All anyone needs to know about color space

Use RGB.

I still don't know what "TV levels" or "PC levels" are, but that's it, really.

ConvertToRGB(clip, matrix="rec709")

All this was prompted by news (to me, anyway) of a cheaper, better alternative to the HDfury. That made me take a harder look at my AviSynth video settings.

Right now I'm playing Jet Set Radio (free on Vita and $2.50 on PS3 thanks to PlayStation Plus), and I recorded one of the sewer levels. Those levels are always dark. Playing the level on my monitor was fine, but my raw capture (MJPEG) was darker than I remembered. I learned from this thread that the capture was YUV (confirmed with MediaInfo and the Blackmagic site), and that RGB would've been ideal.

That's when I looked for an AviSynth solution and found this page. And wow, what a difference...

Raw capture (YUV):

Converting to RGB:

For me, this is huge. Going back to the Tekken 3 days, Castel's combo videos were always clearer and crisper than my own. My blanket solution was just to brighten the whole clip, but I wasn't completely satisfied. Fast forward a decade and I was capturing Einhänder from my PS3 and expecting great things. However, the first two levels were as dark and muddy as ever, and certainly a far cry from the crisp picture from emulators. I'm going to try Einhänder again, and while I don't expect that level of improvement, I'm still excited to see the results.

Downsides to using RGB? Considerably longer encoding times. The 1st pass was about 38 fps instead of about 88, and the 2nd pass was only a little slower at about 36 fps instead of about 60. I also know some AviSynth filters can't be used with some color spaces, but I rarely try anything fancy.

-

EDIT: Well that was a waste of time... after actually encoding with my usual settings in Xvid4PSP (i.e. without color space lines in AviSynth), the videos look pretty much the same, both looking more like my RGB vid. Quite a difference from the raw video screen grabs above. Looks like I still won't bother adding any color space lines to my AviSynth scripts after all, since I'll get the fastest speeds and the best picture quality anyway.

Weird-ass dream (2013.01.06)

OK, maybe not completely weird. I dreamt the guys from Cajun Pawn Stars drove to Las Vegas and met up with the guys from Pawn Stars so History could have another special. Not unlike that Sturgis thing, really...

Ripping soundtracks from PS1 games that aren't Red Book audio

I got Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha after 15 years or so and I wanted to rip the soundtrack. But I couldn't just rip it in iTunes, and I didn't want to go to some shady site and download it from some shady site (...and I couldn't find it online on one of them file sharing sites either).

I found a great site here:

http://www.momentaryfascinations.com/technology/the.spyro.soundtracks.html

Unfortunately, on my Vista setup, I'm missing a DLL or something so PsxMC wouldn't work... but I'll try again later.

...

Oh yeah I got a great MLG joystick for my PS3 from Kane for $65 (thanks!)... of course I still wouldn't have gotten it if my Hori Real Arcade Pro 3 didn't "mysteriously disappear." (I blame my cousin)

Words I hate, Part I

• whilst

Goddamn what a stupid word.

Blacking out frames with AviSynth (BlankClip)

Jeez, I don't know why it took me this long.

I've been capturing shows off the DVR as a hobby for about a decade now. Over the years I've fine-tuned my editing technique. Before I used to clumsily trim the clips right in VirtualDub, never knowing if I really did find and cut all the commercials out. Joining the clips was a pain and clips pieced back together were usually out of sync anyway. Today, I use AviSynth to consistently and elegantly trim my videos.

With VirtualDub's view -> Audio Display feature, I'm able to more accurately edit my captures down to the frame. When the commercials end and the program begins, sometimes the audio from the commercial spills over a few frames into the program. And sometimes the audio of the program begins before the first frame of the program appears.

The goal, of course, is to remove all commercials. Editing strictly by frames, one segment might start with a a bit of audio from a commercial. In that case, I use ApplyRange to mute that portion:

ApplyRange(1797,140673, "Amplify",0.0)

If the audio of the program plays before the first frame of the audio, I would start at the audio. I'll then use FreezeFrame to either copy the frame from the first frame of the program back to the audio, or I'll black out those other frames entirely.

The issue was finding a black frame in the first place. A lot of times I could try to find a black frame between commercials or at the very end of the program. But why not take the guesswork out of it and add a single black frame at the beginning or end of your video? I prefer the end -- here's an example of me blacking out the last few frames:


c1=AviSource("Untitled 50.avi").Trim(151,1948)
black=BlankClip(c1,1)

AlignedSplice(c1,black)
FreezeFrame(1797,1799,1799)

I guess I'll make a proper post about capturing and editing TV shows with my setup later on.

iOS6 sucks for music podcasts

I used to be able to go directly to the track I liked in Jaytech Music Podcasts on my iPod touch and now I can't! Thanks a lot, Apple...

Update: Just delete the podcast app (don't worry when it says it'll delete all your data - my podcasts stayed), close the podcast app, close the music app, shut down your iPod touch, and restart. Podcasts will play from your music app again!

Space Channel 5

Been playing a lot of Space Channel 5 Part 2 (which was on sale last week), and that made me go back to the first Space Channel 5.

For some reason, I was missing some beats (both Dreamcast and PS2 versions), and I had no idea why. Was the timing stricter? Sort of. A little more practice and I discovered that with all the dance battles (as opposed to shooting battles) in the first section of the first stage, you have to hit chu a split second after you'd think you were supposed to hit it. This might apply to other dancing battles (the last set in Jaguar's battle in stage 2 comes to mind).