Ross Scott

It really depends on the program you're using. I remember Cakewalk Studio (5, I think) tended to re-encode everything every time you exported something containing one or more original tracks that were already encoded, resulting in minor quality loss every time you saved the entire project into a single file. But it wasn't much of an issue for me, since I only had to deal with 10-12 tracks of raw wav and professional midi output. Only used it for video a couple of times, wedding footage and such. It wasn't a problem. The right answer is probably 'no preference', but if you aren't sure about your software I'd go for a raw, unencoded format. Processing speed or file volume aren't really an issue anymore in this day and age anyhow. No quality loss, that's what you'll want. You can always encode properly afterward. Well the advantage of compressed is a massive space savings. The video quality doesn't really matter provided you can see what's going on. When I set up the contest, I'll only want audio files back anyway, the video preview is for the editor's benefit to coordinate what's happening with the audio. The audio itself will be uncompressed .WAV files. Here's the story behind that: 1. The SEO guy for the person hosting the site wanted a small text ad placed on the site. While I was happy to have a (site hosted by... [link]) he wanted something more blatantly like an ad. 2. Around that same time Zach enabled Google Ads by accident. 3. I decided since I wanted to appease the host with his small text ad anyway, I may as well just leave the Google ads and maybe use the money for the videos or to give some kickbacks to people working on the site, I'll see. Regardless, this is as far as it goes. I want text-only ads in the bottom of the screen where they're not that noticeable. There will NOT be flash ads on the site, that's the last thing I want.

Well you're right in that I forgot about the heatsink and thermal grease, that skipped my mind. And dude, surely you realize the irony talking about future-proofing with an Intel chipset. Intel has changed its sockets god knows how many times now, whereas some AM2 motherboards from 2006 could run a modern AM3 processor today with a BIOS upgrade. Still, you make a point in that he may want to pay more for a motherboard that will support AM3+ as well as AM3. I'm willing to bet money AMD will still be making processors that work in present-day AM3+ motherboards longer than anything Intel will put out for LGA 1155. Aren't they already planning to move to LGA 2011 in a few months? Anyway, with this amount of cash, you can get the system running just about any game on HIGH settings, not medium. The point here is that with present day processors, for gaming, you're going to see MUCH more performance getting a mid to high-end videocard paired with a medium to lower-end CPU than vice-versa.

Windows XP mode is intended for business applications and doesn't support things like direct3D as I understand it. I'll be using an all-out virtual machine for some of the stuff I need. Also for those interested in sound editing, what format is good for you for matching sound to video previews? If there's no preference, Xvid AVI is easiest for me.

These parts will still give you pretty good performance in most games: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103652&Tpk=phenom%20ii%20720 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186188&cm_re=am3_motherboard-_-13-186-188-_-Product Despite being a slightly older processor, I've found it's almost exactly on par in performance with AMD's latest offering around the $120 mark (for gaming). So that's about $150 you could save with a relatively minor speed hit. If you take some of that money and get a faster GPU, I guarantee you'll have faster gaming than BTGbullseye's build.

If you want to a go with a midrange AMD processor and motherboard, you can shave about $100 off the price with maybe a 1-10% speed drop in most games.

This is true, though part of the reason I don't like Intel is because back when AMD was pummelling them with the first Athlon, they had faster CPUs for less money, but were gaining NO marketshare. Intel ended up engaging in a series of illegal business activites (like paying major vendors like Dell, HP, etc not to buy AMD processors, offering discounts below costs of manufacturing). This lasted for years and it's only just recently having some resolution (The European Union fined Intel 1 billion Euros, though it's kind of a slap on the wrist considering the damage). If Intel had actually obeyed the law over the past decade, the playing field could be much more even now with AMD perhaps having much better processors and both sides having more competitive pricing. That's not even true now, they've been leapfrogging ever since 2002. Case 1: In 2002, the Radeon 9700 blew away anything Nvidia had in every way imagineable, their Geforce 5 series was kind of a wash, and they didn't really come back until 2004 with the Geforce 6 series. Case 2: In 2009, the Radeon 5870 once again, blew away anything Nvidia had and it remained this way for a year and a half until Nvidia got the Geforce 400 series out the door. Case 3: RIGHT NOW, there's debate as to whether the Geforce 590 or the Radeon 6990 is the fastest card, so much so that AMD actually challenged Nvidia to a benchmarking throwdown between the two. The bottom line for these cards is it depends on the game, but the 6990 on average wins more game benchmarks than the 590 (though I believe the 590 gives better SLI results). Don't get me wrong, I prefer Nvidia hardware at the moment (I've gone back and forth on both sides), but to say they're simply faster at the top end just isn't true these days and hasn't been for a while.

This is pretty damn cool, I'm really curious how this will change things: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/intel%E2%80%99s_3d_transistor_faster_cooler_smaller Normal processors already are multi-layered, but only a few levels deep without as many interconnects as what this is. The difference here could be between a stack of pancakes on top of each other v. a Borg cube.

I think it depends on your price range. Show me an Intel CPU that outperforms a comparable AMD one in the $80 - 120 range. While everyone's needs are different, most games are less CPU-dependent than GPU nowadays. While Intel rules the top end (and with Sandy Bridge, now the midrange), it's difficult for me to justify higher costs on a component that depreciates so rapidly anyway. I'd argue unless the company has paid off a developer for special enhancements, ATI and Nvidia have equal video quality IF you don't enable antialiasing. With AA enabled, it's kind of give and take, though I think with Nvidia Inspector and some tweaking, Nvidia hands down beats ATI for AA options. ATI's MLAA mode is a good stopgap however, Nvidia needs a similar shader-based post processing AA method for games that just resist everything else. Really if you want the most performance for your money, I'd recommend ATI, but Nvidia has some goodies I prefer.

Hey everyone, I've received a couple emails asking about what I'm working on right now and I thought this would be a good news update in case people think I'm just twiddling my thumbs. If you don't want to read this, I've made an ADHD version at the bottom. Here's a breakdown of most things: * * * THE WEBSITE - While most of the actual work is being done by Zachary Reidell and Jexius, I'm trying to manage some changes to the website I hope to get implemented. In short, I want it easier to create new episode pages and have more information added to each of the episode pages as well, including some notes I have for some of the episodes. I also plan on updating the FAQ and make it easier to navigate. UPGRADING TO WINDOWS 7 - While this might be a simple procedure for some, I've been using Windows XP for a long time and I have a cornucopia of specialized software that I use, some of which is not compatible with 7 or at least the 64 bit version. I plan on setting up a virtual machine for the most incompatible stuff, but I'm trying to clean up all my files and determine everything I'll need to reconfigure or reinstall. I also already use a custom GUI I made via Litestep, so adapting to a new OS can be an involved process for me. VIDEO ENCODING TESTS - Since opinions are so divided on what format people want to download the videos in, I want to do some encoding tests on MKV and MP4 and see how they hold up, even when using VLC player. CIVIL PROTECTION - There are some important bugs to isolate with the engine that I encountered when making The Tunnel. Once I can have the reproduced reliably, I'll be looking for coding help to try and fix them, or else revert back to an earlier version of the source engine. FREEMAN'S MIND - I want to stay true to my intention of being more regular with releases. While I haven't decided on a new microphone to get yet, the next episode shouldn't have too much shouting, so I plan on starting on that in the next day or two. MOTION CAPTURE - I'm very interested in getting this up and running to see how much I can implement it into Civil Protection. I have the hardware I need, I just need more time to put into it. SUBTITLES - With the help of some volunteers, I'm reviewing some of the submitted subtitles for the different episodes and hope to get more up soon. SOUND EDITING MINI-CONTEST - I could use a backup sound editing person for future jobs that need extra help in the sound editing department. I plan to make an announcement on this later, but I have the perfect test in mind if people want to audition for this part. I don't have the files ready yet, but I plan to get them done soon. All I can say is if you enjoy sound editing, you should enjoy this test. If you're a sound editor and want to help out, let me know what video format for previews is most useful for you to work with when editing. COMPOSER SHOWCASES - I still plan on having some posts dedicated to different composers who contributed towards "The Tunnel," even if their music didn't make it into the episode. MICROPHONE RESEARCH - I've received lots of feedback on what microphones I should look into, which I need to sort through. I've also had at least one person claim that my problem lies with a lack of a compressor moreso than the mic, so I'm looking into that too. ENGINE RESEARCH - While I really have my hands full with Civil Protection and Freeman's Mind, I have tons of ideas for videos I want to work on, and one of which will be a very different format than anything I've done before (many different characters, continous storyline, longer content, etc.). It will still be comedy, but set in a medieval fantasy environment. Based on my research, I think the Dragon Age engine (Eclipse engine) will be the best choice for attempting this, even though the storyline won't be based on anything from the game itself. This means I'll have a new game engine to learn, which is likely to take a while. T-SHIRTS - This is a low priority for me, but I eventually hope to get some t-shirts made due to viewer request with the show logos and/or some quotes with Freeman's Mind along with accompanying artwork. EMAILS - While I've caught up on a bunch of them, I still have many to reply to. I should reiterate that if your email is asking questions that are in the FAQ, you may not get a reply. Also type "cl_drawhud 0" in the game console to get rid of the HUD in Source-based games, since about 5-10% of my emails seem to be about that question alone. GAMES - While this isn't consuming a large portion of my time, I am YEARS behind on games I've been interested in playing. I actually haven't had much downtime at all over the past several months. I went straight from finishing The Tunnel, to moving, to doing a series of Freeman's Mind videos. In addition to catching up on everything else, I'm trying to at least have some more fun in between. * * * ADHD version: Ross is working on lots of different things. He will start a new Freeman's Mind soon.

I guess this should have been stated outright, but if I release AVI it will be in Xvid. Well here's what I'm thinking so far: AVI Pros: Higher quality than WMV, highly compatible with modern computers without needing additional software, current leader in polls Cons: Not as high quality as formats supporting H.264 for the same size MKV Pros: Supports H.264, probably the highest quality option on here, supporters seem semi-fanatical Cons: Not only requires additional software, but too many people are using VLC player, which means many users will have playback problems or sub-optimal quality MP4 Pros: Supports H.264 as well, apparently is the most compatible for mobile devices and Macs Cons: Same as MKV, more restricted audio options WMV Eliminating, AVI more or less fulfills the role this used to have nowadays of being the most compatible. MOV Eliminating, I think only Machinima.com wants this format.

Once it's on Youtube under Machinima's channel, it's out of my control. Unless they can keep the exact same link it's not going to get re-uploaded, but I can always update the downloadable copies here (and have).

I suppose it is an option, but Machinima.com has botched up the majority of video uploads in one way or another. Take "Oil's Well." That was made at 1280x720 @ 30fps with no frame drop. So naturally, Machinima.com uploaded it at 640x360 at 23.976 fps. Or "Friday" where they hard-encoded the letterbox at a lower resolution. The situation is so prevalent I plan on listing notes next to each episode on the website revision explaining what's wrong with the Youtube version. But you're right in that the majority of viewers from the poll don't seem to care on the format.

This is why I'm not trying to go higher res on Freeman's Mind. Civil Protection has some more eye candy however. I won't be going to 1080 with it because due to having motion blur and no dropped frames and limitations of how the source engine saves AVI's, if I did, I would have to do it uncompressed, which isn't practical. 1920x1080 at 180fps (before downsampling motion blur) comes to 64GB a minute v. an average couple hundred megs per shot on Xvid at maximum quality. $7 actually, I'm looking through the mic recommendations however, it's mainly the issue of overwhelming the mic I want to fix. The vast majority of sound effects for the videos come from other videogame sources, almost all of which are at 44.1, so I record and encode at that to minimize any unnecessary resampling. From what I'm reading from everyone, I have a bit of a dilemma. H.264 on MKV or MP4 sounds like the best quality to size ratio, however it may require more effort of the viewers than I should be asking. For the record, VLC is NOT a great player. While it can play almost anything, on MKV/MP4 content, I've seen it actually drop frames somehow (while nowhere near 100% cpu usage), incorrectly interpret light values, and mishandle subtitles. This means even though MKV or MP4 may be the superior format, a lot of viewers are going to get a worse experience. It's unrealistic to assume everyone will install a better player and I'm not keen on encoding and hosting many different copies of the videos, so it may be a matter of whether to alienate people who want top quality of the videos v. inadvertently causing a less pleasant viewing experience for perhaps the majority of the viewers.

I feel like an idiot saying this, but I simply find the subtitles too confusing using the [intercom] tag. The good news is it may be possible to have italics on Youtube afterall. I read a thread saying that if the subtitles are converted to the SAMI format, then uploaded to Youtube, the italics are preserved. If someone wants to test this, go for it; I really think italics are the best way to go with the intercom.

Well I don't use a mac, itunes, a lot of my music is custom stuff from games that is unlikely to be indexed, and I think moods may be a little more complex than a happy or sad spectrum.

I've updated the post to include a poll for the results since I'm getting a lot of different answers. Go ahead and cast a vote there if you have a preference.

Well after reading this I'm leaning towards releasing in 2 formats, MAYBE 3. 1. something at a lower resolution for iphone / Mac people in a format they like or else something highly compatible 2. A higher quality format, probably with h.264, likely with MKV or MP4 3. (maybe) Something lower quality that's extremely compatible, like continuing WMV encoding, similar to what's been released so This I really have to call out. For the same bitrate, this is probably true, but I haven't seen ANY Youtube video that looks better than an Xvid encoding on maximum quality settings. I wouldn't mind seeing some codec shootouts comparisons if you have some links. Besides needing a format to distribute to users, I'd also like a format that is still extremely high quality that isn't psychotically demanding in terms of space for my own backups. So a lossy format, but not easily distinguishable from lossless. The videos I have backed up are higher quality than anything released so far; you'll want these new copies, they'll look better than the WMV ones to date. This is a possibility for lower quality copies, but I'm afraid it may disappear. There's not much I like about the format outside of its compatibility. e-t172: email me if you haven't already (I have about 20 related to this post I haven't gone through yet). You've impressed me a lot with your mention of black/white levels (an issue I've dealt with personally), releasing the shortcomings of VLC player, and generally being on the same page as me for the high quality copies. My viewerbase is large enough now that I'm less concerned about everyone being able to play the videos without some help (since there's always Youtube), and I'm more interested in creating some of the best copies possible in a format that's relatively future-proof.

Well one, when I was originally creating the videos, I wanted to remove as many roadblocks as possible to watching them. Also at the time, this was the ONLY format Machinima.com was accepting (nowadays it's MOV, go figure). I became proficient at Xvid encoding since at the time (early 00s) it was THE format for maximum quality for the space. That's changed however and I'm kind of lost as to what's the best way to distribute now. Everything is going to get re-released at higher quality at some point and at the original resolution, what's been distributed so far is irrelevant. This isn't going to happen unless breakthroughs are made on the Source engine for reasons that are a bit complicated to explain here. WMV is an awful format to work in, I agree. As for AVI, I would need software that can replace the functionality of Virtualdub + AVIsynth before I could move to another format completely. All my backups of the videos in AVI and will probably remain that way for a while. Well I am looking for someone that is prepared to handle the differences in content. For example, "Civil Protection: Friday" compresses at a fantastic rate. Lots of still shots and not much motion. The "Diary of a Zombie" video compresses HORRENDOUSLY due to all the fast motion, pronounced details, no motion blur, constantly changing view, etc. For that reason I am interested in quality-based encoding unless someone wants to manually tweak the numbers for each video rather than a standard size limit. I was planning on getting a different soundcard (probably an Asus Xonar) since Creative has pissed me off too much with their driver support and possibly an accompanying headphone amp, I'm wondering how much quality loss there would be for conversion to a regular headphone jack. I'm not aiming for ultra-professional, just halfway decent.

EDIT: I've updated this post to include a poll to try and gauge what users want better. I'll be leaving this up for a little while. [poll id=3] Well I'm gradually catching up on email and at the moment only have about 100 to reply to. In light of this, I want to get some more feedback from viewers on a couple of different topics. If you're registered on the forums, I prefer you just reply to this there, but if not, emailing me is also an option. VIDEO FORMATS: All the videos here have been released in WMV format for one simple reason, at the time, it really was one of the most compatible formats out there where people didn't have to mess with downloading codecs, or finding the right player. By and large, this led to a dead minimum of people asking me how to play the videos, which is quite an accomplishment, considering some of the questions I receive (i.e. "What game do you use for Freeman's Mind?"). Nowadays, I'm more open-minded about what format the videos are in, so I'd like to see what the majority of viewers want. MP4, AVI, MKV, etc. You tell me what format you want. I know some viewers have expressed interest in the videos being in an iphone-compatible format, which is doable. Beyond that, I don't know. Whatever format is decided on, I will NOT be providing technical support for how to play it, so you'll be on your own for that. Also, if you only watch the videos on Youtube, you can ignore all this. VIDEO ENCODING GURU: Tying into the first topic, some help would be appreciated by someone who is a video encoding FREAK. Someone familiar with lots of different compression techniques, knows about I-frames, B-frames, quantizers, H.264 compression, different container formats, browses places like doom9.org a lot, etc. If you're someone who is interested in getting the maximum amount of quality in the least amount of space, whatever the format, I might be interested in your help for converting all the episodes to new formats. I have all the Civil Protection episodes backed up in maximum quality Xvid-compression, and the Freeman's Mind episodes in a slightly lower quality version. Go ahead and email me if you're a video encoding veteran of sorts, and are familiar with many formats. MICROPHONE RECOMMENDATIONS: Up to date, I've just been using a cheap clip-on microphone from Wal-Mart for all the episodes. This combined with careful recording and sound editing means my voice comes out relatively well in the videos, however the last episode of Freeman's Mind reminded me of its biggest downfall, which is overwhelming the microphone input with my voice. You may not be able to tell from the videos, but I can get very, very loud when recording. So loud it often limits what places I can live for fear of disturbing all neighbors in a large radius around me. With my current microphone, it doesn't matter what recording levels I set the microphone to, it sometimes is just too much for the mic and I get volume clipping, which I hate. One aspect I like a lot about my microphone is it picks up relatively little in the background. When I was working at Machinima.com, they were using a Blue Snowball mic, which generally gets quite good ratings and reviews. I didn't like it however; on every setting, it simply picked up more background noise and echo than my cheap clip-on one, which is a problem for recording. So my standards for not picking up background noise are higher than what that mic provided. If you have recommendations on microphones that can handle a LOT of volume, don't pick up much background noise at all, and are relatively inexpensive, please let me know.

Maybe my understanding of it is lacking, but in general, I understand it as an extension of rational egoism. By "applying to most of reality" I meant that I think there are many situations where Objectivism fails to explain a lot of human behavior and / or fails to account for some behaviors that would be considered immoral by almost any other standard. The immediate problem I had with the dialogue is all of the side characters seemed to be speaking like they existed SOLEY to be an opposing viewpoint that didn't sound very believable to me of how real people behave. My memory on it is too fuzzy to remember the specifics, but I remember thinking conversations like these would never take place between anyone who wasn't senile.

Well the thing to understand is while a game may be good for modding, I need it to be good for cutscenes. Having lip sync, facial control, lots of control over animations and blending, etc. I'd be interested of seeing any videos from Oblivion mods that show really good custom CUTSCENES that aren't from the original game.

Actually Skyrim could be a good candidate, depending on the tools that come with it. My understanding of Oblivion was that things like lip syncing required a real workaround solution and reverting back to an earlier version of the toolkit, which isn't a great sign. I was leaning towards using the Dragon Age engine since it has a lot of assets I would need, but I've heard that it's not currently possible to get custom animations into it (only in-game ones), though I still need to verify that, so I'm not sure what I should be leaning towards. I'm very interested in finding the right engine, as some of my ideas for a fantasy environment are my "top level" ideas which I think would trump what I've done so far. As for what I want to do, one will be quite similar to Civil Protection, in a medieval fantasy environment, the other is something a lot different with many characters, also in a fantasy environment. They'll both be comedy, though the first one will have more of an adventure element to it, and the latter will definitely be dark comedy. Neither of these will be based on the worlds these games use, I would just be using the same engine.

Actually it doesn't, the TOS (or at least the original one) say you can't make anything without Valve's permission pretty much, but it's not enforced at all. If it passes, this bill is unlikely to be enforced in any real capacity that would affect machinima videos, don't worry about it. I'd say a worst-case scenario would be Youtube gets paranoid and takes down the videos, in which case an offshore video hosting site would almost certainly take over.