TrekkiesUnite118
Established Member
So a couple of us were discussing this in Discord and felt this could be a fun thing to do. The general idea is different devs will take the same source video files and encode them to the best of their ability to run on various different FMV capable consoles. So not only Saturn but also 3DO, PS1, N64, Sega Genesis/CD/32X, etc. are all welcome. The general goal would be to see how each console and it's different codec approaches stack up against each other. The competition effectively starts now and will end at a determined deadline (I was thinking 31st of January, 2022, but if people need more time we can extend it.)
Rules:
FMV Samples - Google Drive
Cheater Category:
For each FMV Sample the following titles will be awarded:
Criteria for Best Overall Quality:
February 7th, 2022
Judges:
Entries should be submitted to this thread.
Rules:
- You must encode all the samples.
- You may prep the videos prior to encoding in whatever way you like to help with encoding
- Contrast boosting
- Brightness changes
- Colorspace conversions
- Frame Rate changes
- Resolution changes
- Applying different filters
- Audio changes/compression
- etc.
- You may NOT use an alternate source of the FMV. You must use the master files provided.
- You may encode the videos in whatever codec you want using the encoding software you feel works best.
- You may either use official tools or make your own.
- You may split the videos into multiple videos if it makes encoding and playback easier.
- You do not have to fit all your FMVs on one piece of media (They don't all have to fit on one disc or one cartridge)
- The FMVs MUST run on real hardware.
- Multiple Entries per platform are allowed and encouraged.
- For now we are putting a cut off at 5th Gen consoles. Dreamcast and beyond tends to go beyond the focus of this as at that point all of those systems can do MPEG or better. Though I see no problem with including GBA and Nintendo DS.
FMV Samples - Google Drive
Cheater Category:
- Any entries that use additional non-stock hardware to help with FMV decoding fall into this category.
- These entries will be judged separately from other entries
- This includes but is not limited to the following:
- Video CD Decoders (Saturn, 3DO, CD-i, Asia VCD PSX)
- FPGAs in Flashcarts (Mega Everdrive, Mega SD, MSU-1, etc.)
- RAM Expansion (N64 Expansion Pak, Saturn RAM Carts, etc.)
For each FMV Sample the following titles will be awarded:
- Best Overall Quality
- Most Technically Impressive Video Specs (Ex: Overall Video Specs are impressive even if the results may not be great)
- Most Technically Impressive for the Hardware (Ex: May not look the best but is very impressive considering hardware limitations)
- Most Clever Use of Hardware Features
- Potato Award (While it's technically video playing back, we've thrown any sense of acceptable quality out the window)
Criteria for Best Overall Quality:
- How much of the original video details survived the encoding process?
- How intrusive are the compression artifacts (if there are any)?
- How does it look and sound in it's intended viewing environment? (Ex: How does it look on a CRT over Composite?)
- Audio Quality
- Video Frame rate
- Overall color depth
- Video Resolution
February 7th, 2022
Judges:
- Nick from PandaMonium Reviews Every U.S. Saturn Game
- Patrick from the Sega Saturn Shiro Podcast
- SaturnDave from the Sega Saturn Shiro Podcast
- FilmCow
- ChillyWilly
Entries should be submitted to this thread.
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