pouët.net

Well, I actually don't like having to choose a link from several, just like anyone else. However, some situations, I believe, warrant having several links.

Having a link to a quality recording of the demo and a link to the party video seems reasonable, right? That is two links already. Why would anyone want more?

The problem is to do with what we consider a quality recording. I am guessing, if you have a modern PC demo, it is all about capturing a proper HD version and uploading it onto the youtube. Unfortunately, for many old platforms the choice may be not trivial.

I have a lot of experience with ZX Spectrum, but I know for sure that similar issues exist for C64 and some old PC demos. Old platforms are severely limited in terms of the number of available colours. So, people use various temporal smoothing schemes: rapidly flip between 2 or sometimes 3 colours to obtain something similar to the additive colour mixing, with an added flicker. Don't go judgemental on me. This is how it is. People have done this before, people will do it again. Even right now your current (modern) desktop monitor might be doing something very similar to extend its colour resolution.

So, next time you wonder where all these colours come from on a humble ZX Spectrum - don't. This is not a demo for some Russian super-charged clone. It is simply a demo that flickers on a real monitor. Some demos that use these techniques flicker a lot, but some are surprisingly stable. The snag is: it is only true if you watch them on a 50Hz monitor. In emulator they always flicker A LOT, because you monitor is highly unlikely to be running at 50Hz and the resulting beating is bad.

Someone not knowledgeable watches such a demo in an emulator and complains.

What can one do to resolve this? (a) many people upload "cooked" videos with each pair of frames blended together. This works great, but people who know what is going on come to the comments and complain that this is cheating. (b) very recently it became possible to upload 50-60Hz videos onto the youtube. In theory, these videos look great, but the technology is very temperamental at present and it does not work across a full range of browsers, and even when it does try to work, it is often not holding the stable frame rate and looks shit (again). What is even worse, is that if your browser does not support high framerates, it drops every second frame from your video, so what you get is an extremely distorted picture of what you have done. Often, the result is downright ugly.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Some people upload videos. The issues with videos, in my opinion, are that (*) they are not as convenient to watch, (*) the hosting of videos is not easily available, esp. given Pouet policy of not liking links to cloud storage. Just go through few 10-year old demos with videos, half of the links are dead. Videos are the thing of past, imho.

So, this is why I think that for a modern oldschool demo using techniques with flicker, the gold standard should be to have 2 youtube videos. First - with blended frames, it will be shown correctly everywhere, but it will also eliminate flicker, so no-one will get a true representation of what the demo really looks like. Second - a proper 50Hz recording preserving all frames, but with issues in many browsers and for many configurations.

In 5-10 years time, I am guessing, 50Hz video will remain the only thing needed. But today it is very clearly not the case. And it is not the issue of youtube deficiencies, it is the question of us, authors, trying to present our demos in the best possible way and being unable to do so due to the limitations of modern technology.

does the youtube category need to be subdivided? ;P

anyway: since YT can do 50hz just fine that would me my best bet for the oldschool prod captures using that framerate. if your monitor isnt set to the right refresh rate it will of course look not as good but hey, thats life. you can always change it and if you dont you either a) dont care or b) dont have a clue.

dont get me wrong, im not opposed to having the best possible quality when watching a capture but i dont think having a seperate video for different setups will help a lot. if you like people to watch prods in 50hz give them a hint how to do so, instead. maybe even a nice emulator wiith a working prebuild config bundled with the release.

There is no solution for this. No amount of different versions or hints is going to work. Stop supporting emulator and youtube lamers, there is no way to make it work. Your prods are for knowledgeable people with 50 Hz displays, preferably CRT, and unfortunately that audience is very small and getting smaller. Trying to pretend otherwise is just fooling yourself. As a general rule, if they watch youtube, then they either don't know or don't care. You shouldn't want either, I guess? Stop caring about your view and thumb counts, you'll be happier.

How about starting to encourage getting knowledgeable, and starting to care. The first step to this direction is to stop using youtube for prods that just don't work in that medium. :) Yes, you get less clicks. Who's the first one to take the bold step and show the world that it's possible to live without selling out. My clicks! My views! My numbers! That's the MEANING of life?

Apparently we're at the point where emulators are not even expected from the audience, but on the other hand you expect that people care about the nuances between 50Hz and blended frames.

Well I won't to be the judge of that, but the simplest solution is to link one video on pouet and add the other one into annotation/desctiption/follow-up video/whatever. Which video should be linked on pouet? Whichever you as an expert deem to be the better experience for a general audience.

Don't do it.Just add more pathos

End of discussion.



No issues with browsers; lower platforms see the fps/2 version. Flickercolors not right? Tough shit, go watch it on real hardware.

trixter nailed it.

You nailed it. But it is not as much _people_ caring, as _me_ caring to provide the most authentic experience possible.

I still do not accept "tough shit" argument, but we discussed it already.

What trixter said. Youtube is the last platform where you should care about the quality you get out of the video. They do/did all kinds of processing on the video which is out of your control (like a horrible compressor / limiter on the audio track).
You want a perfect capture? Make one and upload it as a carefully encoded .avi/.mp4 somewhere, and don't let Youtube cripple it for you.

There are perhaps about five people in the world who understand and respect interlace/flicker color effects.

...which is why I do not expect people to.

All of the suggestions in this thread misunderstand the issue. I know how to set up the emulator, or what hardware is needed, or how to make a quality recording. This is not a problem. The problem is UI - User Interface. All of your ideas with video files or links in the distro or other similar ideas - they do not work, because they are a lot less immediate. You cannot replace something immediate like youtube with something less immediate and hope that people will overcome the obstacles.

It is as if you don't want your prods to be seen. Well, I do, for a change and I know that every extra click means less people watching.

I disagree; as someone who likes to watch demos but does not own the necessary hardware (for PC and other platforms), Youtube is the least effort option which the majority of the time will be favoured over installing emulators/ROMs, upgrading to the latest gfx card etc. Also Youtube increases the potential audience substantially.

If it was my work, I would care about how others could be viewing it.

Something else to bear in mind - if you don't provide your own Youtube capture, it is likely that someone else will do it for you and upload to their own channel, where you will have little control over the quality.

That's why I still don't understand why you want to split up your viewers if you care about how many people watch the videos. Choices always generate some level of confusion, more so if you don't even understand what the difference is. And it's apparent that it's mostly you who cares about the technical authenticity, not the audience, and they provide the views, not you.

introspec: I think you're also misunderstanding the issue. If what you say is true, that you don't expect people to 1) set up an emulator and 2) technically understand what you're doing in your demos, then what's wrong with providing them a YouTube capture that's only 95% accurate, if we already assumed that they only understand less of that?

Mind you, I'm not advocating YouTube captures in general, God forbid, but surely the people who are fiddly about the capture quality are already savvy enough to set up an emulator, and for the rest, a standard YouTube capture is just fine enough even if it drops to 25fps?

(That's assuming YouTube wouldn't support 50fps, which as far as I know it does.)

The issue is that current youtube captures can easily be a lot less than 95% accurate.
I could live with 95%. Things can easily get proper ugly for these flickers, once frames begin to drop.

Like I said, it will all become irrelevant in 5 years time. 50Hz will become a properly working technology, computers and networks will become that little bit faster, etc etc. But today, I believe, an extra link to the youtube is the best value/effort solution.

I kind of agree that it would be _better_ if people watched their demos on real hardware or at least in emulators. But before they are convinced to make effort and do it, you need to show them something that will interest them. And if your preview is ugly - you can forget about it.

so, where are those 50Hz captures? I'd love to watch them side-by-side with a Youtube video and see what the fuck i have been missing when watching spectrum demos! subliminal porn pictures, i hope!

But is it also the best? No, not at all! Just see what Youtube does to e.g. noise overlays in demos, no matter how carefully you encoded your video. I understand the need of video captures, using hardware from around 2008/2009 myself, but I don't understand the fixation on Youtube. I'd rather watch a proper AVI/MP4 capture anytime than the mess that Youtube produces. Youtube cripples your videos in various ways, this is why I say you shouldn't care about achieving the best possible quality for everyone on that platform.

Just ask Micksam to put Capped back in action :)

saga: youtube convenience. also, because streaming is more convenient than downloading a whole .avi first! and maybe vimeo's better?

Gargaj +1

For an interlace/flicker color effect, Youtube is about 0% accurate. Youtube implies a lot about the audience as well as their means of seeing your demo. Just like you don't expect anyone on Youtube to smell what the food you made smells like, you don't expect anyone to see what your 50 Hz interlacing color effect looks like. Stop attention whoring and expecting impossible things to occur regularly. Youtube view counts are not an indicator of your success. You don't spend all those hours making demo effects in order to see numbers on a web site. Or do you?

I really don't understand the hostility I'm getting here. It is so simple.
Please. Allow. Us. To. Have. Multiple. Youtube. Links.
De facto you allow it anyway. Examples all over the site.
If you don't want to use them - cool, don't.

I tried to explain in as much detail as I could why I think it to be a good idea.
Who's attention whoring with suggestions that don't work and excuses that don't add up? What's impossible about leaving the choice of best presentation of our works to us, the authors?

Also allow. Us. To. Have. Multiple. Thumb. Counts. One for those who Understand and another for those who Don't. Really. Did you watch it on a real machine? No? Then your thumb is worth shit. ;) Why combine real thumbs and shit in the same number. Data modeling error. :)

It's not hostility actually. I have "been there, done that", and I think there is just no way to make Youtube be your dream audience.

You seem to believe that there is nothing to demo except from technicalities that can only be appreciated by initiated. I do not agree, that is all. But this is another discussion, which would take us far away from the point I was trying to make in this thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3tfxX5tKpg is that 50Hz?