It seems that you're using an outdated browser. Some things may not work as they should (or don't work at all).
We suggest you upgrade newer and better browser like: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera

×
Community
General discussion (archive)How to edit DOSBox videos?(14 posts)solved(14 posts)solved
(14 posts)solved
Pages:
1
This is my favourite topic
Posted November 15, 2014
How do I edit videos taken with DOSBox? I know how to record and all, but when I import into Movie Maker '12 the image looks like a bent LCD screen. Watching the raw movie looks good, but of course it's scaled after the output of the game.
This question / problem has been solved by InfraSupermanimage
Posted November 15, 2014
So you're capturing for like Youtube?

Movie Maker... Ugg, never touched that program before, and i don't think i want to...


It really depends on the software you're using. I'm familiar with VirtualDub, and in there you can specify frames x-y to use filter resize that will fix the visuals, but you'll have to re-encode...
Posted November 15, 2014
Is it free? That's the only reason to why I would ever use MM. As you said, it's total garbage but I have nothing else and I don't feel like cashing out on something I rarely do. I'm not Pewdiepie or Markiplier exactly.
Posted November 15, 2014
I tried VirtualDub but it couldn't import the video at all.
Posted November 15, 2014
avatar
Ghostbreed: How do I edit videos taken with DOSBox? I know how to record and all, but when I import into Movie Maker '12 the image looks like a bent LCD screen. Watching the raw movie looks good, but of course it's scaled after the output of the game.
The problem is the codec that DOSbox uses for its recordings. Most editing software seems to be unable to use it without corruption or crashing.

Here's what you can do:
1. Get a program called "Xmedia Recode". It's completely free.
2. Put your video(s) in it (it's probably best to just use one at first to get the hang of it)
3. Choose "MP4" as the video format
4. In the "Video" tab, set "Codec" to "H.264", "framerate" to 30; "Rate control mode" to "Constant Quality"; "Quality" to 20; "Profile" to "Baseline"; "Preset" to "Slow" and (this is pretty important) "Color Mode" to "YUV 4:2:0 Planar 12bpp"
5. In the "Filters/Preview" tab, go to "Resolution". VGA games generally run with a resolution of 320x200, so you can scale it to something like 640x400 or 1280x800 (use "Nearest Neighbor" as the "Scaling Mode").
SVGA (640x480) can either be left in its original resolution or scaled to something like 1280x960. When using the 640x480 option, I have noticed that it's best to use "Bilinear" or "Bicubic" as the "scaling mode", because otherwise, it might result in weird color artifacts in the video.
6. Click "Add to queue"
7. Click "Encode"

These newly encoded files should work with about every editing program. For very simple, linear videos, I can actually recommend Avidemux (also free).
Post edited November 15, 2014 by InfraSuperman
Posted November 15, 2014
avatar
Ghostbreed: I tried VirtualDub but it couldn't import the video at all.
Handbrake can correctly read the DOSBox video format. You don't need to adjust any of the settings from the defaults unless you have some specific purpose. The resulting video is standard MP4 which works fine in Windows Live Movie Maker and any other modern editors.
Post edited November 15, 2014 by Arkose
Posted November 15, 2014
avatar
Ghostbreed: ..
avatar
Ghostbreed: ..
Yes VirtualDub is free. Although it natively only supports AVI format, and VFW (Video For Windows) codecs, meaning Direct Draw codecs don't work on it.

Thankfully there's plugins, one for mp4 and a VFW codec version of x264.

plugins
x264vfw

Keep in mind VirtualDub is sorta a sledge-hammer approach, good for cropping out unwanted portions of a video (say, commercials) and simple editing or recoding. If you wanted to do more, another program is probably a better choice.

A note on encoding: When possible it's best to do a 2 pass/stage encoding. First pass usually determines the bitrates to distribute over the video, and the second one optimizes the usage of the bitrate.

edit: I think the CCCP might include codecs that VirtualDub can use, off hand i don't remember...
Post edited November 15, 2014 by rtcvb32
Posted November 15, 2014
EDIT: My bad, it does indeed exist. I'm just tired.

Thanks, but nearly every setting you told about isn't present in the software.
For example, there's no H.264, only H.263. And there's nothing called Constant Quality either, it's called Constant Quantizer. There's also no Baseline in the profile selection.
Post edited November 15, 2014 by Ghostbreed
Posted November 15, 2014
HitFilm 2. The trial is limited to exporting to YouTube but if that's what you're going to do anyway it should be enough (also, you can rip your own video from YouTube once it's online :D). Have been using it a lot. It's pretty darn easy to use and rather powerful as far as I can tell.

Edit: I'm not completely sure it can handle the DOSBox video files, though. I was going to say that it can handle DOSBox' exported video but then I remembered that I've been using Fraps to capture DOS games which obviously changes things.
Post edited November 15, 2014 by F4LL0UT
Posted November 15, 2014
avatar
Ghostbreed: For example, there's no H.264, only H.263.
Don't be confused too much. There's a large standard called MPEG-4, which is drawn from. The whole codec and stand is AVC (Advanced Video Codec), however back in 1998-ish Project Mayo (DivX) and Xvid took parts of it and incorporated it in their encoders, ignoring quite a bit of it. This led to good compression and being fast. h.264 and newer is basically Mpeg-4 except using a lot more feature, and improved new technologies.

There's also an older codec that i think was h.263, which was actually a video codec Microsoft had for Net Meeting, and was merely a bug-fix allowing higher bitrates. When more standard Mpeg-4 codecs were avaliable, h.263 was abandoned as a codec entirely. Used quite a bit for porn actually...

This is from memory so part of this may be inaccurate, i'll check and edit this as appropriate in the next few minutes.


edit: NetMeeting also used h.261. The rest of it is pretty accurate.
Post edited November 15, 2014 by rtcvb32
Posted November 15, 2014
avatar
Ghostbreed: How do I edit videos taken with DOSBox? I know how to record and all, but when I import into Movie Maker '12 the image looks like a bent LCD screen. Watching the raw movie looks good, but of course it's scaled after the output of the game.
avatar
InfraSuperman: The problem is the codec that DOSbox uses for its recordings. Most editing software seems to be unable to use it without corruption or crashing.

Here's what you can do:
1. Get a program called "Xmedia Recode". It's completely free.
2. Put your video(s) in it (it's probably best to just use one at first to get the hang of it)
3. Choose "MP4" as the video format
4. In the "Video" tab, set "Codec" to "H.264", "framerate" to 30; "Rate control mode" to "Constant Quality"; "Quality" to 20; "Profile" to "Baseline"; "Preset" to "Slow" and (this is pretty important) "Color Mode" to "YUV 4:2:0 Planar 12bpp"
5. In the "Filters/Preview" tab, go to "Resolution". VGA games generally run with a resolution of 320x200, so you can scale it to something like 640x400 or 1280x800 (use "Nearest Neighbor" as the "Scaling Mode").
SVGA (640x480) can either be left in its original resolution or scaled to something like 1280x960. When using the 640x480 option, I have noticed that it's best to use "Bilinear" or "Bicubic" as the "scaling mode", because otherwise, it might result in weird color artifacts in the video.
6. Click "Add to queue"
7. Click "Encode"

These newly encoded files should work with about every editing program. For very simple, linear videos, I can actually recommend Avidemux (also free).
Thanks alot. I had a few problems due to tired eyes, but it got sorted out. :)
Posted December 30, 2014
avatar
InfraSuperman:
I have a problem. After doing what InfraSuperman said in Xmedia the output becomes weird.
Weird as in the video lags. This have happen in other games too but, for the most time it works good with any game.

Watch this video to see what I mean.
Post edited December 30, 2014 by Ghostbreed
Posted December 31, 2014
avatar
InfraSuperman:
avatar
Ghostbreed: I have a problem. After doing what InfraSuperman said in Xmedia the output becomes weird.
Weird as in the video lags. This have happen in other games too but, for the most time it works good with any game.

Watch this video to see what I mean.
That seems to be an issue with the latest Xmedia Recode version, if you're using that.

Before reading your post, I used version 3.2.0.1, because I'm kind of lazy when it comes to manual updates, and it worked absolutely fine. Then, I installed 3.2.0.4 to test for your issue and the resulting videos were exactly as stuttery as the one you posted (one of the games I tried was indeed Robocod).
I'm not sure why that happens, but it appears to be some kind of bug in the framerate conversion. It doesn't seem to work with any change in the framerate, because even converting a 25 fps video to 24 fps results in occasional, but very noticable stuttering. Since most VGA DOS games are recorded in what appears to be 70 Hz/fps, using the 30 fps setting causes this massive problem.
The videos were only ever acceptable if I set the framerate to "Keep Original". However, this also has its own problems, such as obscenely and unnecessarily large files, especially for 3D games.

My suggestion would be to revert to an earlier version and then testing each new release by getting the portable zip package from the main download page before actually installing it.
As I said, 3.2.0.1 works perfectly fine and 3.2.0.3 has the same issue as 3.2.0.4. I haven't tried 3.2.0.2, though.
Posted December 31, 2014
Thanks yet again. Indeed, I am one of those who keeps my software updated. Seems like it always isn't such a good idea. ;) I'll revert back to 3.2.0.1 then. :)

Update: There we go, smooth fps across the board. :)
Post edited December 31, 2014 by Ghostbreed
Pages:
1
This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussion (archive)How to edit DOSBox videos?(14 posts)solved(14 posts)solved
(14 posts)solved