Soul Gateway - One Stop for Cameo and Original CaS for Soulcalibur V

I like to dedicate today’s post to one of my top affiliates on my YouTube channel - Soul Gateway.

This is the only segment that’s left of a once large internet project for Soulcalibur CaS (Create-a-Soul), and one that shall stay permanently online. The Soul Gateway channel was intended to showcase viewers on CreatiVe Souls (a Soulcalibur V CaS website) on how to recreate custom character creations shown on the website.

If you haven’t visited this channel yet, you should definitely opt to do so. Even if you don’t play or care for Soulcalibur V, I’m sure you’ll take a liking to the custom character creations on there, both cameos and originals—some of which are derived from Musou games!

Here is the link to the channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/soulgateway

Sample videos:

Recent news has it that Soul Gateway wishes to bring the project back online. If you are interested in seeing a new website and forum dedicated to presenting sharing and presenting Soulcalibur custom character creations to the public, as well as revival of the YouTube channel, please leave a message about it on the channel or through PM. Remember, no interests = no plans!

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Pristine Quality Screenshots with Hauppauge HD-PVR

The Hauppauge HD-PVR is perhaps one of the most well known HD capture devices on the market, and is actually the first HD capture device to include H.264 hardware encoding. This hardware allows the unit to seamlessly encode to H.264 on the fly without any impact on the CPU performance of the  computer.

While this is great for videos, it's an absolute nightmare for taking screenshots. This is mainly due to the automatic H.264 compression which cannot be cancelled into uncompressed, and lower maximum 13.5Mbps bitrate limit. Most of the time, attempting to capture a scene featuring heavy motion, then pulling a certain frame out of that clip to use as a screenshot will result in an image that is full of compressed artifacts. It doesn't help either that the HD-PVR—or at least the original model—didn't have any way to directly capture screenshots.

Here is an example of exactly what I'm talking about: capturing a video, then opening it in an viewer/editor and taking a frame from somewhere and making that frame into a screenshot. Note the compressing artifacts.

Wrong way to create a screenshot with HD-PVR.

There is a secret to being able to capture pristine, excellent quality screenshots on any certain part of any scene with any motion, however. And while this tactic works as intended, it does require some extra work, particularly good timing and a little luck.

The secret is really simple actually, just recall this—the first frame (frame 1) of any video the HD-PVR captures will always be in clean, pristine quality with no compression artifacts, no matter where it is taken. Although it's not as perfect as an uncompressed frame, it still comes very close.

So instead of trying to pull a frame out from the midst of a video, capture the frame you want as soon as it appears on the screen, quickly stop the capture, open up the mp4 or ts file—with something like DGAVCIndex—and just copy the first frame to be the screenshot. If you fail to get the right frame as frame 1, just simply keep trying until you get the frame you want, or closely to the frame you want.

Tip: If the time the device takes to start capturing a video takes too long, try capturing a scrap video first. Doing so will cause the HD-PVR to capture nearly instantly on the next and subsequent captures. To avoid lags and stuttering from high CPU usage, you can in conjunction toss the entire Total Media software altogether and resort to command prompt capturing using rcTVCap.

The right but more difficult way.

 Walla! All compression artifacts are gone and we have a very lovely screenshot to share!

This method may also work for other capture devices that can only capture in a compressed format. This may additionally be invaluable to those who own the HD-PVR 2, as it now has a built-in take screenshot tool. Nevertheless, I'm not sure how that function works on that model, so if your screenshots are looking too pixelated and nasty, it doesn't hurt to try this out.

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Wonderpierrot's Questions and Answers

As with all YouTubers and individuals with a following, I get an ample amount of personal questions that sometimes often gets asked frequently. Rather than continuously either ignoring the annoying ones or continuously answer the tolerable ones, I'm going to cite as much frequently asked questions and their answers that I recall in this post. Hopefully, you can gain a little more insight on who I am and what I do.

For more questions and answers goodness, part 2 is now available. Click here to read it!

Q: Where does the name wonderpierrot come from?
A: It's actually just an abrupt name that came out of my head the instant I joined YouTube. You should seriously know that I'm not consistent in usernames at all, and I pretty much embraced at least 25 different usernames on various sites and platforms. Nevertheless, I'm a bit better at sticking to one username nowadays. To the actual answer, pierrot was something I got from a Japanese rock band called PIERROT and which I thought sounded cool at the time. Wonder was basically short for wonderful. Put it together and you get wonderpierrot.

Q: Did you ever have any YouTube channels previously?
A: Yes. My first main channel was in fact completely different in content from my current channel. I also did not actually start out with KOEI games videos, but with videos circling around glitches and fun stuff found in other games. KOEI games were introduced later on, but they were also not serious gameplay videos. Eventually that channel got suspended for a reason I will not detail. However, thinking back about it now, it's actually a good thing it did as I probably could have never gotten out of the whole glitches and fun stuff extravaganza had it survived.

Q: Are you a guy or a girl?
A: Guy. I apologize to folks who thinks I'm otherwise.

Q: If you're a guy, why do you use female avatars and backgrounds and play as females most of the time?
A: As a male it's quite normal to be interested in the opposite gender. I feel to portray myself with female avatars and backgrounds as they are more aesthetically pleasing to my eyes, and I like that. The same goes with playing as female characters. It has absolutely nothing to do with anything else.
I'll also be honest and say I'm quite feminine myself, especially being Asian. I'm a slim type and often times like sporting longer hair. I guess it's just the way I am?

Q: Who is your favorite Musou character?
A: I honestly wish I had a favorite character, but unfortunately I usually don't. I simply like and play as whoever has a good moveset and as an added benefit who is also aesthetically pleasing or badass.

Q: What is your favorite Musou game?
A: Dynasty Warriors 3, 5 and 7. I don't really enjoy the Samurai Warriors series or any other series. I also have to give a big shout out to Dynasty Warriors 4, as that game was probably the most memorable to me.

Q: Are you Japanese?
A: I'm Asian, that's all I can tell you unfortunately.

Q: How long have you been playing Musou games?
A: Since the Dynasty Warriors 3 days when I saw the amazing screenshots of it in a magazine when it was just released.

Q: Why don't you ever answer my questions I post on your videos?
A: Sorry to say, but since having a lot of videos means having a lot of comments, I don't have the time to go through all of them. I usually only check a few new comments a day per video. However, I have been getting better at reading and replying to every comment lately. If you want to ask a question and want it answered, it's best you private message me or post your question on my channel instead.

Q: How did you become good at Musou games and how long did it take you?
A: It's all about passion, dedication and commitment to it. The harder you try, the more you challenge yourself, the longer you do it, the better you'll be. I didn't always start out playing games the way I do now. In fact, if you look at my earliest videos, you'll see I play them like any other casual player. When I realized the potential to be unique and different from the rest of the players on YouTube, I decided it had to be done. So I sat down with every new game, study its mechanics to the deepest possible, and try to challenge myself to deliver thrilling gameplay videos. I also have to say I got a lot of inspiration from other YouTube players when I was starting out. Those are the ones that woke me up and made me realize the true potential all these games have.

Q: Will you do anymore Monster Hunter, NFS, SoulCalibur or other types of games?
A: Probably. At current I feel my channel is much too catered to the KOEI/Musou crowd to stray away from it. In the future, I am desiring to expand my channel a bit and attempt to do other games if possible.

Q: Can I add you on PSN/Xbox Live and play with you online?
A: I don't have a PSN anymore, and I don't plan on having one anytime soon. I don't like having a Xbox Live account either as I don't play online enough to warrant Microsoft's ridiculous annually charges. Sorry.

Q: Do you still do requests?
A: Yes I do; however, I don't really guarantee them. I like to do my own stuff, and it's hard to try to cater to the random crowd, especially when you're concerned with putting out quality gameplay content. If a certain character for instance isn't catered to my gaming style, I probably won't do a video of him/her.

And that's all of the bunch for now. If you have any other questions you'd like to ask me, feel free to drop by my YouTube channel and post a message, post a comment here or send me an e-mail. Thanks for reading!

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