshot looks spectacular, but Adventures is easily one of the hardest GameCube games to accurately emulate. Unless you have a monster PC that can throw brute force CPU power around, the game lags horribly. And even if you do have that monster computer, you will have issues with shadows and de-synced audio during cutscenes, to say the least. This game was built on the Ocarina of Time game engine, modified heavily, and then ported to GameCube when Rare decided to change it up. Needless to say, it’s not surprising to have emulation issues. I honestly have to say from looking at the screens that Mr. Krystal’s HDMI Wii adapter is probably the easiest and most visually appealing way to play Adventures right now.