For some reason, I can't get dosbox to record a 4:3 video. With aspect=true, it looks correct, but it doesn't record what is on the screen.
Now I know I've done this before (recorded properly), but somehow it's been changed. The game looks fine, but the recording is 16:9.
Any ideas of why this is happening and how to murder it and dump the body?
DOSBox records at whatever resolution the game runs at.
DOS games usually run at 320 x 200 resolution and that is exactly what you get.
The whole "16:9" is because LCDs have square pixels whereas on a CRT you could stretch the image vertically.
So what aspect correct does is scale the image to a 4:3 ratio so it looks correct on modern monitors.
Solution:
Resize to 4:3 aspect ratio with your video editing software 😀
I use a CRT, and resizing the video to 4:3 just makes the frame 4:3, but the graphics only occupy the 16:9 frame within it.
Here, I spent some time uploading actual recordings.
Dosbox records in 16:9
http://youtu.be/er5CSPuaJUo
Dosbox video resized to 4:3
http://youtu.be/aBD4pLnGWik
Dosbox records in 4:3 (this was NOT resized, IIRC)
http://youtu.be/w8zWEyPHJF4
I absolutely do not want 16:9. I assume I've made some change in config that elicits this behaviour, but I don't see what it is.
fullscreen=true
fulldouble=false
fullresolution=original
windowresolution=original
output=surface
aspect=true
scaler=none
It fills my screen, which is of course 4:3, but only the video comes up short.
Maybe you are cropping instead of resizing the aspect ratio?
This is what it should look like:
My video editor says that top file is 640x350 at 70fps.
Apparently EGA (which is what I am recording) is actually supposed to be that; whether the pixels are stretched to fill the screen is a different matter. So an actual 16:9 is 640x360, which is almost exactly the same. Basically EGA is widescreen 😐
And...as for my editing, apparently I am using a different editor that doesn't do the resizing the old one did. If I even want resizing now that I know 4:3 distorts EGA...wow...
wrote:Basically EGA is widescreen 😐
😖
EGA is 4:3 and always was, it's just that the pixels are not square. They're not "stretched" - it's just a function of refresh timing and pixel clock. CRTs never had fixed pixel sizes or ratios. 4:3 doesn't distort EGA - on the contrary, it's the way it's intended to display.
DOSBox recordings won't be aspect corrected - for youtubing purposes, integer-scale the video by as much as you can handle ("nearest neighbor" interpolation), then stretch (or set the pixel format) to 4:3. This seems to ensure minimal loss of quality while still providing the correct aspect ratio.
You're telling me that the 350 rectangular pixels are supposed to be as tall as 480 square pixels, but Dosbox won't record them that way because they only appear as intended as a result of external hardware (the monitor).
sigh...
My take is, the only reason they *don't* appear as intended is a result of today's external hardware (modern monitors that are incapable of non-square pixels). ;)
It's not really such a big deal though - you can always use an external program to record videos with aspect=true, or better yet, specify the display aspect ratio when converting DOSBox videos. There's a helpful tip near the end of this page on how to do it with ffmpeg (find "display aspect ratio"), but I'm sure other programs have their own ways.
Yeah, I'm using Dosbox to record because no other recording program seems to treat it properly if they see the layer at all. For instance, IIRC camstudio records Dosbox, but drops a lot of frames and has corruption for some reason. FRAPS and Dxtory are rendering dependent and won't record out of a directx/opengl program.
I think I'll just have to convert.
