The Battlefield 4 Beta - First Impressions and Screenshots

[Please note that previous to playing the Beta, I didn't read any information at the website, hadn't been to any of the meetings, or partook of anything that gave me information beforehand. Hearing about the Beta 'late in the game', I just jumped in and wanted to see what was different. Here then, is my reaction/opinions]

An example of the [slightly] upgraded graphics of Battlefield 4. Click to see Full Size

With only one week left until Release, if the Beta was anything to go by, BF4 seems like it will bring in a bunch of new weapons, tools, maps and 'take things vertical' [ugh, that sounds so cheesy] with much more rooftop/height strategy thrown into the mix. You could always get on top of buildings in Battlefield games of course, but in BF4 it feels downright encouraged with open roofs, lots of room to move, things to hide behind and elevators direct to the various building tops.

"I see snipers will be even more annoying with the elevation in BF4". Click to see Full Size

Yes, all of the 'Rooftop Snipers' can get annoying at times, but once you yourself get up there, you can see how addicting it is, what with the quick ability to strategically place yourself, open viewpoints (and nice views), the potential to parachute close the objectives, or 'get the drop' down on the enemy [so many cliches possible with this game already].

View from the Ming tower with one of the weapons that spawn within it. Click to see Full Size

The weapons are modern guns and tools [not being a gun expert, I'll focus more on how they 'felt', looked or sounded]. The models were nice and seemingly complex (good for something that is so close and often in view) and the textures for them looked great, only a few [that loaded wrong?] were blurry, like the C4 remote and a few side panels on some of the guns. Each one still had their differing audio - if you listened carefully, you could tell if that person around the corner was on the other team or not, just by the report that you could hear. Audio wise, in general: Reverb, Doppler Shift and all the other quality 'standard effects that Dice made standard and we expect now' are all there. Great stuff.

Recons (who now carry the C4 explosives in Battlefield 4) will be making elevators very dangerous transports to use

As far as the weapons themselves go, they seemed to all have one thing in common: reduced bullet spread/recoil [versus the previous games]. I could just hold down the trigger and found myself getting kills at a moderate distance most of the time, whereas with earlier Battlefield games I could swear it was a lot worse, and harder to get kills if you did such a thing. Perhaps this is a reflection of the modernity of the hardware or a statement of how a trained soldier actually would handle it, but either way it felt like it left a lot less general frustration in the gunplay - no more 'hold the crosshair on the enemy and never hit them'. While some might not like the somewhat 'easier kills', it seems like a nice change to me.

Hmm.. maybe he really is part cobra.. Click to see Full Size

Some of the new weapons that are based on real-life arms are guns like the XM25 Airburst, where the shell will travel to the enemy and detonate mid-air and 'burst' just beside or above the cover, damaging the enemy that is hiding behind it. A great counter to the increased number of snipers that will be in BF4, the XM25 also seemed to have very little bullet drop. Only at extreme distances did I see the white 'trail' of the shell drop off. A nice little weapon, once you get acquainted with how to actually use it.

The XM25 requires an extra step to use, compared to the other guns in the game: 
Place the 'crosshairs' of the un-zoomed reticle on the edge of the wall you are going to fire around, approximately where the enemy is, then zoom-in (use the scope) and aim slightly to the side/above the wall that is protecting the enemy. Fire and 'fugetaboutit' - unless the enemy runs away quickly, they are now respawning.

Munenushi is warming up his blow-everything-to-hell trigger fingers and will be making another Explosion Montage for BF4
(the BF3 montage is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShibKBskFd4 ). Click to see Full Size

Another change is the medic and support boxes, where instead of starting off with a huge box that heals/resupplies a large number of soldiers at once, you begin with these little packs that only top-up one soldier at a time. Perhaps this is to discourage the old 'pack of Medics making a group invincible' or other pseudo-exploits some people did since Battlefield 2; but I did start to see people with the large Medic/Support Boxes near the end of the Beta, so perhaps it is just something that is unlockable later. That's fine, as the game allows you to throw out a bunch of the little packs right off the bat, at least.

Knife kill on the top floor near the edge of a window. Click to see Full Size

If asked what the gameplay itself was like, I feel like I could now reply: "Good ol' Battfield, son". This game does indeed feel like Good Old Battlefield. The scope of BF1942 is there, the mechanics and variety of BF2 are there, the fluid feeling of BF3 is there, the high level of action of BFBC2 is there [and I think I just solved the secret of how they came up with the formula for BF4!]. With a good mixture of open and enclosed spaces, sections bright as day and parts dark and closed off, plenty of places to hide/camp/recover, and little touches like store alarms going off after you pass through the doors with a weapon, the only negative thing I could say about the general gameplay was that it felt...'cramped'.

Boats will be on streets and tanks will be indoors in BF4. Click to see Full Size

Perhaps the change is to draw in some COD players [I apologize for mentioning Call of Duty in a Battlefield article for those that are bothered by that], or perhaps they chose a smaller/city map to show off the destruction while keeping the system resource demand low, but without having access to a wide, open-field, running-for-ten-minutes map - at least coming from playing BF3 - the map felt small and cramped. The action was nice and dense, but on a 64-player Seige server, I felt like I was playing Counter-Strike and not Battlefield, at times. This is not necessarily a bad thing however, as the action was always tight and will no doubt appeal to gamers coming over from Call of Duty and other similar games.

An example of the destructible components of the game, this picture used to have barriers (left edge), walls (right half) and armored vehicles (middle). Click to see Full Size

There are a huge amount of things that are destructable in the game, but even after shattering everything I could shoot, I still felt like there should be.. 'more'. Perhaps I am destined to be forever spoiled by the GEO-MOD™-ing of Red Faction (circa 2001!), where you could literally tunnel from one section of the map to the other; but despite all of the things in BF4 you could explode, cave-in or mangle, I still felt like I wanted more, by the end. I guess the only place where you can make a quick hole in the ground these days (if you are cornered by enemies and want to create a bunker/trench to hold them off) is Minecraft - kind of sad, in a way. [After the Beta was over and I came across developer-touted terms like "Levolution", if I would have read anything like that beforehand, I definitely would have expected more than just a bunch of scripted 'exploding-into-parts-but-still-there' models/meshes, to be honest]

Visuals are one of the things that did not disappoint in the BF4 Beta. Click to see Full Size

Overall, I had a mixture of emotions with the Battlefield 4 Beta... I felt excited, pleased by many things, slightly disappointed by others, sad for BF3 (I feel like I am being pushed from a too-soon-breakup into another woman's arms - but according to what I have read about EA's Sports franchises and frequency of releases, this is an all-too-common feeling among sports gaming fans). Still, all things considered (including the fact that the Beta barely scratched the surface of the game I'm sure), I am excited for Battlefield 4. I will indeed.. See You In The Game!

Quality Test - GPU-accelerated H.264/AVC Game Recording with CUDA (with Screenshot Comparisons and Examples)

To perform game recording solely on the videocard, utilizing the high resources of today's little powerhouses sitting in our cases - resulting in high quality video and less lag while recording - sounds like manna from heaven. You might be saying, "Wait, the possibly of lowered performance hit and the possibility of a high-quality recording?.. if this is true, please stop teasing and just tell me now..". Well, dear reader, let me tell you that these things are indeed true [for the most part..].

Beginning with version 1.9.0, Bandicam (a game recording application) included support for utilizing NVIDIA's CUDA for recording your gameplay, touting high speed (less 'lag'), high compression ratio (smaller file sizes) and high quality. All you needed was a CUDA-capable NVIDIA videocard, the latest videocard drivers from NVIDIA, and Bandicam. In the most recent version of Bandicam (1.9.1) they have also included support for AMD's APP ACCELERATION and INTEL's QUICK SYNC. 

For this QualityTest, I took an NVIDIA GPU and put it through the paces of some game recording with the accelerated H.264/AVC codec (as opposed to the CPU-based x264 for example), using Bandicam [which at the time of this writing, to my knowledge, was the only game recording app that could utilize accelerated/gpu-based AVC recording] to test things out. Here are my findings, shared just for you.

An example of an NVIDIA CUDA encoded game recording, this is a frame extracted from the CUDA-produced output file (Unigine Heaven Benchmark Test @ 1080p). Click to see Full Size

Overall, recording with the GPU gave good performance (low performance hit / lag), fairly small file size output, with decent quality [surprising to anyone that has compressed video with CUDA in the past, I know, more info below]. It was only with certain games that the performance suffered (although this may be more the fault of optimization with the game's engine and not NVIDIA's programming) and it was slightly disappointing that the performance wasn't "that much faster" than other codecs [more info at the end about that]. For the most part however, game recording "live" with the GPU and directly encoding to a file using a compatible videocard is indeed nice and fast and produces comfortably-small footprint file sizes.

What file sizes are we talking about here? 

I haven't looked at the specs for the codec and how it's utilized, but from what I can quickly see on the surface, it is using the h.264/AVC codec with my NVIDIA GPU, with Deblocking enabled and with a keyframe/I-frame inserted every 5 seconds. That doesn't leave 'a lot' of headroom for compression (x264 AVC usually defaults to 250-300 frames between keyframes which, at 30 frames per second, is more like 10 seconds to 'play with' for compression); but it still gave a nice small filesize when recording with VBR (Variable Bit Rate), where it would compress slower-motion areas and scenes when it could and increased the bitrate (to try to keep apparent quality) when needed in faster/high-motion sections.

An example of an NVIDIA CUDA encoded game recording, this is a frame extracted from the CUDA-produced output file (Battlefield 3 @ 1080p). Click to see Full Size

Just below, you will find some data samples of game recordings that were done at incremental quality settings, showing the average bitrate of the recording overall and the sizes of the files produced as output
[(i)all game samples were recorded with accelerated/gpu-based H.264/AVC generated by NVIDIA's CUDA at 1080p unless otherwise indicated (ii)although test recordings varied in length between games, throughout each game title, all 4 tests of the same game were done with the same elapsed time]:

Recorded Game Title	Q. setting	Average BR	Filesize
Batman: Arkham City	Quality 100	(~75000 kbps)	753 MB
Batman: Arkham City	Quality 70	(~22000 kbps)	224 MB
Batman: Arkham City	Quality 50	(~10000 kbps)	104 MB
Batman: Arkham City	Quality 20	(~5000 kbps)	59 MB
Unigine Heaven Benchmark	Quality 100	(~120000 kbps)	1390 MB
Unigine Heaven Benchmark	Quality 70	(~48000 kbps)	551 MB
Unigine Heaven Benchmark	Quality 50	(~24000 kbps)	276 MB
Unigine Heaven Benchmark	Quality 20	(~11000 kbps)	140 MB
Diablo III	Quality 100	(~22000 kbps)	44 MB
Diablo III	Quality 70	(~9000 kbps)	20 MB
Diablo III	Quality 50	(~5000 kbps)	12 MB
Diablo III	Quality 20	(~4000 kbps)	9 MB
Alien Versus Predator (PC-2010)	Quality 100	(~110000 kbps)	380 MB
Alien Versus Predator (PC-2010)	Quality 70	(~37000 kbps)	126 MB
Alien Versus Predator (PC-2010)	Quality 50	(~18000 kbps)	66 MB
Alien Versus Predator (PC-2010)	Quality 20	(~8000 kbps)	28 MB
Minecraft (Standalone)	Quality 100	(~47000 kbps)	44 MB
Minecraft (Standalone)	Quality 70	(~27000 kbps)	25 MB
Minecraft (Standalone)	Quality 50	(~13000 kbps)	12 MB
Minecraft (Standalone)	Quality 20	(~7600 kbps)	7 MB
Lord Of Ultima (Browser Game)	Quality 100	(~ 24000 kbps)	59 MB
Lord Of Ultima (Browser Game)	Quality 70	-	-
Lord Of Ultima (Browser Game)	Quality 50	(~7000 kbps)	20 MB
Lord Of Ultima (Browser Game)	Quality 20	(~3000 kbps)	11 MB
Lottso Express (Browser, 384p)	Quality 100	(~870 kbps)	10 MB
Lottso Express (Browser, 384p)	Quality 70	(~320 kbps)	7 MB
Lottso Express (Browser, 384p)	Quality 50	(~225 kbps)	6 MB
Lottso Express (Browser, 384p)	Quality 20	(~164 kbps)	5 MB

table code created by Danny Sanchez (journalistopia.com)

As you can see in the table above, due to the nature of Variable Bit Rate recording, setting a quality figure of "50" does not produce 'exactly one-half' of the bitrate or filesize of a "100" quality setting. The codec is adjusting as needed and where required, allocating more bitrate to complex areas and changes between frames, to help keep "apparent quality" near the desired estimate. Configuring the Quality setting of "100" is essentially telling everything to keep as much detail as possible - but it will only do so within the limitations of the codec being used (in this case, AVC) and how it is configured internally (the calculation time allowed per frame, the buffer allowed, etc), depending on how the developers have programmed it to encode.

An example of an NVIDIA CUDA encoded game recording, this is a frame extracted from the CUDA-produced output file (Minecraft @ 1080p). Click to see Full Size

Overall, it seems that with CUDA, the file sizes are kept comfortably small - especially compared to a FRAPS or DXTORY codec recording. The bitrate doesn't stray too far from a 100,000kbps maximum (about 12 MB per second of video data) despite how much action is going on in the game at the time. At that bitrate, a half hour of straight recording would take up only about 22GB. Not too bad, especially if you are creating long recordings or can't afford that 4TB drive upgrade just yet. A Blu-Ray disc title typically uses a bitrate of 25,000-50,000kbps, so a GPU-based/accelerated recording is still allowing for more than double that bitrate to try to represent what is happening on the screen in viewable quality.

So then, what is the quality like?

Normally, if you ask anyone about quality who has used GPU-acceleration together with words like "video editing" and "compression", they will tell you: "It encoded faster, but the output looked craptacular..". I myself have tried off and on in the past to compress videos for myself and others with acceleration and every time I tried CUDA or AMD's APP.ACCEL for the final AVC output I was disappointed at the blotchy, blurred, 'macroblock-y' mess that comes out, unless I allow for a much larger bitrate than intended (and receive a correspondingly larger file size). Somewhat surprisingly then, it was nice to find that I did not need to confine myself to "100% Quality" and always expect huge filesizes with GPU-based game recording to get decent viewable quality, suitable for sharing.

A side-by-side comparison of four CUDA quality settings (100%, 70%, 50%, and 20%), these are frames extracted from the CUDA-produced output file (Batman: Arkham City @ 1080p). Click to see Full Size

As can be seen in the screenshot comparison above, decent quality can be maintained at the 100% Quality setting, despite the speed of the encoding being done with H.264/AVC. I was pleasantly surprised, to be honest. Of course, Videophiles will notice slight Posterization and light MPEG-compression artifacts (such as Macroblocking) occuring even at 100% Quality if looked closely for; but for the majority of people, a quality setting of 100% (even down to 80%) should be found quite acceptable. I personally found that at 70%, the compression artifacts became more noticeable, especially the 'trails' that occur from the lossy Vector Quantization (the codec keeping track of where things are moving around between frames), which is why I chose 70% as the 'next notch down' on these tests. At a Quality setting of 60% and any setting below that, these 'trails' left behind are very apparent and in my personal opinion I do not recommend going below 60% for GPU-based game recording at this time, as the quality loss and compression artifacts become too obvious and may remain apparent even in a final render after editing.

An example of an NVIDIA CUDA encoded game recording, this is a frame extracted from the CUDA-produced output file (Diablo III @ 1080p). Click to see Full Size

The screenshot above is a frame taken from a CUDA-produced Diablo III game recording. Even during a busy moment, with many things happening quickly on the screen, clarity seems to be maintained at a decent level, even the somewhat-hard-to-compress 'Red Text On A Dark Background' - and this video clip was recorded at the 80% Quality setting. Although some macroblocking is beginning to occur in the darker/flatter area of the upper left (as the codec attempts to keep detail in the high-motion areas by compressing the more static areas of the screen to a higher degree), the darker/flatter toolbar and stone floor overall do not seem to be suffering excessively.  [As always however, my personal opinions on quality are mere suggestions based on my own tests and I encourage you to do a bit of your own testing, to find out what settings you would like to settle on and use for your projects]

Since the desktop/GUI can also be recorded with Bandicam, I decided to try record a web browser game with the GPU as well, for the people out there who like to record these games. I recorded two free online games, Lord of Ultima (a city/area building game) and Lottso Express (a bingo-style game), both of which are 2D (flat, board-like), which I thought would be a good example of more static detail (low-motion) compression.

An example of an NVIDIA CUDA encoded game recording, this is a frame extracted from the CUDA-produced output file (Lord of Ultima, a web browser game @ 1080p). Click to see Full Size

Lord of Ultima takes up the entire desktop in this large example of low-motion/static area handling by the accelerated codec. The game, captured above, is largely non-moving, especially the toolbars and left portion of the screen. Recorded at GPU-encoded 100% Quality, the toolbars are clear, text is very readable, and even the darker, static area of the Town Hall pop-up is clean and macroblock-free (very little compression artifacts throughout the entire screen), very nice.

A side-by-side comparison of four CUDA quality settings (100%, 70%, 50%, and 20%), these are frames extracted from the CUDA-produced output file (Lottso Express, a web browser game @ 384p). Click to see Full Size

Lottso Express runs in a small window, so I tested out recording at the exact resolution of this window (576x384) to see how gpu-acceleration handles lower resolutions. The differences inherent in the four Quality settings, in each of the four extracted frames from the CUDA recordings above, is shown. Although the top section/frame is quite clear (at 100% Quality), it quickly degrades as the quality setting goes down, but the recording still remains watchable. In my opinion, if one is recording just for themselves for fun, or just to share with a friend quickly, even a recording level as low as 60% quality may be acceptable when recording a low-motion 2D game with gpu-accelerated encoding; but I still recommend not going below the 70% Quality setting when recording a 3D (high-motion) game, to maintain enjoyability and clarity when using gpu-accelerated recording (such as CUDA, being used here).

 [My tests presented here are only done with CUDA, as I do not own any other videocards capable of gpu-based recording at this time. Output quality may vary when recording with AMD's App Acceleration or Intel's Quick Sync. As always, I suggest doing a few short tests yourself to see what codec and settings you personally would prefer]

What are the configuration settings that can be changed? 

There was not much available to configure, as far as the Quality settings and configuration, within the game recording application (Bandicam) at the time of this test. Certainly not as much as the x264 codec, with it's VFW interface, that has been developed over time by generous programmers/contributors. For CUDA, you can choose between Variable Bitrate and Constant Bitrate (allowing CBR if you wish to more precisely estimate the file size) if you wish, and you can utilize the CPU to assist with recording and compression as well, but that's about it. This may be a limitation in CUDA itself however, as I contacted Bandicam developers to see if there would be any deeper configuration options for the codec that CUDA is using (such as Deblocking settings and Partitions) and they got back to me stating that there were no other configuration options of that type available to include, at this time.

The interface for CUDA recording found within Bandicam's Video Format settings. 

As of the most recent version of Bandicam (announced at the Bandicam website just days ago), they have added the option to change the Keyframe Interval (the frequency of Information Frames within the Groups Of Pictures, which helps with things like 'trails' or corruption from compression) and the ability to change the FourCC identifier, both of which will make the recording more compatible with video editors such as the Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere lines of products. I am proud to say that I did a lot of compatibility testing previous to this on my own and submitted my findings to the developers of Bandicam, just in case they were interested, which contributed directly towards this recent addition to their application. Information on my tests and findings, for those interested, can be found in these articles, here:
http://gametipsandmore.blogspot.com/2013/05/game-recording-with-mpeg-4-using.html
http://gametipsandmore.blogspot.com/2013/06/and-more-how-to-stop-trails-and.html
http://gametipsandmore.blogspot.com/2013/06/and-more-game-recording-for.html
http://gametipsandmore.blogspot.com/2013/06/and-more-how-to-record-with.html
http://www.bandicam.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1687&sid=06b9cdb4450af00f3d33fb4306963f6f

As always, remember that if sharing your video on streaming sites (which limit bitrate) and uploading sites (such as YouTube), your video will be recompressed [converted again] at settings much lower than your production video and detail will be lost (blurred/smoothed and show Macroblocking) due to  the nature of recompression. Therefore, if wanting to save time, there is no need to create and upload huge-bitrate, finely-detail video, as can be seen in this comparison of an uploaded YouTube video and the output that people will be seeing afterward:

A side-by-side comparison of frames extracted from the Original Uploaded Video (Left), YouTube's 1080p Compressed Video (Middle), and YouTube's 720p Compressed Video (Right), showing loss of data/detail due to recompression.
(Diablo III @ 1080p, high-motion scene, moderately-detailed game engine)
Click to see Full Size

How about performance?

I don't usually talk much about performance when I do QualityTests or TestRuns, except for maybe a short paragraph on my own experiences or a "Personal Short Version/Opinion" section at the end. The reason is, every system is different and everyone has their system configured in different ways. I could say that GPU-recording ran great for me, but then someone with a laptop running a non-dedicated videocard will tell me how wrong I am and that it doesn't run well at all. I could say it lagged me out all the time, but there would be many who could run the same thing with no problems. A quick look at any Technical Support area of any forum anywhere is evidence of the fact that even with the same hardware, there are a bunch of people who will have no problem at all and a bunch who will be having no joy. So, I mainly leave the issue aside but I sometimes mention how it seemed to run for me and [especially if anyone asks directly] I would be happy to provide more information to those who want to know more about it.

For me, performance while recording with the GPU was a mixed bag. For the most part it seemed to work fine, but there were a handful of games that just didn't like it as much. Some were choppy or laggy when I began recording. The theory is, that recording with the many cores of a GPU, processing and encoding a frame to a file should be more streamlined, but in practice it seems to take more resources from the videocard itself than I expected. Perhaps it is due to needed optimization of the games or drivers, or perhaps it is my 'older' videocards that are beginning to get on in years (I was running two GTX 560 Ti's in SLI mode during these tests). I did find that some games preferred non-SLI mode when recording with CUDA (such as Diablo III, if I remember correctly) and things were smoother when recording that way; but for the most part, accelerated recording ran with about the same responsiveness as [and in some games, slower than] my own optimized settings for the x264 iteration of AVC. Not long ago, I spent a bunch of time testing and tweaking x264 to record with the H.264/AVC codec, finding the best settings for speed while maintaining quality - and in light of the performance I was able to tweak out of x264 - GPU-based-recording didn't impress me much [if talking strictly about performance hit here]... perhaps I'll end up just using my settings with x264, for now.

For more information, tests and tweaks that I did over time with h.264/AVC and the x264 codec, feel free to check out these articles here at the blog (some are the same as the above asection):

http://gametipsandmore.blogspot.ca/2013/05/game-recording-with-mpeg-4-using.html

http://gametipsandmore.blogspot.ca/2013/06/and-more-how-to-record-with.html

http://gametipsandmore.blogspot.ca/2013/07/quality-test-h264avc-game-recording-2k.html

An example of an NVIDIA CUDA encoded game recording, this is a frame extracted from the CUDA-produced output file (Allods @ 1080p). Click to see Full Size

Overall, recording with gpu-acceleration was pleasantly surprising. Quality (at 100%) was better than I expected from it (it does taper off quickly as you lower the quality setting, however). The file sizes were comfortably small (about 25GB for an hour of recording at 70% Quality, about 45GB for an hour of recording at 100% Quality). The performance was a mixed bag for me, but for most games it was indeed fast and could get the job done. So, in essence, it managed to deliver on all promises. Not bad at all.

Have fun recording with your GPU and See You In The Games!

Quality Test - H.264/AVC Game Recording with the x264 AVC Codec, with the goal of Quality (with "2K" HD Video Samples from Four Games)

In an earlier post about game recording with H.264/AVC (MPEG-4 Part 10) here, I went somewhat in-depth about concepts and considerations for the various settings and why you might want to use them or leave them as they are. With plans to make a "short version" of why you might want to use some settings over others (and setting recommendations geared more towards Speed of recording, reducing lag/choppiness) in the near future, for now, enjoy this short sampling of some game recordings done with H.264/AVC - this time with the goal of increased Quality in mind as well - showcased using four different games and presented in 2K Resolution (2048x1152p):

Clicking the Gear icon in YouTube's player and choosing 'Original'/1440p, while still Youtube-recompressed, is the closest to the original upload in viewing quality (You may need to click on the YT logo and watch it at YT to enable the Quality Setting)

Recorded games:

Battlefield 3 (Grand Bazaar), Planetside 2 (48+ Players Per Side in a BioLab territory, Night), Hitman: Absolution ('Run For Your Life, Shangri-La'), Grand Theft Auto 4 (Broker area, Night)

These games were selected because I felt they created a good 'obstacle course' for this codec Test, with light and dark areas, large panning/movement areas and hard edges to deal with, either from on-screen text or finely detailed textures [all Texture Filtering was turned Off in the Videocard Control Panel settings] (they were also all relatively demanding games, showing then, the low performance hit of this codec, with these settings)

Recording codec:

H.264/AVC configured with the x264 Video For Windows Unofficial (Black Logo) interface (the XiWave GNU GPL MPEG-4 Codec)

Recording settings:

CRF18, NoPartitions, Fast P-Skip, 1 Reference Frame, Diamond ME, ME Range 4, Subpixel ME 1, GOP 1 (for editing with Vegas/Premiere), NoWeightedP-Frames, No B Frames, Deblocking Filter (Strength 1), Non-Interlaced, No CABAC, DCT Decimation, No Trellis, Deadzone (11,21), Flat Matrix, MaxBitrate 50000k (Buffer 5000k), Threads 4, all other settings left as Default/Off

Recording compression:

Originally recorded @ 50000kbps, H.264/AVC format @ HD Resolution (1920x1080p)
Compressed @ 25000kbps for smaller upload to YouTube, WMV format @ 2k Resolution (2048x1152p), in attempt to keep detail/compensate for YT recompression

[The 'analog pause' effect wasn't added to accentuate any specific action going on at the time, it was more to showcase the detail maintained at that time/frame, when recording with the h.264/AVC codec] 

At a max bitrate of 50000k (a high quality Blu-Ray movie bitrate), the original recorded output takes up about 375MB per minute of recording. For an hour of gameplay, that's less than 25GB (including uncompressed audio (uncompressed to be more compatible with video editing apps and use less CPU resources while recording)). Maintaining good quality - although quality is relative, mind you - that is still about one-tenth the filesize of a FRAPS1 codec recording or a YUV or Lagarith codec recording. Chalk it all up to a powerful codec that has the ability to not only compress more where it can (without over-compression in dark/flat or low-motion areas), but also compensates for its' own compression via Deblocking and other built-in techniques.

Doing a quick test without the self-compensation capabilities found within the codec (turning off Deblocking, CABAC, etc), the output has macroblocking and other artifacts occurring, as can be seen in this screenshot:

An example of the internal filtering/compression-compensation found within the h.264/AVC codec, two frames taken directly from two h264/avc recordings, done one after another in the same area in the same online game
(Rift, recorded @ 1080p).
Click to see Full Size (cropped and zoomed source)

The two frames above are from videos shot close together in time, at the same bitrate, resolution, everything... The only difference between the two is that the left side has all filtering/compensation for compression that the codec can perform 'OFF' and the right side has CABAC, Deblocking and other compression/correction techniques 'ON' (Deblocking within the codec was set at only +2+0, as higher Deblocking settings have the effect of excessive smoothing.. [but if you don't mind that or you like the look of it, you can turn up the Deblocking to a maximum setting of +6+6, with a small hit to recording performance]).

These powerful compensators for compression come at a tradeoff however, as the more that you turn on, the longer the codec will take to scrutinize the frames and the slower the compression/output will be. This results in 'lag' both in the game and in the output video, as the resources of the system are directed more towards analysis and compression of the recording, where doing the calculations on the frames, then writing them to disk, can cause the recording to fall behind what is actually occurring on the screen. Also, turning up too many compensators/filters within the codec can result in a 'washed-out' (or at least excessively-smoothed out) video, meaning higher loss of detail.

So, are you stuck with only either crappy looking video or too-smoothed-out video output? Not at all. There are two main directions you can go with your h264/avc game recording (which one you decide on is limited somewhat by your system capabilities):

• On the one hand, you can have small filesizes, allowing you to record longer and more video. You can turn up the analysis and compensation techniques within the codec (Deblocking, Motion Estimation, CABAC calculations, Partition Analysis, etc) - as much as your system can handle, but not too much or you risk excessive smoothing, lag and other effects - and still end up with good quality game recordings.
  
• On the other hand, you will have larger filesizes, but if your system cannot handle the extra analysis and calculations of the codec, you can turn off these compression/compensation techniques and also gain more speed/performance [less 'lag' during gameplay and in the video output - this may also result in more detail being kept from the original source]. All you have to do is allow more Bitrate (setting a lower CQP or lower CRF, if you are using those) to more accurately represent what is occurring on-the-screen/in-the-frames, so that you don't get compression artifacts (as in the left portion of the screenshot above) - and still end up with good quality game recordings.

What settings to use, then? I will present the settings I settled on, after much testing; but again, these were done on my system, with the limitations that includes for me. You may have a more powerful or lesser so system, but all it will take is a few tests, changing a few settings each time, to see what kind of quality you can arrive at, with the balance/tradeoff of performance hit you are willing to tolerate.

Although JPG-compressed for posting, it can still be seen in this frame extracted directly from the H.264/AVC game recording (Hitman: Absolution @ 1080p), that decent quality can be maintained, despite the ability to record in smaller filesizes, with this codec and these suggested settings for the x264 interface.
Click to see Full size

There was only a light performance hit for my system with these upcoming settings, usually only a couple frames per second (averaging about 5fps loss, depending on the game/area being played); but it may depend on the 'overhead space' that you have running a game already. What I mean is, if a game is already chugging along for you, you may not be able to use or turn many things on with this codec (it can be much more demanding, as the different processing options get turned on). Along that same line of thought however, if you are able to run a game you want to record smoothly already, you should have no problem trying out this codec (esp. with my suggested settings). Since that was the case with many of the games I was playing with at the time [although games like GTAIV are always choppy haha], I will list the basic system specs that were used during the time of this Test:

AMD FX-6100 CPU @ 4.0GHz
AMD/ATi Radeon HD 6870 GPU (1GB VRAM) @ 950MHz
16GB Patriot "Gamer" RAM
all on a Gigabyte 990FXA Chipset Mainboard
running Windows7 64-bit
recording to two SATA III harddrives set up in RAID 0 (~233MB/s throughput, according to Dxtory)

I also managed to perform these couple of quick tests, as a comparison of the performance hit to be expected when recording with this codec and these settings on some other systems (CPU/GPU combinations listed):

Unigine Heaven Benchmark
6-core CPU / HD 6870 GPU ~1-3fps
4-core CPU / GTX 560 Ti GPU ~3-5fps
2-core CPU / GTS 250 GPU ~5fps

Rift (Online MMORPG)
6-core CPU / HD 6870 GPU ~1-3fps
4-core CPU / GTX 560 Ti GPU ~ 5fps
2-core CPU / GTS 250 GPU ~5fps

Not bad, in my opinion. These settings seem to work well, no matter what combination of hardware there was. Hopefully this will be the same for you, dear reader.


So then, just below are the settings I normally use when recording with the H.264/AVC codec. I might change things a bit for certain games that look vastly different, such as, if I wanted to keep the grain in the Left4Dead series of games or if I was recording a solid-coloured/static-area looking game like Minecraft or Web Browser games. For the most part however I use these settings, both for maintaining good quality and keeping disk space usage relatively low (at least, far lower than using the FRAPS1 codec, Lagarith, or a YUV codec).

[Note that I have chosen to use a GOP (Group of Pictures (Frames) (called "keyint" in the bottom example)) of "1". This is for editing compatibility with Vegas/Premiere and is optional if you are not using these video editing applications. Feel free to change the "1" in this setting to the Codec Default of "250", or as desired. For more information on this, especially if you plan to edit the recordings with Sony's Vegas or Adobe's Premiere lines of products, see this post earlier, here]

When using the 'Unofficial' (Black Logo) x264 Video For Windows interface to configure settings:

When using the 'Official' (Red Logo) x264 Video For Windows interface to configure settings:

For the official/redlogo interface, choosing the Ultrafast Preset configures many settings that are the same as the above prior three screen captures, seen using the unofficial/blacklogo interface. The command line area (box at the bottom) where things are typed in, change the remainder of the settings so that they end up the same as the other interface settings in the prior three screen captures above.

As you can see, these settings can be configured using the x264 interface for the codec, so no matter what game recording program you use* - be it Dxtory, Bandicam, MSI's Afterburner, etc - you will be able to choose these settings, adjusting for your own tastes as you prefer (or adjusting to be within your hardware limitations). 

[*The game recording application must be able to use 'external/third-party codecs', i.e. other codecs not included with the program itself, that you have installed on your system, in order to utilize the x264 interface for the h264/avc codec]

For more detailed coverage of the settings used when recording with h.264/AVC [in an article that focuses more on speed of recording, reducing 'lag'/choppiness], where to download the codec/interface and how to start using it in Dxtory, Bandicam and MSI's Afterburner, see this earlier post here at the blog:
http://gametipsandmore.blogspot.ca/2013/05/game-recording-with-mpeg-4-using.html

Please note dear reader, that I am not saying "This codec is the best one to record with" or "use this one only".

I am merely showing that it is possible, or how to tweak it for quality or file size, as to your own personal preference.

There are many codecs out there to choose from when game recording and although some are more apt for certain types of games than others, overall it is your own choice to use whichever one you prefer. Do some short tests and see which one works best for you and your current system - and try to have fun with it

Have Fun Recording with H.264/AVC and See You In The Games!

Speedrun - Hitman: Blood Money - A Vintage Year (Silent Assassin, Pro Difficulty, Suit Only, Targets Only, "No Coins")

Messing around trying another Speedrun, this time booting up some good'ol Hitman: Blood Money, "A Vintage Year" level.

Hitman is a wonderfully crafted, enjoyable game. In my opinion, every single installment in this series has been. People have enjoyed the 'puzzle-play' aspects of it, people have enjoyed the gunplay, the stealth. Players have also enjoyed trying to run as-fast-as-they-can through levels that were probably not designed with this intention. Now, Hitman: Blood Money may not win any awards for "realism" in some areas of gameplay, but I personally have something against the concept that an Assassin, wearing a nice suit, most likely a millionaire, is carrying around twenty dollars in pocket change. Heck, I am sometimes annoyed at the jingle in my own pocket of a couple of quarters when I come across them. Thus, my personal aim with this level: to do a Suit-Only, Targets-Only, Silent Assassin, 'No Coins' Speedrun (on Professional Difficulty). I am probably not the fastest at this sort of thing, I have only done a couple of intentional Speedruns in the past; but it was still fun to make and I figured it was 'decently fast', so I wanted to share. Enjoy!

Recorded game:  Hitman-Blood Money, First/Third Person Shooter/Stealth/Action
Recorded with:  Bandicam (Registered Version) @ 1080p
Recording codec:  MPEG-1 @ 80% Quality (Default Setting), 30fps


This was actually not as hard as I thought it would be - after finding out that Delgado.Sr is snipe-able up out on his balcony. It was his Son that gave me trouble (as it seems to do with everyone, after a few forum finds on the subject). I started just pushing him down the stairs and also setting up the Barrels to fall on him; but eventually I settled on just a good-old-fashioned-assassin-stand-by: the single bullet to the head. This felt 'right', after sniping dear-ol'Dad, anyway. Instead of pushing the Guards at the bottom into the water, I just walked non-chalantly by them, as they didn't seem to care anyway.
[On the actual Playthrough, I seem to get some guards' attention, but I assumed this was for going into the areas I wasn't supposed to, not for being witnessed killing anyone]

I also wanted to do things like 'leave nothing behind', such as 'just dropping weapons' (like the Sniper Rifle) to save time. This sort of stems from the multitude-of-coins thing... Don't get me wrong by the way, I appreciate the time so many have taken to figure out their own ways to complete Hitman levels by using distractions. I just for some reason [OCD?lol] find it hard to extend my fantasy thinking within the game 'that far' - to where a so-called Silent-Assassin-slash-Hitman is always carrying around and actually utilizes enough laundry money to make the homeless cry on every mission. [I didn't actually mean to rant here, hah] I just think if an assassin wanted to throw anything around to distract guards, it could more realistically at least be a found weapon of some sort, as opposed to a ton of coinage everywhere (pebbles could even make more sense).

At any rate, whether you use coins (a mechanic that is indeed offered directly within the game) or you don't, there you have it; not the fastest run [or the most 'Silent' lol], but hopefully an enjoyable little watch, nonetheless.

See you in the games!

Raw Gameplay (Unedited) - Battlefield Play4Free (32 Players, Saiga-12 Won from The Daily Draw)

Battlefield Play4Free is a Free-To-Play title, where it doesn't cost anything to join in, but you can purchase weapons, armor, clothing and other items for Real Money by purchasing Tokens that you can then use in the in-game Store. There is also a nice feature where you can win prizes (weapons, armor, clothing, etc) from a game called The Daily Draw, where you choose a card from a draw of eight and it will generate an item for you.

The items range from temporary one-day use weapons and clothing, to seven day usage, to permanent items your character (Soldier) can use in the game forever (for example, a scope that can be attached to a gun for that soldier for all time). This is great for those who can't afford to purchase many in-game items, as it not only offers the possibility of getting some great gear 'forever', it also gives a nice preview of a weapon, mod or clothing, so that you can see what it will look like/feel like, if you decide to splurge and purchase it for yourself (supporting the game and developers as well) sometime in the future.

In this video, I present 'Raw Gameplay' (unedited gameplay) of BFP4F after winning a Saiga-12 Shotgun for one day's usage on my Medic via The Daily Draw. I had joined a 32-player server (running a Rush map) that was nice and full (16 soldiers per side). After getting the kinks out and getting used to the controls again after not playing for a while, I think things picked up as the game went on.. I was soon having fun arming MCOMs and healing and reviving. Near the end, I realized that my Aircraft controls weren't set/got reset, as my mouse wasn't 'inverted' and I couldn't fly the helicopter at all, haha.

Recorded game: Battlefield Play4Free, Online FPS
Recorded with: Bandicam (Registered Version) @ 864p
Recording codec: MPEG-1, 70% Quality, 30fps

This video was also a test of a few things (though not an 'Official Testing Video'): I was messing around with different settings (resolutions, quality settings) to see how low I could set things before the quality suffered too much. This is of course, something VERY relative and what looks 'good enough' to one person, looks 'like crap on a cracker' to another person. What I was testing here was, what seemed good enough to upload to YouTube (since it recompresses anyway) and still be enjoyable, while making the recorded file as small as I could via Quality settings (which limits the bitrate somewhat) and resolution size (the larger the resolution, the more bitrate/filesize that would be required).

As I have stated in earlier articles talking about Quality, Bitrate and Filesize, I still find that going below 60% produces too many compression artifacts (macroblocks and 'trails', Gibbs effects and more) for many games, especially if there are large dark areas (which would get compressed more highly and have these compression effects occur in them). This doesn't happen with all games however; some games are fast-moving and/or do not have many darker/flatter areas and using 50% quality doesn't look too bad, even with the MJPEG codec. It's a balancing and testing game, as some games (especially with text) look fine and others look very bad (the compressor will try to allocate more bits around edges like text and compress even more highly then, the flatter/darker areas in a scene). I have done recordings of news streams and other things however, that allow for a very low quality recording setting (down to 20%), but that is mainly because the source itself is of a low quality (many streams are highly compressed and there is not much 'extra' compression artifacts produced by recording it in a lower quality/bitrate, especially if you are going to downsize for the final output video).

For most games, I found I could go down to 70% Quality comfortably - as long as the resolution stayed 'higher' [720p or higher]. With lower resolutions, the bitrate/quality reduction means too many 'casualties', as 30% of a 1080p recording isn't that many pixels when you consider the screen size; but one-third of a 480p recording is a huge amount of the already small screen being 'lost' to compression. Thus, with some testing (again to what looks "ok to me") I arrived at a middle ground of 864p, which maintains decent clarity of text and is large enough to discourage overcompression of darker/flatter areas. For keeping recorded files small and downsizing to 720p HD, it looked fine to me in tests - and on some games, doesn't look that bad even if you wanted to upsize to 1080p HD (clear text was maintained, etc).

So, enjoy this first installment in an 'unofficial' Video Series here at The Game Tips And More Blog: "Raw Gameplay" of Battlefield Play4Free. If you like the game, play it, tell others about it and buy some stuff from the Online Store and support it!

See You In The Game!

Any gameplay videos or animations uploaded are only one example of one possible path of game play and is not representative of the gameplay experience of the entirety of the game material as it is non-repeatable in exactness (movements, actions, viewpoints, etc) to a high degree of accuracy (especially in regards to online multiplayer play and interactions) and therefore is not a representation of a large portion of the game content (this includes complete Walkthroughs/Playthroughs, Raw Gameplay Footage and Tutorials). All material and content uploaded attempts to respect copyright and is presented for Educational and Entertainment purposes only, utilized under Fair Use and can be construed as Free Advertising. No copyright infringement is intended and cannot be inferred. Any possible representation approaching any infringement, to those seeking infringement action, requires double notification and will be honoured by permanent removal of the infringing material.

The Game Tips And More Blog's Ludo Ludi (Game Play) #1-3

I wanted to start a video series that was Random Gameplay Video Clips that I have collected over time. I started out calling it FLASHBACK, creating a logo for it and everything; but I wanted a way to archive/share them out a little bit faster/easier, rather than 'Featuring' them every time, so I came up with the concept of "Ludo Ludi".

It means "game" and "play" in Esperanto. The idea was to not label the gameplay clips or state what they are, in order to have other people enjoy the "surprise reminiscence" of the games. Viewers could try to guess what they are for fun or just enjoy them as part of a playlist where they didn't know what was coming next. For the most part it would be easy to guess them of course; if you played the game, you'll know what game it is and what class I played, etc.etc. But, I still thought it would be entertaining to have a bunch on a playlist of some sort, with no obvious names, having a transitory video (without logos/intros) of something loopable such as static - as though changing the channel on a television - in-between videos. With Youtube's Playlist and Randomize features, this can now be done and one can sit and reminisce on games of yesteryear with my video clips showing snippets of gaming moments recorded from a wide variety of games! Everyone with ADD/ADHD can just click the Next button on the playlist to skip to the next one if the current one isn't holding their interest! Everyone is a winner! With this in mind then, I now present one long paragraph and the first three installments of :

The Game Tips And More Blog's New Gameplay Video Series, "Ludo Ludi (Game Play)"

Enjoy and See You In The Games!