Broken Sword I & II - Enhanced cutscene project - Update

md5 · Post by **md5** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 12:16 pm

Impressive work overall Phreddy, kudos

Post by **eriktorbjorn** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:24 pm

Phreddy wrote: [edit]I loaded the intermediary file in RAD Tools, used the "Smack It!" option and it came out awful:

I haven't checked what you mean by awful, but I'm pretty sure that Smacker uses lossy compression. In other words, making a new Smacker movie will probably do a pretty good job of re-creating the compression artifacts that you worked so hard to get rid of. (Wikipedia's article about Smacker says that "[t]he compression rate can reach 1:12, but most of the quality is lost due to pixelation".)

DXA uses lossless compression, so all the details are preserved. It works best if each frame is as close as possible to the one that comes before it. If your filtering has caused shifts in the colours between frames, it could potentially mean that the DXA encoder won't be able to do a good job.

john_doe · Post by **john_doe** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:51 pm

The encoder uses the Smacker file just to get the number of frames and framerate.
You don't even have to create a new Smacker file.
So I'd just convert the cleaned up video (Avi I assume) to 8-bit PNGs (the RAD Tools can do that), rename the PNGs to match the Smacker filename and run encode_dxa with the original Smacker file and the new PNGs.
The resulting DXA probably won't look as good as the cleaned up video since the DXAs are palette-based where the Avi is probably true-color. Still, the videos would look much better than the Smacker originals.

Phreddy · Post by **Phreddy** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 9:32 am

I meant to convert to DXA, not Smacker

. Blame it on a brain fart :p. I had a rough day yesterday and went to bed right after work, but expect the DXA version today.

Phreddy · Post by **Phreddy** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 2:59 am

Ok, I now made an actual DXA encode. My SCUMMVM folder is in a drive I can't access right now, so I can't try it for myself. Therefore, I ask that you test it for me. Here is the download link:

http://rapidshare.com/files/66851197/intro.dxa.html

john_doe · Post by **john_doe** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 8:13 am

The DXA works in the standalone player.
But I see that all frames use the same palette, which is bad, since there are artifacts now caused by the color reduction.
If possible, you should try to let each frame have its own palette.

Raziel · Post by **Raziel** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 8:20 am

john_doe wrote:The DXA works in the standalone player.
But I see that all frames use the same palette, which is bad, since there are artifacts now caused by the color reduction.
If possible, you should try to let each frame have its own palette.

I was going to describe long and boring which you pinpoint with your few lines, thanks

It's VERY good in moving scenes, the artifacts there have been reduced to a minimum,
compared to the original (dxa from ScummVM's website, that is) but as john_doe stated
MANY little artefacts are now spread over the entire movie, making it look worse than
the one we have now, especially on steady scenes it looks like a step back.

Still, great work, keep on

Phreddy · Post by **Phreddy** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 8:56 am

Thanks for the feedback, it's much appreciated

.

john_doe, is this:

what you're suggesting (the highlighted section was not set in this attempt)?

john_doe · Post by **john_doe** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 9:18 am

Yes, that's looks right and should produce better-looking results.

Phreddy · Post by **Phreddy** » Sat Nov 03, 2007 3:45 am

Here's another version, this time made using john_doe's suggestion:

http://rapidshare.com/files/67074868/intro.dxa.html

Hopefully it looks better, as it now takes almost 64MB

. By the way john_doe, I couldn't find the standalone DXA player you were talking about and the ffdshow version I downloaded today doesn't have DXA decoding. Where ca I download this standalone player?

[edit:I'm a rude dumbass, aren't I?] Thanks for the compliment and encouragement, md5

.

Post by **eriktorbjorn** » Sat Nov 03, 2007 4:33 am

Phreddy wrote: Hopefully it looks better, as it now takes almost 64MB .

I haven't looked at this one, but in the one before that you could see that the backgrounds weren't entirely stable: Parts of them shifted slightly between frames. That probably contributed to the increase in size compared to the "original" DXA file.

If the palette is re-generated for each frame, you probably can't even be sure that the parts with the exact same colour are represented by the same value in two consecutive frames.

Ideally, the background should remain static, and the palette should only change when new colours are introduced into the picture. Of course, ensuring that is probably quite a bit of work.

Phreddy · Post by **Phreddy** » Sat Nov 03, 2007 1:06 pm

Uniformizing/stabilizing the colors on contiguous frames might be doable by simply making a new lossless encode with an extra filter. While I find out which settings to use, please take a look at this 64MB version.

Raziel · Post by **Raziel** » Sun Nov 04, 2007 5:46 pm

Gets better and better, keep on, Phreddy

As eriktorbjorn said, the background is still very unstable

Most noteable on the first scene left and right from the Eiffel Tower,
other than that it's awesome

Can't wait to get my hands on the finished version

Phreddy · Post by **Phreddy** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 11:14 pm

Here's a new version with the new filterchain and new palette creation set to "every 2 frames":

http://rapidshare.com/files/67715436/intro.dxa.html

Hopefully the changes made for a better-loking result.

Raziel · Post by **Raziel** » Tue Nov 06, 2007 8:46 am

It gets better

This time the background noise shows up only every two or three seconds

The problem is, the raven isn't animated anymore (stuck on the sky)
unless there's fade-in and fade-out of the credits...

Overall really looking good, keep on