Beginners Guide to Capturing and Recording Melee Footage.

[Kadano]

Does anybody have experience with deinterlacing footage? I finally got my Pinnacle Video Transfer to work and the option for best quality automatically interlaces the footage. I've read the first couple pages of this thread, and all the options that have been talked about are with programs I have never heard of and am unfamiliar with.

I've done the simple stuff like using VLC to deinterlace and I've used Adobe Premiere to do it as well, but neither of these options give me the perfect result. For example, when character are dash dancing, grabbing, etc. I can still see the comb effect on them.

Don't use best (three LED) setting. Or at least use it without the best.txt hack, iirc that might be what forces keeping interlacing.

When you use "best" setting, the interlaced video is encoded directly to h264. You can't deinterlace that properly afterwards. At the 2-LED setting, it will deinterlace somewhat to 30 fps before encoding, which looks much better. (Still tiers below proper 480p capture or even 480i60 with Yadif2x deinterlacing though.)

 

[Thomas Johnson]

Don't use best (three LED) setting. Or at least use it without the best.txt hack, iirc that might be what forces keeping interlacing.

When you use "best" setting, the interlaced video is encoded directly to h264. You can't deinterlace that properly afterwards. At the 2-LED setting, it will deinterlace somewhat to 30 fps before encoding, which looks much better. (Still tiers below proper 480p capture or even 480i60 with Yadif2x deinterlacing though.)

Thanks!

 

[Thomas Johnson]

Don't use best (three LED) setting. Or at least use it without the best.txt hack, iirc that might be what forces keeping interlacing.

When you use "best" setting, the interlaced video is encoded directly to h264. You can't deinterlace that properly afterwards. At the 2-LED setting, it will deinterlace somewhat to 30 fps before encoding, which looks much better. (Still tiers below proper 480p capture or even 480i60 with Yadif2x deinterlacing though.)

And what is the best.txt hack? I haven't heard of it.

 

[Kadano]

And what is the best.txt hack? I haven't heard of it.

Iirc you just put an empty text file named "best.txt" in the USB stick's root folder.

 

[Ed94]

I just wanted to put this out here for improving the picture quality of melee captures since this thread is about that and someone may be able to take advantage of this.

Unfortunately I don't have the streaming equipment so I cannot tell you exact quantity to do this by, except for some rgb values and percentages, but if you can do some post-processing before putting the video source through the stream, you could make it look better using by correcting the stream based on the information below.

So essentially when I was doing some remastering of skin textures for characters I noticed a pattern keep coming up overall for all the textures in the game, and how the game outputs its various tone levels.

For pretty much the majority of textures there is a tint of to much yellow and/or green from neutral grey. Black Levels also come out too light from 0 to around 45 on the RGB 256 scale. So if you were to edit the source a bit before it heads to the stream, you could do a pretty decent improvement to your capture quality so long as your capture device is providing as neutral signal as possible. This could also be used to edit the video capture before uploading to youtube.

​

For the purposes of this demonstration I will be making these changes on the above freeze of melee with Fox and Marth on their neutrals on Pokemon Stadium as I have found it to have the most neutral lighting of the 5 stages used in tourneys.

The game is running on dolphin with me viewing it on a VG248QE calibrated display running the game internally at native res with fullscreen at 800x600. No enhancements whatsoever.

Spoiler: Black Level Adjustment

First thing to do to start improve the picture is to drop the black tones to a lower level.
The best way I can show the amount is using photoshop's curves adjustment:

The curve shows 0-255 levels of tone. Moving nodes to the bottom right lowers the light levels of values while to the top right left brightens them.

To get the deeper blacks that output should have I'll be making the new lowest value of the spectrum (8,0), then to make sure I keep the rest of the tones the same for the most part past 45 I put another node at (45,38). This allows for a more natural adaption to the new black level:

The result:

Spoiler: Color Correction

Now that tone levels have been adjusted colors can be properly corrected to look as neutral as they can be.

Melee has a naturally warmish tint to it emphasizing yellow and greenish values that just make it look more dated.

There are two general ways to remove this, you can either edit the RGB values as best as you can to remove the tint which will do an ok job, or using some video editing software or a plugin for post processing for your stream, you could change the output of specific colors of the video source.

For the RGB Value change, I reduce red's output to 247 and green to 243.
The resulting change leaves the whites less bright so it would be good to raise the contrast a bit to compensate.
Result:

Now if you have more direct control over the colors, it would be better to reduce the output of yellow by around 30%. Then reducing the output of green to 252. This should really remove any excessive tint and leave finished video look as corrected as it can be while keeping the game vanilla.
Result:

The only other thing to do now that may help is reducing the saturation by 5%. Just to erase as much of as you can of the excess yellow-green.

Imgur Album

Its not a huge difference but every little bit counts. More drastic changes can be made I was focusing on keeping the original game look intact so I kept it subtle.

 

[Cthulhu_MD]

Does anybody have experience with deinterlacing footage? I finally got my Pinnacle Video Transfer to work and the option for best quality automatically interlaces the footage. I've read the first couple pages of this thread, and all the options that have been talked about are with programs I have never heard of and am unfamiliar with.

I've done the simple stuff like using VLC to deinterlace and I've used Adobe Premiere to do it as well, but neither of these options give me the perfect result. For example, when character are dash dancing, grabbing, etc. I can still see the comb effect on them.

There are some deinterlacing tutorials, but the issue stems from the fact you're using composite which is interlaced. You'll need component cables, via using the Wii to capture the games in progressive scan i.e; 480p. 480i is only possible via the Gamecube and Wii composite cables. Since the GCN Digital AV cables are rare and expensive, it's best to find a CRT or small LCD that has Component input and plug your Wii in it.

I think since you're using Pinnacle, I don't think you can do that... unless you get a converter or something.

 

[NS23]

I found a CRT with HDMI, would I be able to just connect it to my computer and stream?

 

[Odon]

Recently bought a dazzle and am having trouble trying to get the driver to install. can anybody assist me with this?

 

[Thomas Johnson]

Recently bought a dazzle and am having trouble trying to get the driver to install. can anybody assist me with this?

So you have the driver and it just won't install? Is it stopping midway through, not showing up as installed?


It might be possible you have the wrong driver, but you can probably the correct one here for download:

http://cdn.pinnaclesys.com/SupportFiles/Hardware_Installer/readmeHW10.htm

 

[Odon]

So you have the driver and it just won't install? Is it stopping midway through, not showing up as installed?


It might be possible you have the wrong driver, but you can probably the correct one here for download:

http://cdn.pinnaclesys.com/SupportFiles/Hardware_Installer/readmeHW10.htm

I was able to get the driver to install properly. now I'm having issues getting the audio to work correctly but I'm getting there

 

[HoverZero]

I know this is a REALLY old post, but I'm assuming functionality has to do with the amount of input lag there is? I don't care about video quality, I just want no input lag on the capture device.

 

[Dolla Pills]

I know this is a REALLY old post, but I'm assuming functionality has to do with the amount of input lag there is? I don't care about video quality, I just want no input lag on the capture device.

In my experience it's not a good idea to play through your recording as that seems like it's always laggy (maybe I'm wrong but it certainly has been from the devices I've used). What you want is either a capture device that has pass through (input your game signal, it will capture it on your computer and also output it without lag to a tv/monitor for you to play on) or some way to split the signal so that your capture device and tv/monitor are getting the same signal. What are you looking to get btw?

 

[HoverZero]

In my experience it's not a good idea to play through your recording as that seems like it's always laggy (maybe I'm wrong but it certainly has been from the devices I've used). What you want is either a capture device that has pass through (input your game signal, it will capture it on your computer and also output it without lag to a tv/monitor for you to play on) or some way to split the signal so that your capture device and tv/monitor are getting the same signal. What are you looking to get btw?

I'm sorry. I don't think I phrased that well. I play on a CRT and intend to play on that while recording. What I'm asking is will there be any input lag on the TV when I use any of these?

 

[Dolla Pills]

I'm sorry. I don't think I phrased that well. I play on a CRT and intend to play on that while recording. What I'm asking is will there be any input lag on the TV when I use any of these?

I've used splitters both powered and unpowered as well as a pass through connection and I haven't noticed additional lag.

 

[Jazz Chef]

Hey! I'm looking to do some Screen capture gameplay for Melee on my CRT. Problem is my school required me to have a mac so thats what I got. I see they have a Diamond Multimedia USB 2.0 video capture Device for Mac and was wondering if anyone had any experience with this. Also How could I use this to get a setup that tournaments have or people streaming on Twitch use? Thanks!

 

[Psyche76]

I recently bought the pinnacle dazzlle hd, what splitters do you recommend for it? I have a sony trinitron if that makes any difference

 

[FuzzyQuills]

Going to pipe up here to list what I use for my melee recordings, take with a grain of salt though, as I use a PCI card for mine, of which not everyone can use, especially on a laptop.

PC hardware:
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 3000+
RAM: 1.5GB
Display/GPU: 1280x1024 CRT, Nvidia GT 8800 (I think that's what it is anyway)
Capture Card: DVI Co FusionHDTV DVB-T Plus with Composite Video attachment.
Sound card is onboard.

PC Software: Windows XP Professional SP3, DScaler, PowerStrip.

I use DivX with built-in Deinterlacing turned on, 2000kbps CBR bitrate (I think, would have to check), 720x576/720x480
I can post a video quality test at a later date.

With this, I can record and play at the same time, no lag whatsoever. Well, except for that time I got stuttering due to a fragmented hard disk, which reminds me...
Some tips on optimizing your destination disk you're recording to:
1) If it is a Hard Disk Drive (not an SSD or USB flash drive) make sure to defrag your destination hard disk when recording to prevent possible stuttering and freezing. (Note that splitting the signal will not fix issues in the recording itself arising from disk fragmentation)
2) A good practice for almost any disk is to backup your clips and fresh format the drive; this prevents stuttering/lag caused by an inconsistent filesystem.
(Generally, NTFS is pretty reliable for this unless you don't safely remove each time when using a PC)
Then, you can either move the backed up clips back on, or move them to an archive disk.

My two cents. Happy recording.

 

[BKsLittleWorld]

Dude I have a Question because I dont know Melee that well (currently trying to learn IC) I did a little Turner and somebody threw a Jon to me because he said the capturing would lead to delayed input. Can you help me with it? Is this true and if so why. Would you recommend buying one of yours or do you think It might be because the Capture Card is between Wii and TV

 

[Sempai]

I was able to get the driver to install properly. now I'm having issues getting the audio to work correctly but I'm getting there

I never got my dazzle to work, It would black screen in and out all the time. How did you fix your problem?

 

[XenoFalcon95]

I have a pretty not good computer, would I be able to record dolphin with fraps or something without too much stutter?

 

[zooksman]

Does anyone have experience capturing melee with the VC500? I saw

which is amazing quality and in 60FPS, but according to the spec sheet it only supports 30FPS. Can anyone confirm whether it is possible to record in 60FPS with that device?