Sony Vegas, DOSBox, Windows Media Player and VLC.

[Tawmis]

So... I finally finished King's Quest VI, long play... and man, is it long. It's like 4 hours of game play - which I will be slicing down (to remove a lot of my wandering in the minotaur tunnels, and the assortment of deaths I met)...

Now the odd thing is - the videos play fine in Windows Media Player (there's 14 different captures, done over the course of months of playing).

However, I can't import them into Sony Vegas 13.

So I thought, "I wonder how they look in VLC."

Well, the intro cut scene looks like an acid trip colored version... and then when Alexander lands on the shore, it looks normal, but then when I go one screen north, it looks like a EGA version of King's Quest VI with the coloring.

Now what I've done with the previous DOSBox captures is just play the videos through Windows Media Player - and just let FRAPS catch it. But a 4 hour video of RAW AVI (that's not compressed) is going to be:

1. A long time to capture
2. A massive file size

I tried installing the K-LITE CODECS, but that did nothing to resolve any of the issues, so I uninstalled.

Any ideas?

If need be I will do the FRAPS capture tomorrow, but just wanted to see if I was missing something...

You know something's wrong because when you try to open with Sony Vegas, despite the file type sort, it says "Unknown"

And just for confirmation, here's the error in Sony Vegas.

This plays fine and looks normal in Windows Media Player...

... but not so much in VLC. LOL

[JasefWisener]

AVIs are always weird for me with any editor, but I feel like Vegas is usually one that has a lot of issues with them. The best bet may be to convert them to a different format.

[Tawmis]

AVIs are always weird for me with any editor, but I feel like Vegas is usually one that has a lot of issues with them. The best bet may be to convert them to a different format.

It's weird because, when I use FRAPS to capture it (or anything) to the raw .AVI format, it's fine.

(I ended up doing the Windows Media + FRAPS capture last night, because I figured by the time I got up in the morning, it'd be just about the right time that the video would be done - and it works).

A mere 57GB in size. :)

[Tawmis]

The plot thickens... I remember this happened with the King's Quest V video... but the video and audio are way out of sync...

EDIT: To be clear, the DOSBox capture video is in sync just fine (when played through Windows Media Player).

It's something that happens when capturing the video (through FRAPS), that it loses sync. Also when importing the FRAPS capture, you can even see the audio extends past the actual video in the time line.

So it's something that FRAPS is doing that's causing the delay.

EDIT AGAIN: I just changed my settings according to this video, and will see if that fixes the FRAPS Audio lag issue later tonight.

[Collector]

Have you installed the ZMBV codec? Also, if you are going to use FRAPS why not do the Win version for the hi-res dialog portraits?

[Tawmis]

Have you installed the ZMBV codec? Also, if you are going to use FRAPS why not do the Win version for the hi-res dialog portraits?

The version I am using is the one from GoG, so I don't think it has the Hi-Res version for the character portraits.

For the ZMBV codec, I did do the "install movie codec" that DOSBox has in the folder (not sure if that installs the ZMBV codec?)

EDIT: Found the ZMBV codec (.INF and .DLL) on my system and installed. No change.

[Tawmis]

Interesting - watching it in Windows Media Player, it's all synced... as soon as I hit FRAPS to record - you could see the delay in audio/video.

Just realized, I also have Camtasia on my computer (which I normally use for capture, then edit other stuff, for like presentations) - but on a whim, decided to import into Camtasia - and what do you know? Imports fine. When I play it in Camtasia, seems to play fine too. Now saving it as an MP4 to see if I can then use it to edit in Sony.

[Tawmis]

Well, that worked. I was able to import the DOSBox video captures into Camtasia. Save it as one large MP4 file.
From there, I was then able to import the newly saved MP4 file into Sony Vegas and do the edits.
(Although the entire game play is 5 hours and 45 minutes... this is a seriously long game... granted I died quite a few times... But this is me cutting out being lost in the minotaur dungeons, and me trying to guess the cliffs of logic - both of which I eventually went to a walkthru to save my sanity).

I think I am going to "speed walk" the dungeon and the cliffs of logic (and unspeed walk, where there's something to do)...

[Tawmis]

I did find this article on Reddit about making higher version of videos... Anyone know if this works?
Reddit Article.

[MusicallyInspired]

The sync issue is because the ZMBV codec uses variable framerate. A lot of video editors don't like variable framerate. You'd have to convert the video to a calibrated framerate format. You can do this with Handbrake fairly easily and encode it with x264. I went through the same thing when I was doing a let's play of Blackthorne in DOSBox on my YouTube channel. However, ZMBV also records DOSBox footage in its raw format without any filters (no aspect ratio correction, upscaling, or anything). This means you have to correct that in post-production with Sony or whatever you're using.

I use AviDemux which is a lightweight demuxer/simple editor that can save videos without re-encoding them (which is handy for splitting up videos quickly) and doesn't lose any visual quality. It also has filters, though, like upscaling and aspect ratio settings. That does require re-encoding but it's still very good at what it does. You have to upscale the video first to say 1280x720 in one filter instance, and then scale down to 960x720 in a second filter instance so it does them in that order specifically to get that 4:3 ratio and still have nice crisp pixels because you always want to scale down to the correct aspect ratio rather than up (which stretches video and causes more blurring than necessary). can throw it in Handbrake to handle the variable framerate mess and THEN load it into Sony Vegas or whatever you're using. Bit of an assembly line but it's worth it for maximum quality.

Of course, the way you're going about it works too. Whichever you're comfortable with. For me, I'm a stickler for aspect ratio and sharp pixels so I spend the time making sure it looks the way I want it to look. Not everyone cares about that, though.

[Tawmis]

The sync issue is because the ZMBV codec uses variable framerate. A lot of video editors don't like variable framerate. You'd have to convert the video to a calibrated framerate format. You can do this with Handbrake fairly easily and encode it with x264. I went through the same thing when I was doing a let's play of Blackthorne in DOSBox on my YouTube channel. However, ZMBV also records DOSBox footage in its raw format without any filters (no aspect ratio correction, upscaling, or anything). This means you have to correct that in post-production with Sony or whatever you're using.

I have no idea why I didn't think of using HANDSHAKE since I use it for ripping all my DVDs.
At least when I did it through Camtasia, it also did the trick and kept the resolution and quality (and did it pretty quickly, undoubtedly due to it being only 320x200, despite being nearly 6 hours of video).

You have to upscale the video first to say 1280x720 in one filter instance, and then scale down to 960x720 in a second filter instance so it does them in that order specifically to get that 4:3 ratio and still have nice crisp pixels because you always want to scale down to the correct aspect ratio rather than up (which stretches video and causes more blurring than necessary). can throw it in Handbrake to handle the variable framerate mess and THEN load it into Sony Vegas or whatever you're using. Bit of an assembly line but it's worth it for maximum quality.

Going to try the upscale/downscale tonight when I get home, since I already have it "fixed" through Camtasia. See if I get what I want.

Thank you!

[Collector]

For me, I'm a stickler for aspect ratio and sharp pixels so I spend the time making sure it looks the way I want it to look. Not everyone cares about that, though.

Me too. But then that is one reason that I like the ECE build of DOSBox. It has the "pixel perfect" patch that gives even pixels, even with aspect correction. Also, it is not junked up with a bunch silly, unneeded patches, but is does have a few audio and graphics patches that lend to greater accuracy/enhancements, some (not counting Munt) might eventually make it into the official DOSBox.

[MusicallyInspired]

I still use DAUM because I like the CRT Bright pixel shader. That really takes me back.

[Collector]

Have you checked out the "pixel perfect" patch?

[MusicallyInspired]

I have not. If it has pixel shaders too I'll switch immediately.