Hey everybody, I have a small update for Halloween. I don’t have any new videos, but I’m far enough along with the encoding process to release the MKV copies of some of the earlier videos. My original plan was to release “Diary of A Zombie”, “Halloween Safety”, and “The Tunnel” for a Halloween-themed release in high-quality x264 MKV format, so you could see all the detail. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get the revised audio back from the finalists in time for Diary of a Zombie, Halloween Safety gave me an error when trying to open the original source file in Windows 7, but The Tunnel worked! So below here is a re-release of The Tunnel:

Download “Civil Protection: The Tunnel” 1280x720 MKV (250MB)

So not as Halloween-ish as I hoped, but 1 out of 3 I guess is better than nothing. I think the quality is quite good on this copy, however I ran into some minor errors for EVERY method I tried for x264 encoding when using VLC Player to play it back. The setting I decided on resulted in the least amount of visual errors, but there still are some small ones when using that player.

In other news, my throat is mostly healed, so I plan to start again on the next Freeman’s Mind soon, and I also hope to get the sound editing contest resolved soon as well. Beyond that, everything I work on feels like a giant spinner I turn to figure out what I’ll do next.

Youtube

Download 848x480 MKV (108MB)

Here is the much-delayed episode 39. I like this one if just for the fact that it finally ends the seemingly never-ending factory sections (for now anyway). For some reason, I started having a lot more ideas once I got out of the factory section of the game. For those that haven’t played the game before, the upcoming episodes will have a lot more of the environment to “interact” with, so that makes things easier for me. While the filming is more or less done, voicework won’t resume on Episode 40 until my throat gets better. Also it looks like the color got skewed on Youtube again, it feels like a dice toss these days as to how that will turn out, but the downloadable copy should look correct once I encode that.

I have news on several items. First off, I JUST received the audio back from Otto for the next Freeman’s Mind episode. I still have to do final processing on everything, but I’m pretty sure I can have it completed and sent to Machinima.com in the next 24 hours. After that it will go up whenever it works out for their scheduling. My apologies this episode took so long. It took me a while, it took Otto a while, then I didn’t get as far ahead on the next episode as I intended.

Second, while I’m guessing some of you may not believe me due to the timing, I’ve come down sick with something in the past day or two that’s gone after my throat. It’s currently painful for me to speak for more than a few seconds, making more voice recording not an option right now. I’ll resume recording on the next FM as soon as my throat is better.

Third, things may not be so great on the code end of things for the Source engine (again). I did get in contact with Valve, and the last email I received from them said that while it would take them a while to release a bug fix of the code officially, they could hook me up with a part of the code that fixes the stuttering of animations during demo playback. Unfortunately that was over a month ago. I’ve been sending them a check-in email each week since then, with no reply. While I suppose I’m the last person to criticize others of being late on emails (considering my current backlog), if someone is emailing me once a week as a reminder about something I already said I would help them with, I would almost certainly respond in a more timely manner. Anyway, I hope the employee I’m in touch with is just busy and will get back to me, but I may have to figure out alternatives in the meantime.

Fourth, I still have plenty of other things to catch up on. Round two of reviewing the sound editing contestants, finalizing the MKV tests, getting more things (like broken links) fixed on the website, and catching up on emails. The next post here will likely be the sound contest winners or else FM #39.

Well I’ve reviewed all the entries for the sound contest and I think I’m just a picky bastard in that none of them jump out at me as a clear winner, though some of them are close. I’ve gone and emailed all the contestants and a few have been eliminated. The rest I’ve written up a list of things each person could do to improve their mixes. I think after another round of revising we’ll have a clear winner. My attention to detail on this may seem excessive, but it’s nothing I wouldn’t do myself.

Work continues on the videos and I hope to have some more work started on improvements to the website (including broken links) sometime soon.

As for the video releases, for those that have a preference, people seem to favor MKV over MP4 almost 2:1, so I plan to be transitioning to that. From the feedback I received, there seems to be NO consistency with what stutters on people’s computers. It’s almost like each format is different for every person. MKV at least has the advantage of being one of the highest quality options, so even if you don’t like the format, you’ll be working with a better source if you want to convert it to something else. Also if you prefer the existing WMV copies of the videos for some reason, I recommend grabbing them now, because I plan to take them down later and replace them with the higher quality .MKV files.

Look! A poll:

[poll id=”4”]

I’m getting close to deciding on a format in the future for the videos, and I’ll probably go with either MKV or MP4, since both of those formats can utilize the x264 codec, which offers some of the best quality to size ratios out there. Before I make anything official however, I wanted to essentially “beta test” the new formats.

My biggest concern about .MKV or .MP4 is that in the past I’ve seen the footage stutter or become choppy under certain players. It’s my hope that this is the result of people encoding it in a less compatible manner, so I’m trying to make my as kosher as possible.

If you have time and bandwidth to kill, I’d like your help testing this out. I’ve uploaded some clips from Civil Protection that contain scenes with smooth-scrolling motion. This should make it easy to see if there’s any stuttering during playback. In addition to .MP4 and .MKV I’ve also uploaded a copy of the same footage in Xvid .AVI and .WMV for comparison. If you notice any stuttering in one format, but do NOT see it in another, I’d like to know. Preferably leave a forum post, or you can email me. Including information like your OS, any codecs installed, and what player you were using would be helpful. You don’t have to contact me if it stutters in none of the clips or all of them. In those cases, nothing can be determined specific to the format. Here are the clips:

1280x720 Test clip MP4 (70MB)

1280x720 Test clip MKV (70MB)

1280x720 Test clip AVI (125 MB)

1280x720 Test clip WMV (172MB)