Difference between revisions of "Anri-chan"

Revision as of 21:22, 1 July 2007

Getting Started

Project Name

Anri-chan will begin by prompting you for a project name. This name will be used as the basename for your encoded videos (e.g. the high quality video will be called projectname_HQ.mp4, etc.). Avoid using spaces or characters other than letters and numbers in your project name. Also, avoid using single digits (like "1") for the project name ("run1" is okay, but "1" is not).

Video Source

If you are encoding from a DVD source, answer the next question with "y". As explained in the Anri-chan window, if you don't want to keep the disc in the drive the whole time you're encoding, you can simply copy the VIDEO_TS folder located on the DVD to the root (lowest) level of a hard drive, e.g. C:\, so that it is now located at C:\VIDEO_TS. Then, when Anri-chan asks for the DVD drive letter, input that hard drive letter (in this case, C) instead. In this way you can "trick" Anri-chan into thinking a hard drive is a DVD drive with a disc inside of it.

DVD Drive Letter

Next, enter your DVD drive letter (or hard drive letter if you copied the VIDEO_TS folder to one as per the instructions above). You can find out what letters Windows assigned to your drives by opening My Computer.

DVD Type

The next question asks whether you are using DVD-RAM. This is a special kind of DVD that is compatible with some DVD recorders. You can find out whether the disc is DVD-RAM by opening it in My Computer (you may need to right-click on the DVD icon and choose "Open") and checking whether there is a VIDEO_TS (regular DVD) or DVD_RTAV (DVD-RAM) folder in there.

DVD Chapter

Now Anri-chan needs to know which DVD "chapter" you want to encode. Terminology varies somewhat between different DVD recorder manufacturers, but a DVD "chapter" is easily found by looking at the files in the VIDEO_TS (or DVD_RTAV) folder on the disc. When you look inside the folder, you will see files something like these:

VTS_01_1.VOB VTS_01_2.VOB VTS_01_3.VOB

VTS_02_1.VOB

VTS_03_1.VOB VTS_03_2.VOB

The first number in the names is the chapter number. The second number is the file number; you don't need to worry about it (if you're curious, .VOB files have a maximum file size smaller than the capacity of a DVD, so it's sometimes necessary to split one chapter up into multiple .VOBs).

You can play these .VOB files using the free VLC media player for Windows. By using VLC to check what's inside each file, you don't have to guess which chapter your video is in when Anri-chan asks for it.

By the way, don't use leading zeros when you enter your desired chapter number (that is, enter 1, not 01, when you want chapter 1).

Indexing

After entering a chapter number, Anri-chan will explain that it is opening the DGIndex program to index the MPEG-2 video from the DVD chapter you selected. Indexing is necessary to open the video in Avisynth. This step is performed automatically by Anri-chan.

Video Properties

D

Anri-chan will next ask for the D of the game video. D stands for Dimensions and has two possible values, 1 and 4. Which of these two your game is can be found by looking at the DF page. (More information on D and other game video terms can be found in the Glossary.)

If your game is not listed yet, you can use the Anri-chan Extract Sample tool on your Desktop to make a small sample video to upload to one of the free video hosting services. Once you've uploaded the sample video, post the link in the DF topic in the Tech Support forum, and one of us will let you know what the D is (as well as add the game to the DF page). Don't forget to tell us the title of the game and the system you're playing it on.

Scanning

Next Anri-chan wants to know whether your video is progressive or interlaced. If you don't know, it's most likely interlaced (answer "n" to the question). However, if your video is a PC screen capture (made using e.g. FRAPS or Camtasia) and never touched a VCR or DVD recorder, then it may be progressive. If you answer "y" to the Progressive question, Anri-chan will skip over the next four questions automatically (because they are about interlaced video, not progressive).

VHS

If your video was ever on VHS, answer "y" to the VHS question. It doesn't matter that it was copied to a DVD later--if it was originally VHS, then it will need some additional filters applied to it.

Field Dominance

The next question is a tough one. You will most likely not know the answer if this is your first time using Anri-chan with your DVD recorder. If you make the wrong choice, then your encoded video will display a rapid jerking effect. This effect is probably best described in numbers: a video normally plays its frames in order, like this: 1, 2, 3, 4. If you make the wrong choice at the Odd Dominant question, then your video will play its frames as follows: 2, 1, 4, 3. This is obviously unacceptable, and you will have to run Anri-chan again, this time answering the other way. However, once you know whether your DVD recorder is odd dominant or not, you should never have to worry about this question again.

If you are recording using a PAL DVD recorder, there is more of a chance your video will be odd dominant than if it were an NTSC dvd recorder. However, PAL DVD recorders often make even dominant (the opposite of odd dominant) video, as well, so watch out.

Note that field (odd or even) dominance is irrelevant for F2 (see below) video. It is only important for F1 and F3 video. That is, if you are encoding F2 video, you will see the exact same results from Anri-chan no matter which way you answer this question.

1 pixel bob

The "1 pixel bob" question should be answered "n" unless you have already run Anri-chan once and are seeing a jittering effect in your video. This effect is like someone is shaking the video up and down rapidly.

If you are seeing this effect and answering "y" to the 1 pixel bob question does not solve it, you may be working with so-called "deflickered" video. Post a sample to Tech Support as explained earlier to have one of us confirm this. If you are working with deflickered video, then nate will need to encode your run for you (Anri-chan currently does not have this capability). Deflickered video is most often found in ports of older games such as the Sonic Mega Collection or the Wii Virtual Console. Please see this forum topic for more on deflickering.

NES

The next question is important to answer with "y" if your game is played on an NES. NES games ported to other systems are not included (if you're curious, it has to do with how many channels the mono audio is on as well as an ugly gray line on the left side of the NES image). Accidentally answering "y" if the game is not played on an NES will not be disastrous, but it will slightly increase your encoding time.

F

Now Anri-chan wants to know the F for your game. F stands for framerate and has three possible values: 1, 2 and 3. Find F the same way you found D earlier: on the DF page. Again, if your game is not listed there, you can use the Extract Sample utility to post a sample video to Tech Support so we can identify F for you. You can find out more about F in the Glossary.

2D/3D

Whether your game is considered "2D", too, can be found on the DF page. Though most games that appear 2D are classified as 2D here at SDA, some 2D games are considered 3D, and some 3D games are considered 2D. It's important to look up this answer for every game you encode.

(If you're curious, this value actually has nothing to do with whether the game is 2D or 3D - it actually controls the so-called Framerate Decimation Paradigm, that is, whether lower quality versions of your video will be F2 or F3. The distinction is made by whether there are F1 blinking effects in the game, which are much more common in 2D games than in 3D ones. If a game with such effects is encoded at F2, blinking objects will disappear or stop blinking entirely. Therefore, lower quality versions of so-called 2D games are encoded at F3 instead of F2 to avoid this problem.)

Content Properties

Trimming

Anri-chan will now ask whether you would like to trim off unwanted video from the beginning and end of your chapter. If you have more than one video per DVD chapter you'd like to encode, you can use this function to accomplish that by trimming down to one video at a time.

Drag the slider at the bottom of the VirtualDub window that appears to find the numbers of the first and last frames you want to keep for your final video. Note that the image appearing in the VirtualDub window is low quality as it has not been encoded yet.

If you want trim off the first 80 frames but leave the end of the video alone, enter 80 for "First frame to keep" and 0 for "Last frame to keep". 0 is shorthand for the first or last frame of the video.

Station ID

You are next asked whether you want to append a so-called Station ID ("StatID" for short) to your video. You will only want to do this if this video has already been accepted to SDA. For more on StatIDs, see the StatID section of the Avisynth page. Because the StatID is the only thing standing between your video and YouTube pirates who will post it and claim it as their own, you will definitely want to write a StatID for your video if you are having it published it on SDA.

If you want to see a preview of what your StatID will look like, using the Station ID Preview tool included with Anri-chan (a shortcut to it should be on your Desktop).

Review Settings

You're almost ready to encode! Anri-chan asks whether everything is in order with the settings you chose. If not, you can answer "n" and go back and enter them again.

Ready to Encode

Anri-chan notifies you that it has saved your settings in the projectname_job.bat file. Find this file inside your project directory on your Desktop. To start the project again with the same settings at any time, simply double click that file.

Encoding Options

Anri-chan will ask you which type of videos you want to encode. All types it asks about are required for submission to SDA in the vast majority of cases. If you are encoding for yourself or for SDA verifiers, answer "y" to only the "XviD-Normal-Quality (576Kbps) movie" option.

(If you're curious, you can divide the number before the "Kbps" by 8 to find out how many kilobytes per second the video will take up ("Kbps" stands for kilobits per second, and there are normally 8 bits in a byte). The first three or four video options are for H.264 MPEG-4 video encoded by x264, which is very high quality. The last two are for XviD-encoded (DivX-compatible) video, which is of lower quality than the H.264.)

Encoding

Encoding begins. Note that the "eta" (estimated time of arrival) displayed by x264 will not tell you very much, because every video is a 2-pass encode and because the figure is not that accurate to begin with.

Encoding may take a very long time depending on the speed of your computer and on what answers you gave Anri-chan earlier. Answering D1 has the most serious effect on encoding time; it is not unheard of for the encode to take up to several weeks if you have a very long video for which you requested a high quality D1 encode. You can speed up the process by closing down programs you are not using. Also, there's usually no reason not to leave your computer on at night so the encode can finish.

When your encodes finish, you will find .mp4 and/or .avi files (depending on which video types you chose to encode) in the project directory. Contact Mike Uyama for instructions on how to send these in to the site for publishing.