UK Dynamic League tournament movies

Hiya all!

Since its Christmas, we've decided to film some matches from the tournament with this new ClickSmart 510 camera which Logitech gave us. We've only managed to get three movies from the camera (8Mb isn't enough!). Here are two of our top players battling it out on VF4.

I present you Jason Samoy as Akira and Genjin Jeffrey as Lion:

<a target="_blank" href=http://animeinc.users.btopenworld.com/Jason_Samoy_vs_Genjin_Jeffery_1.avi>Akira vs Lion 1</a>
<a target="_blank" href=http://animeinc.users.btopenworld.com/Jason_Samoy_vs_Genjin_Jeffery_2.avi>Akira vs Lion 2</a>
<a target="_blank" href=http://animeinc.users.btopenworld.com/Jason_Samoy_vs_Genjin_Jeffery_3.avi>Akira vs Lion 3</a>

 

Problems

I personally cannot see these, what codec do I need?

 

Okay all fixed (hopefully!)

Okay... The movies have been recoded to DivX 4.0. They should be much smaller then the previous lot. Mind you, the quality isn't that great.

Use these new links, please!

<a target="_blank" href=http://animeinc.users.btopenworld.com/Jason_Samoy_vs_Genjin_Jeffrey_1.avi>DivX 4.0 movie 1</a>
<a target="_blank" href=http://animeinc.users.btopenworld.com/Jason_Samoy_vs_Genjin_Jeffrey_2.avi>DivX 4.0 movie 2</a>
<a target="_blank" href=http://animeinc.users.btopenworld.com/Jason_Samoy_vs_Genjin_Jeffrey_3.avi>DivX 4.0 movie 3</a>

 

Re: Okay all fixed (hopefully!)

Steve, I'm glad you folks have your shite together ...
a couple of requests:

1. We don't wanna see the dynamic league ad once, much less three times for one match. How about splicing those little one-round flicks together into one movie next time? People will be willing to download one three meg movie rather than three one meg movies.

2. You were right, the quality was really bad. If you guys did the most efficient encoding humanly possible to save space and download time... go nuts and make the next move five megs instead of three. That extra 35% increase in size would go a long way towards making a more watchable movie, and modem people don't mind a 5 meg download (or do they?).

You don't want to shaft your best players by making them look bad, right?

 

Re: Okay all fixed (hopefully!)

for people like me on a modem, 5 mb for the UK players is 5 mb too much.

 

Re: Okay all fixed (hopefully!)

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[1. We don't wanna see the dynamic league ad once, much less three times for one match. How about splicing those little one-round flicks together into one movie next time? People will be willing to download one three meg movie rather than three one meg movies.]
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They are not ads, it info on who is playing against who and which characters they are using. This is an advange to viewers and for us:

1) Players can identify clips if the filename is somewhat renamed.
2) We can keep a catalogue of players movies.
3) If the filename needs to be less than 8 letter + extension, it can be done without losing the info on who is playing who.
4) and that you know its a Dynamic League movie.

I admit that the spliting of rounds is a bit "fussy", but at the end of the day, people can watch one round and if they like it, they can download the rest of the rounds.

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[2. You were right, the quality was really bad. If you guys did the most efficient encoding humanly possible to save space and download time... go nuts and make the next move five megs instead of three. That extra 35% increase in size would go a long way towards making a more watchable movie, and modem people don't mind a 5 meg download (or do they?).]
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You're right, quality is better. But quality comes with a price and that means waiting much longer to see the matches and in some terms, paying more on line rental. One thing I certainly know that the majority of people don't like is that fact that if they wait for a say a 5MB movie to download, and then find out that the movie lasts like 30 secs, they'd be p***ed! You also have to contemplate with people who use Internet Cafes with timers and also people who are still on dial-up and are on "pay-as-you-go" type ISP setups. Added to that fact that we only have limited server space. Its better to have 50 movies ready to download at 1MB each than 10 movies at 5MB each.

Anyway, the source came from a Logitech ClickSmart 510. It compresses the movies in the camera that captures at 10fps on an 8MB SmartMedia card. I doubt making these movies 5MB each would make the picture quality any better. Unless you want to donate a comcorder or a laptop to us, this is all we have at the mo.

 

Re: Okay all fixed (hopefully!)

They are not ads, it info on who is playing against who and which characters they are using. This is an advange to viewers and for us:


They're irritating. But daioh does it too, so I guess I'll settle for it. But once per MATCH, not once per round. This is a must.

One thing I certainly know that the majority of people don't like is that fact that if they wait for a say a 5MB movie to download, and then find out that the movie lasts like 30 secs, they'd be p***ed! You also have to contemplate with people who use Internet Cafes with timers and also people who are still on dial-up and are on "pay-as-you-go" type ISP setups. Added to that fact that we only have limited server space. Its better to have 50 movies ready to download at 1MB each than 10 movies at 5MB each.


lol, to put in the most friendly, affable way possible: you're full of shit. Fifty movies at a meg apiece takes up the SAME AMOUNT OF SPACE AS TEN FIVE MEG MOVIES! What weighs more, a pound of rocks or a pound of feathers? DuRRRR!@ ...

50 separate downloads and 50 separate movies having to load into our media players. 50 double clicks. 50 filenames to keep track of. 50 rounds, and who can remember which specific one had that nice lion okizeme combo? This is a MONSTER PAIN IN THE ASS for modem users. Ten at five megs each is much more reasonable and manageable. We're talking the SAME CONTENT mind you! 50 rounds spread across fifty movies is the exact same as 50 identical rounds spread across 10 movies, except that 10 movies are easier to keep track of, move around, manage, and open. Hell, I'd rather see five movies. I was never scared of a ten meg download with a modem.

Now as for sparing those who pay more often than monthly for the internet:

First, I can't speak for england, but in america very very very very very very few people who still pay by the minute. We have free ISP's that give you 40 hours a week. Paying per minute would be insane. I'm sure the UK has something close to this.

Second, internet cafes may charge by the hour, but they're fucking LIGHTSPEED. A 5 meg movie is about a 30 second download if it's slow.

Third, a 5 meg divx (when encoded properly) lasts a while. The frigging .wmv's from daioh have 5 full rounds stuffed into 4.5 megs. That's not 30 seconds, that's 1.5 - 2.5 minutes. I have a great anime clip that gets almost a meg per minute.

Finally, if you have so little confidence in dynamic league's quality of play that you don't think a modem user would be willing to commit 30 or 40 minutes for a *real* movie then you insult the players and the people downloading. But I'm sure you don't think that, you're just backpedaling, looking for an excuse for chopping up a perfectly good match into 3 tiny movies. Nobody has and keeps movies measured in KB rather than MB anymore. I know several modem users who would download TBZone flicks, which are close to 20 megs.


Anyway, the source came from a Logitech ClickSmart 510. It compresses the movies in the camera that captures at 10fps on an 8MB SmartMedia card. I doubt making these movies 5MB each would make the picture quality any better. Unless you want to donate a comcorder or a laptop to us, this is all we have at the mo.


Your hardware may be great or it may be crappy, but compression's got nothing to do with that. Once you have raw digital video movie source, you can encode it into any format you want at any resolution you want. How big the movie files turns out depends on your skill and knowledge.

I'd recommend this: Get TMPGenc and VirtualDub. They run on any windows machine and allow you to encode or convert various movie files. If I were bored, I could probably re-encode those flicks you released and drop the filesize by a third while retaining the same (cough) quality. You might as well learn to do it yourself. Then you can make spanky divx 4.1 movies with great quality and small filesize, or even some of those nice daioh-type .WMV's, which have some of the best compression I've seen.

Just admit it was your first try, it wasn't too hot, and humor us by trying harder in the future. If I see any more 800 K movies, I'm not gonna bother with them, even if it would only take 15 seconds of my time to download and watch.

 

Re: Okay all fixed (hopefully!)

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lol, to put in the most friendly, affable way possible: you're full of shit. Fifty movies at a meg apiece takes up the SAME AMOUNT OF SPACE AS TEN FIVE MEG MOVIES! What weighs more, a pound of rocks or a pound of feathers? DuRRRR!@ ...

50 separate downloads and 50 separate movies having to load into our media players. 50 double clicks. 50 filenames to keep track of. 50 rounds, and who can remember which specific one had that nice lion okizeme combo? This is a MONSTER PAIN IN THE ASS for modem users. Ten at five megs each is much more reasonable and manageable. We're talking the SAME CONTENT mind you! 50 rounds spread across fifty movies is the exact same as 50 identical rounds spread across 10 movies, except that 10 movies are easier to keep track of, move around, manage, and open. Hell, I'd rather see five movies. I was never scared of a ten meg download with a modem.
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Let's put it this way, you can have 50 of the best rounds, all from 100 different players. instead of 10 of the best matches from 20 different players. And this is based on the resources we have right now. As I've said before, 5MB 2.5min movies are all good and well, but only if we have the server space to do it. And as I've said before, we have very little server space. Added to the fact that we have a very limited bandwidth allowance, its better to make 1MB movies right now.

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First, I can't speak for england, but in america very very very very very very few people who still pay by the minute. We have free ISP's that give you 40 hours a week. Paying per minute would be insane. I'm sure the UK has something close to this.

Second, internet cafes may charge by the hour, but they're fucking LIGHTSPEED. A 5 meg movie is about a 30 second download if it's slow.
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We've got AOL, which is dreadful & BT Anytime, which doesn't work half the time. There's probably more, but the majority of users here in UK still use pay-as-you-go type ISPs.

In terms of Internet Cafe's, well then you haven't been to Tower Records have you... They charge like a £1 by every 20mins!

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Finally, if you have so little confidence in dynamic league's quality of play that you don't think a modem user would be willing to commit 30 or 40 minutes for a *real* movie then you insult the players and the people downloading. But I'm sure you don't think that, you're just backpedaling, looking for an excuse for chopping up a perfectly good match into 3 tiny movies. Nobody has and keeps movies measured in KB rather than MB anymore. I know several modem users who would download TBZone flicks, which are close to 20 megs.
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What has the quality of play got to do with the quality of the movie? You haven't even thought of all the elements we have to face with serving these movies. You have to take note of the modem users, the time it takes to download movies, the available server space, the restricted bandwidth on the servers and the source of the movies that it was filmed with. If you really want to see the quality of play from our players, its best to fly over from the US to the UK and watch our players in person.

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Your hardware may be great or it may be crappy, but compression's got nothing to do with that. Once you have raw digital video movie source, you can encode it into any format you want at any resolution you want. How big the movie files turns out depends on your skill and knowledge.
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As I said in my previous posts. I have a Logitech ClickSmart Camera 510 with 8MB of SmartMedia. Logitech has its own codec which compresses the movie realtime in the camera and records at 10fps. I've only managed to capture 3 out of the 5 rounds of the Samoy and Genjin, which means they were already split into three seperate movies. Now, if the source was uncompressed, and running at say, 30fps, it wouldn't be a problem. Since the source is compressed and running at 10fps, picture quality has already been sacrifice. There is no way on God's Earth that you can bring that picture quality up from that source. Increasing the resolution would make the pixels bigger and increasing the frame rates wouldn't make any difference what so ever.

As I've said before, donate us a DV Camcorder, or a laptop with a firewire port, and you'll be able to watch high picture quality movies your way.

 

Re: Okay all fixed (hopefully!)

Ok, the gist of what you're saying is this:
Since you have limited space, let's just keep small one-meg movies of the best rounds, and throw out the rounds that aren't worth the space... is that about it?

My point then is that no single round movie, no matter who's playing, is a really entertaining download. It's just one round. Even one with the best play in the world would be a disappointment. It doesn't show who wins the match, it doesn't show which player in a close contest pulls off a miracle, it doesn't show someone who's down 2-zip (kyasao for example) finding the nerve to come back and win with style. Single rounds are just boring. Before you released your UK movies, I found a couple of one-rounders on Feixaq's movies and bitched because it was not worth the effort to watch one round of mediocre play. It still isn't. There's only so much entertainment to be found in fifteen or twenty seconds.

If you want to put that space to the best possible use, don't take your fifty best individual rounds and expect us to religiously download fifty tiny movies. Instead, kust filter out all the matches where there was just one decent round, or two decent rounds, and keep matches where there were three to five good rounds. I'm going to assume UK players have close matches occasionally and don't have just one good round every couple of hours.


Is the only way to convince you of this to take a poll? I'm really really sure that even people on modems here will say "fuck downloading a ton of tiny moves, I want a complete match, please."

As for the internet cafe, that's how much they cost here in america, unless my estimation of a pound is way off. The one down the street is six USD an hour. But the download speed of a dedicated T1 or T2 makes it NOT AN ISSUE. I can download a meg in literally 15-20 seconds there. Do the math. For the one pound (20 minutes) I could download all fifty of these theoretical one meg clips. But I'd much rather use my time to get 10 good matches.

re: aol - LOL! How sad for you. When you say "we" do you mean the majority of UK people or you personally? If it's you personally and AOL's got this cap on how much server space you can have, that's something you ought to rectify. AOL's the bottom of the barrel. I guess the explains why my attempts to download straight from the source seem to fail a lot. If you mean UK users in general.... yah AOL's the biggest provider in the US too, but no matter what ISP people go with, the massive overwhelming majority in the US are month-to-month billing. I'm really surprised to hear that most people pay-as-they-go in the UK. You positive about that? Not just guessing maybe to boost your argument?

Well anyway thanks for reading this far. One last word about the logitech. I'm pretty sure that if filesize is a concern to you, then these can be better, and that's my point. If we're stuck with that sort of quality, ouch. But if you're so concerned about disk space, then these movies could be smaller yet. Unfortunately I can't put my money where my mouth is because I'm home for the holidays, and this crappy windows95 machine crashes every time if I try to use video manipulation tools.

Please consider making full matches rather than single rounds. Ask around.
Anyone else who wants to pipe in about this, feel free too.

 

Re: Okay all fixed (hopefully!)

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re: aol - LOL! How sad for you. When you say "we" do you mean the majority of UK people or you personally? If it's you personally and AOL's got this cap on how much server space you can have, that's something you ought to rectify. AOL's the bottom of the barrel. I guess the explains why my attempts to download straight from the source seem to fail a lot. If you mean UK users in general.... yah AOL's the biggest provider in the US too, but no matter what ISP people go with, the massive overwhelming majority in the US are month-to-month billing. I'm really surprised to hear that most people pay-as-they-go in the UK. You positive about that? Not just guessing maybe to boost your argument?
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no.. I was just putting examples of monthly billing dial-up ISPs in the UK. And as you can see, we don't have many or any prominatent ones. My servers? Nah.. not AOL. That's British Telecom (BT) which are not very good either to some extent. I'm fortunate to be on DSL, although I have no money to support it! I'm sure people in the UK still use "pay-as-you-go" dial-ups. You are talking to a nation where "pay-as-you-go" cell phones are carried by people of all ages...

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One last word about the logitech. I'm pretty sure that if filesize is a concern to you, then these can be better, and that's my point. If we're stuck with that sort of quality, ouch. But if you're so concerned about disk space, then these movies could be smaller yet.
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It can't be helped since the only way to make the picture quality better via the Logitech camera, is to either get a laptop with a USB port (no money for that)... or carry my PC to the venue (not very practical). This way the compression isn't done by the camera, but instead its software, which encodes in Indeo 5 and captures at 30fps and lasts as long as the hard drive can take (instead of dumping it into that 8MB SmartMedia). Making the movies even smaller actually worsens the picture quality, which is why I didn't choose that option. The camera is really good, but not for capturing tv footage. It's better used on people. I'll always have a use for it even if i do get a camcorder.

Full match movies have already been considered ages ago. Its just with the circumstances right now, full matches can not be achieved until more equipment and staff are available.