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DosBox recordings Conversion in Virtual Dub

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First post, by Bartjaah

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Hiya folks,

A hobby of mine is recording Games (mostly Dosgames) and upload the footage to Youtube.com/ClassicRetroGin a 1080P HD / 60 FPS format.

What I do:
- Play a game in DosBox while DosBox' internal video recorder does it's thing. Recording awesome footage in 1:1 uncompressed in ZMBV codecs, creating small neat files for me.
- After playing a game I load up VirtualDub and set it up with one filter; Resize. I try to resize my videos to a larger file so I have no quality loss on HD. I usually do this in a batch (job list), but let's talk about 1 file for now.
- After that I import al the exported videos in Adobe Premiere Pro and edit it to my likings and export it to HD 1080P/60FPS and it's good to go.

This always worked fine for me untill I upgraded to Windows 10. I have the ZMBV codecs (64bit) installed to my Windows\System32 folder. But I run into the following problem; while rendering/converting the video in Virtual Dub, it shows a projected filesize, and it gets HUGE.

EXAMPLE: A few months back I've played some AlleyCat on DosBox and recorded a video file of the gameplay.
Here's the file:
4YiOvf.png
Time: 13:40
Frame: 320x200 pixels
Size: 145 MB
FPS: 70

When I still had Windows 7 I have converted this file with Virtual Dub with this filter:

8S9Dek.png

So I have setup only a 'Resize' filter, that scales my video 6 times it's original size with a 'Neirest Neighbour' filter mode instead of the other more popular methods. This let's me keep my video exelent quality when upscaling. The file that was spit out by Virtual Dub was the following file:

ltTDsb.png
Time: 13:40
Frame: 1920x1200 pixels
Size: 470 MB
FPS: 70

470 MB for a export is very do-able. Okay, 1920x1200 is too big, when I import it to Premiere Pro I scale it down to framesize and export it to a quicktime file or something to my liking, and that goes to Youtube. This was my standard procedure and I'm really fond of this method. Although since I upgraded to Windows 10 the following happens in Virtual Dub. The filesizes of the exported files gets HUMONGOUS. So let's try to convert this same DosBox recording in Virtual Dub with exact the same settings (the neirest neighbour resize filter of 600%) and this is what happens.

EjZqkp.png

I don't mind working with large files, but 380 GigaBytes for only one video of 14 minutes isn't really doing it for me.
Does anyone know what's going wrong? I'm trying to record some more awesome games here, but this disables me to do so. It should work like normal, because it did once.

Bart.

Reply 1 of 25, by ripsaw8080

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Are you sure you're selecting the ZMBV codec as the compression method when saving the resized video to disk in VDub? Also check that the color depth to the compressor is the same as you were using previously. Otherwise, well, I think the 64-bit native compile of ZMBV is not official...

Reply 2 of 25, by Bartjaah

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CDKsMA.png
It says that it can't use this one (I replaced my ZMBV.dll and .ini for the 32bit version of the ZMBV codecs).

xgiNI4.png

Reply 3 of 25, by ripsaw8080

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Try the unofficial x64 compile of the ZMBV codec: ZMBV 64-bit codec, here you go.
Then try different output color depths with that to see if it helps.
I don't have any other suggestions for you.

Reply 4 of 25, by Bartjaah

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The codecs you provided in the link still won't work (same error).

Reply 5 of 25, by ripsaw8080

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And what have you tried in regards to changing the output color depth and/or color space?

See Great Hierophant's comment about changing the color depth in your previous thread on this subject:
Upscaling DosBox recordings (ZMBV Errors)

Reply 6 of 25, by Bartjaah

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I'm now trying the MS Video Codec 1, which is better, I think (haven't seen the results yet). But I'm trying to convert some Jazz Jackrabbit 1 footage (which I've done 100 times more before) and it keeps giving me an error (an invalid size was specified error code 7). I'm not getting what I'm doing wrong compared to the last 1.5 years I'm doing this this way. I just can't deal with these enormous filesizes.

Reply 7 of 25, by Tertz

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Bartjaah wrote:

I'm not getting what I'm doing wrong compared to the last 1.5 years I'm doing this this way. I just can't deal with these enormous filesizes.

if nothing will help, you still may to use VM with Win7 in your Win10. rendering speed should be similar

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Reply 8 of 25, by Bartjaah

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I've tried another machine (win7) and another laptop (win7) with some files I recorded from Hocus Pocus, Jazz Jackrabbit 1 and I can't seem to get these right. Either they won't convert, or the filesize gets enormous, and I didn't have to deal with this a few weeks ago, and I'm not doing anything else. Could it be that my source files (recordings) are recorded differently. Perhaps it's possible to share one or a few of these files with you guys and you can take a look if you can succeed converting it to 'something x 1080' and tell me how you did it.

Reply 9 of 25, by Tertz

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Bartjaah wrote:

Could it be that my source files (recordings) are recorded differently.

You may make a new test record in Win7 and check has it effect.

Perhaps it's possible to share one or a few of these files

Better to make new short video file and check has it problems on your side. If it has, then share it.

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Reply 10 of 25, by Bartjaah

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For example; I'm trying to convert these two files http://we.tl/2vcyEukSuw
01-01.avi = Hocus Pocus Ep01L01.
file0001_003.avi = Jazz Jackrabbit EpCL01.

Maybe someone else can give these two files a go. I'm trying to resize them so their height is 1080pixels (or a bit more, that doesn't matter) with a Neirest Neighbour filter without the filesize getting enormous and that's it. The rest stays the same.

If you can manage to do this with Virtual Dub (or something else), can you please let me know how you exactly did this or send me a preset or something like that?

Reply 11 of 25, by zirkoni

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I converted the Hocus Pocus clip to 1728x1080 (no change in frame rate), resulting in a ~70 MB video.
I used the x264vfw codec for video, direct stream audio:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/x264vfw/

Screenshot of the resized video as attachment.

This is what I use when I upload DOSBox recording on my Youtube channel, except I usually resize to 720p only.

https://youtube.com/@zirkoni42

Reply 12 of 25, by Bartjaah

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Thank you Zirkoni! I was looking for a solution like this! This is fantastic. Now I can finally convert all of my videos, edit them and place them on the Youtubes. Thanks a lot!

Reply 13 of 25, by Bartjaah

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Do you know why the Jazz Jackrabbit video gives an error? (It has something to do with the video size but I can't seem to figure out what's the problem).
All of these Jazz Jackrabbit videos have these problems (I think it has something to do with them being 320x199 instead of 320x200). I never had this problem before with the other Jazz Jackrabbit playthroughs I did.

I've converted some large files (raw Jazz Jackrabbit 2 recordings) too, but when I open these up in Adobe Premiere the sound sounds like it's in mega slow motion, something went wrong there...

Reply 14 of 25, by zirkoni

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Bartjaah wrote:

Do you know why the Jazz Jackrabbit video gives an error? (It has something to do with the video size but I can't seem to figure out what's the problem).

VirtualDub wrote:

Width must be a multiple of 2.
Height must be a multiple of 2.
Valid depths: 24 32

Works fine for me if I set the resize filter to 600% (1920x1194), for example.

https://youtube.com/@zirkoni42

Reply 15 of 25, by Bartjaah

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That's strange, it works for 600%, (1920x1200) but not for ( ...x1080), then it fails.

When I place all the Hocus videos in a job list, the audio get's out of sync so at the settings in the 'compression' menu, I have checked 'VirtualDub' hack and another check too.
Now the videos come out perfect. Only when I place them in a joblist it says I should check these two options again. When I just import 1 clip, and save it it works like a charm, but now I have to sit and wait and do them one by one. Any ideas?

Reply 16 of 25, by Tertz

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in Virtual Dub for Rabbit:
1) resize filter: aspect ratio - off, letterbox 320x200, mode nearest neighbor [this step may be not needed]
2) resize filter: aspect ratio - as source, new size pixels - x1080, mode nearest neighbor
3) video->color depth->32 bit
4) compression->ZMBV
And you'll get 1080p video in lossless ZMBV (at least in XP). Good if youtube supports ZMBV.

look that theme also
Editing movies captured in DOSBox

Last edited by Tertz on 2015-09-17, 16:20. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 17 of 25, by leileilol

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Tertz wrote:

3) video->color depth->16 bit
...
And you'll get 1080p video in lossless

NO. WRONG

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long live PCem

Reply 18 of 25, by Tertz

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leileilol wrote:

WRONG

zmbv is lossless codec as I've said 😀 Unlike H264
Seems useless captiousness is your hobby.
If you suppose that saving his 8-bit material in 16-bit color space will reduce the quality - you are wrong in this too.

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Reply 19 of 25, by leileilol

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Tertz wrote:

Seems useless captiousness is your hobby.

and it seems misinformation plus plugging pointless dosbox benchmark bullshit everywhere is yours

Tertz wrote:

If you suppose that saving his 8-bit material in 16-bit color space will reduce the quality - you are wrong in this too.

The captured video is already in 24-bit color. VGA palettes work with a 18-bit color space. You are fucking wrong about that being lossless. It is crappy, misinforming advice to reduce that to 16-bit color. You gain NOTHING from it. You LOSE color precision. It is NOT "lossless".

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