Record video from Mesen successfully?

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oRBIT2002
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Record video from Mesen successfully?

Post by oRBIT2002 »

Has anyone tried this successfully? I am not using the internal video recorder (it records to ancient AVI-format) but have tried with "OBS Studio" but I got issues with the framerate, there are framedrops every now and then. CPU Usage is about 5% so that's probably not it (I've got an i9 CPU).
Anyone got any hints what kind of software I should try or settings I can modify perhaps?
tepples
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Re: Record video from Mesen successfully?

Post by tepples »

Use Mesen to record to AVI using whatever codecs it supports. Then use FFmpeg to transcode to a container and codec in wider current use on the Internet, such as the WebM stack or the MPEG-4 stack. If you need help with specific tasks at FFmpeg's command line, such as pixel doubling to work around YouTube's lack of high motion at LD, SD, or ED resolution, let me know; I have recipes.

I'm guessing that the MPEG-4 stack hasn't been integrated directly into Mesen because Mesen's current maintainer lives in the United States, and the United States still recognizes software patents.
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Dwedit
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Re: Record video from Mesen successfully?

Post by Dwedit »

For people who don't like FFMPEG's command line interface (you practically need to refer to a manual every time you try to use the program), you can use AviDemux as your transcoding tool instead. Despite the name, it deals with more formats than just AVI, supporting most modern formats.

The new VirtualDub2 (not the ancient version) can also be used for modern video formats.
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calima
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Re: Record video from Mesen successfully?

Post by calima »

Tepples, direct encoding to h.264 at a high quality would use far too much cpu while still being bad quality due to single pass. It simply doesn't make sense, it's the right path to record to a low-overhead format and transcode later.
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oRBIT2002
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Re: Record video from Mesen successfully?

Post by oRBIT2002 »

Can anyone recommend a good lossless/almost lossless AVI codec then perhaps?
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Dwedit
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Re: Record video from Mesen successfully?

Post by Dwedit »

(post rewritten)

There is a VFW X264 codec available called "x264vfw".

I've tested it in several programs that can output AVI files.
Test results:
Flash 8: Does not work at all.
FCEUX: Does work, but requires some work afterwards.
Mesen: Does not support VFW compressors at all.

---------

To use X64VFW with FCEUX:

Install X264VFW (install the x86 version), install VirtualDub 2, install AviDemux
Open FCEUX
"Record AVI", select x64vfw codec, click Configure
Change colorspace from "Convert to YUV 4:2:0" to "Convert to YUV 4:4:4", this will skip the chroma downsampling step that would badly ruin the video quality.
Set Rate Control to "Single Pass -ratefactor based (CRF)", set rate to 20, that should be good enough quality.
Turn on "VirtualDub" Hack
Capture the video, go to "Stop AVI" when done.
Note: Do not use the fast forward feature in FCEUX, it will mess up the audio. Using speed control (200%, 300%, 400%) is okay though.

Now you have a nonstandard AVI file (due to VirtualDub hack) with video as H.264, and audio as PCM.

Open that AVI in VirtualDub2
File -> Export -> Stream Copy, save it as an .mp4 file
File -> Save Audio, save it as a WAV file

Open the MP4 file in AviDemux
Audio Menu -> Select Track
In first dropdown combobox, pick "...Add an audio track", pick the WAV file saved earlier
In the dropdown combobox that says "Copy", change it to AAC
IMPORTANT: You will need to set the audio shift, do not skip these steps.
Use the buttons to seek to the first frame, note the time it says there.
Set the audio shift to that time. I've seen it start at either 881ms, or 297ms.
Set output format to MP4
Save the output video to a new file

Now you have a standard MP4 file with compressed video and audio. Unfortunately, Firefox won't play H264 with YUV 4:4:4 colorspace, but Chrome does support it.

Example video file: ending of NES Platoon (1m:52s, 2852KB)
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tokumaru
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Re: Record video from Mesen successfully?

Post by tokumaru »

I can successfully record video in Mesen using the lossless video codec that comes with DOSBOX. I don't remember its name right now, but it shows up in a separate folder after you install DOSBOX and you can just right-click the .inf file and select "install".
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