I just can't get good results! Help a newbie (frag movie :o)

[Jmmsbnd007]

I have spent days using different versions of xvid, reading many guides, and generally tinkering around with XviD. But I just can't seem to get good results! Here's a short clip I made:
http://www.team-exigent.net/files/team/downloads/render.avi (Sorry about the debug info, forgot to turn that off :P)

Settings:
(My goal is 20MB/minute, and this test clip is slightly over that, with poor quality.)
2 pass mode, quarterpixel resolution, default B-VOP settings, square pixel aspect ratio, target bitrate... anywhere from 1500 to 3000 kbps, target size (anything corresponding with 20MB/minute), maximum motion search precision, best VHQ mode, turbo on/off, use chroma motion on, cartoon mode off (tried it on, too), frame drop ratio and max i-frame interval default, min/max quants: 1|16 (tried many settings here), etc. I've tried almost anything! Help a newbie :(

[*.mp4 guy]

Reset the settings to default, then cut the resolution in half. If you know how run some mild bluring filters, definately use a lower resolution tho.

[DeeGee]

First Person Shooter game graphics are a b**** to compress due to the (usually) fast motion and sharp images. You usually have to give up on some of these: bitrate, quality or size... If the 20MB/min is the limit, you need to give up on the resolution and sharpness.

[Jmmsbnd007]

Originally posted by DeeGee
First Person Shooter game graphics are a b**** to compress due to the (usually) fast motion and sharp images. You usually have to give up on some of these: bitrate, quality or size... If the 20MB/min is the limit, you need to give up on the resolution and sharpness.
I really have trouble believing this 100% because of all the other frag movies that I've seen. It especially hits hard with the crosshair :/

[Didée]

Enabling "antialiasing" in the game already would help a lot.

[*.mp4 guy]

Seriously add some bluring it will make the image seem more "natural", it will be a lot easier for the codec to deal with.

[Jmmsbnd007]

Originally posted by Didée
Enabling "antialiasing" in the game already would help a lot.
I have. I captured with 16x AF and 6x FSAA. It's not a capture quality issue; that's excellent. Look at how blocky and gross everything is, especially the crosshair:(

[Didée]

Originally posted by Jmmsbnd007
I have. I captured with 16x AF and 6x FSAA.
Oh, okay. Then the aliasing is only caused by the missing high frequencies. Which is no wonder, with all P-frams @ q16 and B's @ q25 ...

Are you sure you need to encode that stuff @ 800*600 ? Seriously, using a smooth resizer to go to 640*480 would improve the result a lot. As would using DeBlock postprocessing for playback.

[WaryWolf]

i've seen a lot of people have trouble compressing frag movies after they've used a sharpening filter to get a nice effect. if you've done this you may want to tone it down a little or even disable it. and, as Didée stated, you don't need to use a resolution of 800x600, even if it is the current trend in gaming movies....

you can also consider turning down anisotropic texture filtering, because this will sharpen and enhance detail on textures which makes them harder to compress.

and finally you could use a lower framerate. 25 fps doesn't look bad at all if you're using motion blur or supersampling to smooth out the video, and you'll save around 15% of the bitrate.

[Jmmsbnd007]

Originally posted by WaryWolf
i've seen a lot of people have trouble compressing frag movies after they've used a sharpening filter to get a nice effect. if you've done this you may want to tone it down a little or even disable it. and, as Didée stated, you don't need to use a resolution of 800x600, even if it is the current trend in gaming movies....

you can also consider turning down anisotropic texture filtering, because this will sharpen and enhance detail on textures which makes them harder to compress.

and finally you could use a lower framerate. 25 fps doesn't look bad at all if you're using motion blur or supersampling to smooth out the video, and you'll save around 15% of the bitrate.
Nope, no filters were used (yet). The actual final product will be in a widescreen 7xx by something resolution, but I didn't get around to resizing test renders. I'll probably end up capturing at 90 fps and lowering it down to 30 so I get more of a motion blur effect when people turn/look around and whatnot, unless there's some blur filter I can use in vegas. (<-- noob). Thanks again.

[Jmmsbnd007]

I'm going to try again with a slight blur and then again at 640x480. I'll report back here in a bit with results.

[Jmmsbnd007]

Originally posted by Didée
Oh, okay. Then the aliasing is only caused by the missing high frequencies. Which is no wonder, with all P-frams @ q16 and B's @ q25 ...

Are you sure you need to encode that stuff @ 800*600 ? Seriously, using a smooth resizer to go to 640*480 would improve the result a lot. As would using DeBlock postprocessing for playback.
More info on DeBlock?

[Didée]

Either

http://img228.echo.cx/img228/3597/xviddecoder8mh.png ,

or the "Postprocessing" tab in ffdshow ...

[tiberious]

a couple of gaming movie sites have posted 'tutorials'

for some quite nice info about resolution, fsaa and some codec information etc:
- http://www.own-age.com/forum/thread.aspx?id=5883&page=1

for the basic settings used by shaolinproductions:
- http://www.shaolinproductions.org/content/view/41/46/

and also for some general settings and many aspects of game video encoding see video editing forums in:
- http://www.own-age.com/forum/