Qhimm.com Forums

Miscellaneous Forums => Graphical => Topic started by: Junonite on 2012-10-03 19:53:34

Title: Immersion - A Video Reconstruction Project
Post by: Junonite on 2012-10-03 19:53:34
THE GODS HAVE SPOKEN (in a passive-aggressive tone).

This is no longer a video restoration project, it is now something far more bizarre.

It was clear within minutes of my attempts to clean up the original cutscenes that very, very little could be done that wouldn't either destroy vital image details or ultimately rob them - via noise removal and various magic spells - of their unique, if overly compressed nature.

So I'm going to reconstruct the cutscenes polygon by polygon, dodgy camera movement by dodgy camera movement.

Oh no, what have I got myself in for...

High definition reconstructions that are shot for shot duplicates, so no fancy lighting, atmospheric effects, more organic character animation etc...

These will be true to the 1996 originals we've all grown to love and squint at.
Title: Re: Immersion - A Video Restoration Project
Post by: Hellbringer616 on 2012-10-03 20:28:40
Well, we already have a few of these, But best of luck to you sir.
Title: Re: Immersion - A Video Restoration Project
Post by: Tenko Kuugen on 2012-10-03 21:34:43
a few? a bunch.

Honestly? Don't bother, it's a waste of time and effort. You will be just polishing a turd, and the end result won't be anything close to what you're hoping for.

I agree with this
theres loads of things that actually need work. the FMVs are not one of them.
Title: Re: Immersion - A Video Restoration Project
Post by: EQ2Alyza on 2012-10-03 22:09:05
Keep us updated along the way. Good luck.
Title: Re: Immersion - A Video Restoration Project
Post by: Terid__K on 2012-10-04 00:09:43
Honestly? Don't bother, it's a waste of time and effort. You will be just polishing a turd, and the end result won't be anything close to what you're hoping for.

Title: Re: Immersion - A Video Restoration Project
Post by: Covarr on 2012-10-04 03:34:23
The 2012 rerelease of the game did something like this, and with at least somewhat of a budget. It's probably better done than any of the fan-made ones I've seen. Only issue I have is that they relied a bit too much on temporal denoising, which works well in moving scenes, but there's serious compression artifacts where things stand still.

If you can do the interpolation, that could make this a better project than what's out there. I will warn you that past attempts at interpolating these videos have resulted in some pretty glitchy videos, particularly on the more high-motion FMVs.

Widescreen conversion probably isn't worth it, as we can't use the extra space on a widescreen monitor to view these in-game. Using Aali's driver, we either get the original game scaled as large as possible while keeping its aspect ratio, or stretched to the wrong aspect ratio... But the image it's rendering is still 4:3 or thereabouts. With widescreen videos, at best what we'll have is FMVs that don't overlay characters in the right spots, and at worst just flat out don't display properly in-game.
Title: Re: Immersion - A Video Restoration Project
Post by: cirellio on 2012-10-04 14:48:49
Not to mention the torrent for bootleg is gigantic enough as it is thanks to so many videos...
If you are going to do this, you may want to start with the 2012 PC videos instead of trying to work with the PSX videos as so many have done before (and have done a good job).
Also, that was kind of a low blow to FF8.
Title: Re: Immersion - A Video Restoration Project
Post by: Tenko Kuugen on 2012-10-04 15:59:41
we should have the videos separate from all other mods in the torrent. because, seriously, they're probably accounting for over half the total size
Title: Re: Immersion - A Video Reconstruction Project
Post by: Junonite on 2012-10-05 13:33:08
Please view my initial post, the scope of this project has altered dramatically.
Title: Re: Immersion - A Video Reconstruction Project
Post by: Tenko Kuugen on 2012-10-05 15:00:03
sounds a bit too ambigious
try it out by starting with a very short FMV ( the shortest ) and see how long it takes
Title: Re: Immersion - A Video Reconstruction Project
Post by: Hellbringer616 on 2012-10-05 15:41:44
I would venture over to the Team avalanche board then, Not only is it possible they have some of the models you need already. but it's also possible for you to help them in their venture by submitting your finished works.