Let's Play Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs | Part 6 - Run!

[Shawn Zipay]

Here is part six of the Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs let's play, which may be the most tense and "frightening" part yet.

If you have been enjoying this series, I may be tempted to do more blind let's plays in the future. Feel free to leave a comment and a thumbs up here or on YouTube. Part five (and probably six) will be up tomorrow.

Related Links

• Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs review from TGN
• Part 1 of the Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs blind let's play
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• A YouTube playlist of the let's play to date

[papasmurf128]

I can't watch this at night, as it freaks me out! The quality on this one seemed a lot lower, maybe it was just me.

[Shawn Zipay]

Every video (since the third one at least) has been encoded with the following:



The problem in quality arises from the use of gamma correction which often produces "splotchy" areas at times in super dark areas it's trying to lighten (which could be minimized if I enable maximum render quality or up the bitrate significantly which just ups the encode time by a huge margin and has generally been unnecessary). ...And then there's the big cause of problems... YouTube. They re-encode every upload on their own.

Which really sucks. They turned this, a 651MB video, into a 239MB video, so I'm sure you can imagine the cuts in quality they make with their process.

[K-16]

I had a few thoughts written below, but considering this is a 20+ minute video, I realized the filesize will always be large enough for YouTube's forced re-encoding to wreck the quality in every way possible. Wished I had suggestions, but my thoughts are currently moot, but written anyways so I can learn a thing or two about rendering (I personally use debugmode frameserver and use Virtualdub or a third-party encoder GUI, because I don't like rendering through Adobe Media Encoder, but that's just me and others have no issues with it).

Would changing pixel aspect ratio to square pixels 1.0 obliterate the video quality because the resolution is 1280 x 720? I'm wondering if that would offer any filesize reduction whatsoever, at the cost of improper pixel scaling. Also, would changing the profile from high to baseline also obliterate the video quality? I don't understand how subsets of MPEG-4 toolsets work, but I've seen people use baseline profile settings without much quality loss for live-action clips, though I haven't seen rendering settings for video games. I was also wondering if setting the level at 4.0 would improve overall quality, but I don't know if that would inflate the filesize by another GB or increase rendering time by several hours with no effect to the video itself.

[Shawn Zipay]

I think the PAR being changed would only matter if it were displayed on a non 16:9 format but if it's on YouTube, it shouldn't be an issue. It's recorded at 720p and encoded in 720p. I can try it at some point, maybe real quick right now to compare it to my finale video that I did last night, but premiere tends to set this on its own based on the aspect ratio of the source and I'm not inclined to change that.

There's no need to change the profile from high. There is next to no change in render time and changing it to a lower setting would make no sense.

Levels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264#Levels IE: I'm already at a higher "level" than I need to be since it's 720p at 29.97fps. If I was working with higher resolutions and framerate it would matter.

This is purely on the shoulders of YouTube. The Finale video I uploaded is 992MB on my machine. The YouTube "HD" version that I downloaded to compare is only 319MB. Their re-encoding sucks.

[papasmurf128]

Regardless it still scared the shit out of me!

[K-16]

I think the PAR being changed would only matter if it were displayed on a non 16:9 format but if it's on YouTube, it shouldn't be an issue. It's recorded at 720p and encoded in 720p...

I see. If you do try it, let us know what the results are.

There's no need to change the profile from high. There is next to no change in render time and changing it to a lower setting would make no sense.

I was wondering if that would reduce the filesize to further minimize YouTube's need to cramp it down. As for the render time, that was referring to levels, not profile. Which as you explained below...

Levels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264#Levels IE: I'm already at a higher "level" than I need to be since it's 720p at 29.97fps. If I was working with higher resolutions and framerate it would matter.

Whoops. I was reading an article on how levels work and was linked to this and embarrasingly forgot you were working with H.264. Derp. The one you linked to made much more sense, and now I understand raising it to 4 would be meaningless since the video isn't above 60 fps nor is it larger than 1280 x 720. Thanks for clarifying my mistake and confusion.

This is purely on the shoulders of YouTube. The Finale video I uploaded is 992MB on my machine. The YouTube "HD" version that I downloaded to compare is only 319MB. Their re-encoding sucks.

Right. Which is why I wrote the questions as the second paragraph, noting it's purely for learning about rendering.