This may be old news to some, but to me it is something new as I only stumbled upon it recently while attempting to submit my own YouTube videos to GameFAQs.
GameFAQs are now allowing commentary and non-game music in all user submitted videos. Previously, videos with commentary and non-game music were disallowed and if submitted would be rejected. This also means game reviews and let's play from YouTube can be shared across to GameFAQs now. Videos involving cheats and exploits are still banned, however.
Why is this such a deal you ask? If you have read my post "6 Ways to Promote Your YouTube Videos" I detailed one of the ways were to submit your YouTube videos to GameFAQs to gain a larger audience. With this bit of change, it is now possible to pretty much successfully submit all of your gaming related YouTube videos to GameFAQs, with the exception of cheats/exploits videos.
Just remember to of course submit quality content only, please!
There has been a bit of an online thing in Japan recently, where websites are cracking down on who actually gets to view their content—preferably only their own species. Why is that, you ask? Well, imagine you created a website in English for English speaking audiences, then along comes a bunch of foreigners from another country who generate content on your site in a different language you and your audience doesn't understand. You wouldn't like that too much, right?
So hence, if you try to visit a few Japanese sites/pages recently and discovered you are unable to access them due to errors (e.g. Forbidden Access), then you are most likely purposely locked out due to your location not being in Japan.
The most recent example of this is on SAVEDATA.JP. I already detailed what this site is about and why it is useful here. However, they have begun to make all their save codes (セーブエディット) section available only to people living in Japan. So if you try to access these pages outside of Japan, you'll be now greeted to the following:
Red text translate to: You do not have permission to access.
Here is an easy way to get around this, and no, you do not have to move to Japan or any other country.
All you really have to do is to switch to use a proxy address. Proxies not only help you retain anonymity over the internet, but it additionally solves the issue of blocked/forbidden websites and pages, even ones set up by the server/network you are currently using.
But the above page will not just work with any proxy. You specifically need to use a proxy that is located in Japan. By doing such, you are basically masking yourself to the internet as coming directly from Japan instead of where you are currently.
Most proxy lists should indicate the proxy IP (proxy address), port, speed, level of anonymity and country it comes from.
In order to browse the internet with at least decent speeds, you should select a proxy that has the highest speed. Not all proxy addresses also work, so you may have to end up trying multiple ones until you come upon one that does the trick.
So looking at the above proxy list, I would first select 179.60.241.173, copy it to the clipboard and keep the 8080 port number in mind (as I'll be needing to input it later onwards).
Do not simply copy and use this proxy address I'm using or refer to the screenshot I posted for addresses. Proxies change all the time, so you most likely won't be able to continuously use the same ones for an infinite amount of time.
Let's briefly go over how to actually switch to a proxy address in your internet browser settings. All browsers will be different, but in general they should all give you adjustable proxy settings.
In Firefox, proxy options are located under browser options/preferences in Advanced -> Network -> Connection -> Settings.
After clicking "Manual proxy configuration", you need to enter the proxy address you copied previously and paste it into the "HTTP Proxy" number field. Additionally, input the port number tied to that proxy address into the "Port" field. Leave everything else unchanged and save the changes.
In Chrome, proxy settings can be changed by going to Settings -> Show Advanced Settings -> Network -> Change Proxy Settings. The steps should then be the same as Firefox above.
After changing the proxy, you can then test the page that you couldn't access earlier by simply reloading or going to the address again. If you cannot get the page to load or you are still getting error messages, you should go on to try the next proxy address.
So after doing that, I was able to access SAVEDATA.JP's save codes pages again!
Now that you know how proxies work, you can use it to your advantage in other ways, and I do mean not strictly for Japanese web content exclusively.
I know that a lot of my viewers are interested in
playing imported games, particularly newly released Japanese titles or
earlier titles that were unfortunately pushed off into the abyss for
English or other international audiences. While I think the idea is
wholly crazy for reading intensive games such as RPGs, it's otherwise
alright for games that are rather light on it, such as action games in
veins of KOEI's Warriors series.
To help your
experience be less of a misery, I'm going to share with you a useful
tool you can use yourself to quickly translate in-game Japanese text to
English, or whatever other language you desire. Now if you are already
fluent in Japanese as I mostly am, you can still use it for a dozen
other languages and not just for games either. I've used this tool
myself to translate Chinese, Korean, German and Russian text to English from
games, movies, video clips and television shows (none of which I'm fortunately any adept in).
The tool in question is called OCR, or Optical Character Recognition. If
you haven’t heard about it yet, it essentially allows you to
grab specific sections of text in a picture/screenshot and converts
them to machine-encoded/computer-readable format, which is text that you can manipulate freely on your PC
including copying and pasting into a translator.
OCR is widely available as both online web embedded services or via downloaded software. There are additionally both free and paid versions; free versions offering basic functionality with less accuracy while paid offering higher accuracy and more features.
Before we dive into anything, let’s briefly go over the prerequisites. You’re going to need the following:
1.) A computer that preferably has access to the internet. 2.) OCR software.
I tend to favor and prefer ABBYY Screenshot Reader, included in ABBYY FineReader. Although it is paid software, it has worked mostly flawlessly for me converting virtually any text in any language in screenshots to computer-readable with high accuracy. If you visit their website, you can download a free, fully featured trial of the software. Albeit its rather hefty price tag, I highly recommend purchasing as it is one of the best OCR software available on the internet.
Do not download or purchase ABBYY Screenshot Reader individually, as you will not be receiving Asian language support with it.
If you prefer to go the free route, there are numerous free OCR services available, both as online web embedded and via downloaded software. Be wary that a lot of them do not support Asian languages.
Capture2text is a free downloadable OCR software with Asian language support and specific section/text area capturing: http://capture2text.sourceforge.net/
Keep in mind that I have no experience or knowledge with Capture2text or any online based OCR services, let alone free ones. All I ever use is the fantastic ABBYY Screenshot Reader. Nevertheless, a simple Google search will yield more results, if the above ones are not favorable or working for you.
The following is necessary if you desire game console support (e.g. PS3, Xbox 360, etc.): 3.)A capture card or device compatible with your game console.
The
capture card or device is necessary because we require a method to take
screenshots in the game with the text we want converted/translated, so
we can then run OCR on it. Now, you may get away substituting this with a camera, but since most OCR
requires the text in the picture be very clear and precise, a capture
card or device will undoubtedly work much better.
If you want to do this on PC games, then you can simply use "Print Screen" command.
Alright,
now with the prerequisites and boring things aside, let’s get into the
actual process!
Let’s say for example you're playing Musou Orochi 2
Ultimate right now on your PS3, pretend you don’t know Japanese and really
like to know what the highlighted text said.
Now being
that it’s a game, you can’t really just copy the text and paste it into a
translator, could you? You could possibly manually convert the text into computer-readable by finding out which letter is which (using some sort of
Japanese dictionary or characters list) and typing it out one by one on the computer. But let’s face it, that’s going to take until Hell freezes
over and infinite eye strain, especially given the amount of Kanji that exists!
Well, fear not, as this is where OCR comes to save the day! It will easily convert the text to computer-readable for you in the speed that it takes you to type a sentence or less.
So
the first thing you have to do is take a screenshot of the screen with
the text on it you want converted, utilizing your capture card or device. If you're on a PC game, print screen should
work dandy. Remember, you can also attempt to use a camera if you're on
a game console and have no access to a capture device. That may or may
not work, depending on how large, clear and prominent the text comes out on the
photo.
The next step is to run OCR on the screenshot. For this purpose, I'm going to be using ABBYY Screenshot Reader exclusively. Methods and instructions will vary upon the OCR being used. In my case, I'm going to show you how easy and fast it is to use ABBYY Screenshot Reader.
Here ABBYY Screenshot Reader can be launched directly from the Start Menu after installing ABBYY FineReader:
In order to change language to Japanese or any other Asian language, click on the Language drop down menu and select "More languages...":
In the Language Editor window, Asian languages, including Japanese can now be selected under "Asian Languages". Be sure to uncheck any other languages that have already been enabled, such as the default English. If you have more than one language selected, the software will attempt to read all of those languages in the screenshot, which may make the results not come out what you'd expect.
After clicking OK and confirming that you only have one sole language selected, you can now go ahead and click on the capture screenshot button (the big button with the notepad and clipboard icon to the right). However; before doing that, you have to make sure the screenshot the software needs to read from is already opened in a picture viewer, fully zoomed to 100% and non-hidden/obstructed on the screen. Because once you click on that button, it will essentially freeze everything on the screen.
Click the capture screenshot button to start the reading process, but do not click it until your screenshot is launched in a separate window, fully zoomed to 100% and non-hidden/obstructed on the screen.
After clicking that button, the ABBYY Screenshot Reader window will disappear and your cursor will transform into a crosshair.
What you basically wish to accomplish here is to simply just drag and select the section of text you want the screenshot reader to read and copy from.
It might consume a few lousy seconds, but once it's done its magic, that bit of text that is in the screenshot should be correctly converted and additionally copied to the clipboard.
We can find that out by simply opening a software that can input text (such as Notepad) and clicking Control + P to paste.
So here are the results of attempting to run ABBYY Screenshot Reader on that specific section of Japanese text in that Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate screenshot:
In comparison to the actual text that appears in the game, it read it 100% perfectly!
The next step is, as you have guessed, copy that bit of text and paste into a translator. My main web translator of choice is Google Translate, but if results fair poorly for you, I also recommend Babylon Translation or Babelfish.
After running that bit of Japanese text on Google Translate, this is what it returned:
Google Translate doesn't do a fantastic job on translation, especially regarding Japanese to English, generating broken Engrish a fair majority of the time. Regardless, it should be enough most of the time for you to get a general idea of what the text means. Here, I can pretend that I can only read the English, so to my understanding it basically means that turning this on will cause enemy morale to raise greatly at the start of the battle.
Now if you still don't understand it after the above translation, you are welcome to tormentask me to give you a proper translation that doesn't make anyone's mind melt in confusion (Japanese only of course). No OCR necessary, just send me the screenshot or text directly. :)
And that pretty much concludes this guide on OCR. You can envision other endless possibilities you can have with OCR, given all the possible languages it can read from. Of course and like I already indicated, it doesn't have to be Japanese or be a game. I honestly think every person who enjoys foreign media and games should have knowledge on how to effectively use OCR, and most certainly ABBYY Screenshot Reader.
One last thing I want to mention is that any OCR, even ABBYY Screenshot Reader, isn't a miracle product by any means. Meaning, it's not going to perfectly read all text you hand to it. If you desire perfect or near perfect results, you have to make sure whatever text in your screenshots you want read from is as crisp, clear and in large font as possible. The text should additionally have no background behind the text, straight (not crooked) and be single colored. Vertical text is fine as long as it's straight.
Viewer Brandon Schmierer wrote the following e-mail to me a few days ago:
"Hey Wonderpierrot, I have been loving your videos and when you started posting Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate videos it encouraged me to re-buy WO3 for my ps3. However I haven't been able to find what attributes you use on your weapons. I have been doing the typical setups that people use on Tier lists: Bolt Wind Slay Agility Osmosis and Absorption with the remaining 2 slots being either Typhoon/Echo/Reach. However playing chaos with these attributes makes it too easy, so I was wondering if you had a medium level setup that could still clear chaos but not make it be too easy. Thank you for your time and I hope you continue to make awesome videos."
The Warriors Orochi series is in my humble opinion one of the best series in KOEI's game arsenal. This is especially valid because of its unrestricted combos, unrestricted weapon fusion system and high character level and stat ceilings. However, there has always been the iffy problem of these games being too easy and not challenging enough if you "do the right thing".
What I mean by "doing the right thing" is taking heed of your own judgement (and even others) and maximizing your characters to the best of their ability and potential possible in the game. Because, why would you not do that given the chance? You want your characters to be the most powerful right?
Well, when you start doing too much of that, the difficulty of the game suddenly drops downhill. Actual player skill and the unrestricted combos are significantly diminished, as enemies on the highest difficulty can be taken out in mere seconds, leaving no room for any real fun essentially. This is clearly an outcast from other games (even in the same genre), when 100% maximization still results in the game being plenty challenging.
"But the game difficulty is balanced!! Because the enemy are just as strong as you are LOLZ!!" is an argument against what I said can be made. True, the enemy can kill you as fast you kill them when you're uber strong, but you see... there's a big problem in that equation: Enemy AI. Yeah, the enemy AI is weak. So when your own brain wins in a landslide against the enemy AI, then their damage output doesn't matter too much. The game in the end is still easy.
Even if the enemy AI somehow were intelligent, who actually likes sudden death gameplay? That is the equivalent of uber you vs the enemy at the highest difficulty.
When it comes to maximization, that is, making your character the best s/he can possibly be in the game, veteran players will often lure you to the following setup:
* Max character level - this is quite obvious.
* Big-star weapon with max compatibility - also obvious; it's after all the best and highest damage weapon you can attain in the game.
* And a variety of weapon attributes, that usually involves the following (all max level, of course): Wind, Bolt, Slay, Agility, Reach, Osmosis, Absorption, Echo/Typhoon
If you indeed meet all these points for any character, the character will without a doubt be vastly overpowered regardless of moveset type. If you're the type of player who likes to run around slaying everything that attempts to get in your path in a few measly charges and consider that entertaining, then maximization would be right for you. Farmers and grinders, I'm including you too! But it gets worse, because the game actually has an attribute that can lessen the killing time further, called Brilliance. With this equipped in addition, you can pretty much one shot everything in any difficulty now. Brilliant.
So what if you're the player in between, who actually wants a challenge and doesn't like the game to be too easy, or even too difficult? What if you're the player who wishes to showcases as much skill as possible in doing flashy, ridiculous, lengthy tag team combos without over-killing? You know, the kind of thing this game was made for? Well, there is a way to get a very good balance of all of these, and I will show you how!
Character Level and Stats
Firstly, let's talk initially about the character level and stats. I'll be quick and efficient, max the level or don't max it, but don't let it sit below 50. Maxing the level and therefore raising your character's stats to max won't impact the game's highest difficulty by a lot. In fact, you'll need to be very high leveled in order to survive higher star stages in chaos. The last thing you want is the enemy taking you out in one hit. I suggest leveling to at least 70+.
Weapons and Weapon Attributes
Next and more importantly, let's talk about weapons and weapon attributes. Here's where you can predominately decide the game's overall difficulty. This suggested setup I often use gives you a difficulty that is just right (i.e. neither too easy or too difficult). It of course also allows you to be as stylish and lengthy in the execution of combos as your heart's content.
4 Star Weapon - 4 star weapons are preferred to big-star star weapons, as it requires much less grinding to max compatibility. The attack power + compatibility of 4 star weapons when maxed tends to also work best to balance difficulty.
Weapon Attributes:
Wind - You should always have this attribute on your weapons, but do not max it. Leave it at a very low level, i.e. level 1-5. Anything beyond that destroys the game's challenge and difficulty as it depletes too much of an enemy/officer health in charges. It is a necessity for guard breaking and to help speed up time killing officers in chaos, but not too much.
Agility - Max it. Attacking slow will be painful for a lot of combos.
Reach - Max it. See above.
Osmosis/Absorption - You should put these two on. Otherwise, you'll be scrambling to switch characters often or roam around to find recovery items because enemy damage is extremely significant on chaos. Put it to a lower level if you desire more challenge.
The following attributes are optional:
Flame - Flame isn't too powerful but it does add helpful additional damage to your charges. It doesn't hurt to put it on your weapons and even max it.
Typhoon - Adds a ton of range to your attacks. Useful for characters with low reach and essential for certain combos. Some characters may not really benefit from it. You will have to experiment.
Bolt and Slay - Bolt, slay and wind I don't recommend combining any of these together. All three of these attributes are damage scaled based on enemy health, so they are vastly powerful at high levels and even more so when combined. If you do put them on, leave them at a low level like with wind.
Never put the following attributes:
Brilliance - We don't need to say anything further about this little gem. It adds attributes (such as the already powerful bolt, slay and wind) to all your attacks when your musou bar is full. Turns the game into cheating mode, essentially.
Echo - Unless you're not a combo enthusiast (why wouldn't you be?!), echo is not cool to put on your weapons. It totally, I mean totally ruins your combo potential for most attacks.
Any other attributes are up to you, but these are usually the main ones I utilize when I do combo based videos (or in other words, gameplay that doesn't feel easy and boring). Of course, you can adjust attributes and levels to your needs if you feel it is not challenging enough.
Character Equipment
There are only two main things you need to take in consideration with equipment items. One is attack power and the other is defense. There are two items in particular that can raise attack and defense independently: Lion's Fang and Chimera Shell. Unless you feel like your damage output is poor, I would place Chimera Shell over Lion's Fang. The rest of the slots can be filled with a mix of Phoenix Wing, Charm of Alacrity, Amulet of Protection, Tengjia Armor, Iron Gauntlets and of course one of the horse saddles.
Defense, defense, defense is the key. You already have more than enough damage output, but enemy damage to you can still be a problem. You want to lower their damage as much as possible to help balance the difficulty better.
If you're willing to sacrifice some attack, then Shield of Sacrifice is a notable item to equip to boost defense.
Summary
By following this setup and guidance, I will guarantee you can get a lot more enjoyment out of Warriors Orochi 3 with increased challenge and difficulty. This setup is also mandatory for any kind of prolong combo on officers without unnecessary over-killing.
And regardless of what anyone says, that you may be "doing it wrong" or "being noob", shot back and say "YES, I AM handicapping myself so the game is no longer a cakewalk and actually requires skill!".
But what about Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate you say? Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate is another beast of its own, and I will be covering a Combo/Challenge Setup of that game at another time.
I've been on YouTube for around 7 years and I've seen far too many people make mistakes with their video titles, description and tags. Hence, I'd like to share with everyone my tips to best optimize your video title, description and tags to ensure good ranking and high viewership.
Title:
The video title is the most important and crucial part of a video. It's after all what Google and YouTube predominately uses in its search algorithm to rank and bring up video results in its search engine.
Make sure your video title is as descriptive and specific as possible and avoid vagueness like the plague. Ensure you don't make the same mistakes I sometimes do and always spell check the title, including any names.
If you're creating videos about Japanese games as I do, you can gain a more diverse international audience by including a split of both Japanese and English in your title. Try to go for actual Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji characters as opposed to Romaji (although certain players will also look up game titles in Romaji). Japanese games are also very popular in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan; so inputting Chinese titles would help too. The only downside to this is that it would dramatically limit your actual title length, as you would have to put two or more languages together of the same thing.
If you decide to skip using Japanese and Chinese languages in your title, or even any other language; don't worry—you can still put them all in the tags.
Description:
The description is the least important of everything, but that doesn't mean you can slouch on it or leave it empty. The description helps the viewer the most, as it may decide whether or not they want to watch the video and understand why it was made.
You have a brilliant amount of text length in the description, so try to write down everything you possibly can about the video.
Tags:
Tags are the second most important aspect of a video for ranking and search. You want to put as much tags as you can that pertains to the video, including things that viewers may potentially look up.
Personally, I tend to put every possible version of the subject title first (including in different related languages), then onto tags that deal with the video itself, also as many in different related languages.
Here is a sample of the tags from a recent video I did:
Notice how I put the game's title as the first tags in English then Japanese, followed by tags that are more specific into the video itself. Also note the extra Japanese of a few important tags (character names, combos, gameplay and chaos).
If your video in question is purely English or another language and won't really benefit from an international audience, you can skip putting translated tags. That way, you can save room for tags that deal more with your video.
Remember: Don't put non-related tags into your videos in efforts to gain more views. Not only will it piss off your viewers, but it's a violation of Google/YouTube TOS and you could potentially be suspended for it.
Thumbnail:
The thumbnail is the third most important as it may determine whether or not a viewer will actually click on your video to watch it. Unless YouTube happens to choose you an amazing thumbnail (lucky you), please don't use the default three supplied. This especially goes for game videos, where the default thumbnails often looks like a confusing mess because it's taken in midst of random gameplay footage.
You want a thumbnail that viewers can actually understand and be enticed by—i.e. large distinguishable visuals, aesthetically appealing and easy to read text (if any).
The best way to do this is of course create your own thumbnail using software, such as Photoshop or GIMP.
Notice how I used large visuals of the characters and large font. The largeness is mandatory as YouTube can shrink your thumbnail to around 100 pixels, so you want to ensure everything is distinguishable and readable.
If you're still not able to use custom thumbnails on YouTube—what are you waiting for?! Go sign up for monetization and get that very important option! You don't even need to be a partner to do so.
Summary:
To summarize, remember and execute these tips for all your videos to
ensure good ranking and high viewership, regardless of your subject
content. Of course, the most critical part of a video is the actual
content, so make sure you have good content first and foremost!
I apologize for the lack of posts this month, but it's also been a pretty busy and hectic month for me. I additionally didn't have a lot to blog about besides personal things—which I'm sure none of you care about. I do have some more content planned in the forthcoming weeks, so stay tuned and stay subscribed! :D
Anyways, I thought about doing a mini post regarding three hidden gameplay things you may not know about in Dynasty Warriors 8. These are not game changing by any means, but they are interesting nevertheless. I actually found some of these out by pure accident.
1: Instant Affinity Shield Breaking
The next time you approach an officer with an inferior weapon affinity, get into close range, then proceed to do an interim save.
Reload the game and the officer's affinity shield is instantly completely destroyed without you having to do anything!
There isn't much use to this in normal gameplay, but it's definitely useful to provide normally impossible combos (see number 2).
2: Eliminate Recovery for Named Officers
Here's something you might not know about—if an enemy officer has his or her affinity shield totally destroyed, they will no longer be able to do any sort of recovery, or somersault. You can switch to a inferior or neutral affinity, and they'll still retain the inability to recover.
Unit commanders are like named officers, but they lack one thing in common—recovery. They will almost never attempt to recover when falling on the ground or during an air recoverable attack. So go ahead, and do the normally impossible juggles with them.
Got anything else you'd like to share that I or we don't know about?
I'm going to do another brief questions and answers post. And because I still get asked quite often about HD video capturing—including what my setup and equipment are and my process, I'm going to dedicate this Q&A exclusively to HD video capturing!
Q: What are your current video game capturing setup and equipment?
A: I have owned and used the same setup and equipment since I started uploading HD videos in YouTube, way back in 2008-2009. So right off the bat I won't say it's the absolute best setup and equipment, but it is still incredibly high quality and efficient till this day.
For capturing hardware, I use a Hauppauge HD-PVR. Not the HD-PVR 2, as there's really no difference between the two besides the added benefit of HDMI (which is mostly worthless to my videos anyways, as most of them are on PS3 and it has HCDP aka "copy protection").
HD-PVR Front
HD-PVR Back
I also think owning the original HD-PVR opens up a lot more options for me. For instance, I can configure the HD-PVR so it can capture all my videos using a simple DOS command prompt. If you have ever used the supplied Total Media software to capture, you'll know how much of a strain it can put on your CPU. Capturing through the command prompt uses absolutely zero percent CPU use. Remember to hook up your component out to your HDTV of course, unless you want to do blind capturing. If you want to learn how to do this and have the first generation HD-PVR, e-mail me!
The HD-PVR is connected to a laptop with a dual boot of Windows 7 and Mac OS X.
For software, I use literally too much, but then again using that many allows me full control of everything. But the most often I use are the three of: DGAVCDec for demuxing the .ts output file; AVISynth to enable the opening of the video file in VirtualDub and for basic trimming/fades; and VirtualDub for filtering and encoding/compressing. For more advanced videos where serious editing, filtering and joining is required, I will additionally use Sony Vegas Pro.
Sometimes I will also use iMovie and Final Cut Pro X, depending on how fancy I need things to be.
Q: What are your steps to creation of a video for YouTube?
A: Here is a brief summary of what I usually do >
Capture footage using HD-PVR through rcTVCap (DOS based capture).
Demux the .ts output file in DGAVCDec.
Edit my AVISynth script file, add a fade in/fadeout if necessary, add trim points if necessary.
Open the video file using the AVISynth script file in VirtualDub.
Apply my filter and compression presets for all my HD videos in VirtualDub.
Encode/compress the video using x264 codec (H.264).
If you don't understand that, then it's perfectly fine. It's quite advanced!
Those steps however are only the case if the video in question doesn't require serious editing and filtering, in which the steps will be a little different. I usually will just encode the video file in VirtualDub as uncompressed and edit it further in Sony Vegas Pro.
Q: What would your future video game capturing setup and equipment be, or what do you suggest would be the best one out there?
A: If you truly want the best; meaning the best quality, the best audio and the best efficiency, your only option would be capturing uncompressed through HDMI and perhaps optic audio.
At the moment, there are quite few video capture devices on the market that can capture uncompressed and these are usually ones that are tailored to the professional market. The only ones that springs to my mind are any of BlackMagic's Intensity products.
So why does capturing uncompressed matter anyways? It matters because when you capture uncompressed, you are actually capturing the footage in its pristine, pure, natural state, with zero added compression of any kind. That means ZERO compression pixelation! More popular consumer capture devices (HD-PVR, Elgato, etc.) will force your videos to all go through its hardware encoder/compressor (usually H.264).
H.264 is an awesome codec and should be used on every video, but it's not so awesome when you want to use it for editing and have to recompress again. Recompressing H.264 with H.264 over again can degrade your video quality.
On the other hand, if you upload your captured videos the instant it comes out and never need to edit it, then a H.264 type capture device would be an easier, more affordable and better option. Then again, you may not care too much about the quailty either.
After you captured your uncompressed footage, you can then bring it into a video editor, edit it and then encode/compress it to H.264 at a HIGH bitrate. This results in the most minimal amount of quality loss and compression pixelation possible. Don't try uploading uncompressed videos directly or even use them for long term storage, as they can take up as much as 180MB per second!
Another added benefit of using uncompressed videos is that video editors tend to work much better with uncompressed videos than compressed video. If you don't believe me, just try to edit a H.264 video file then an uncompressed video file in Sony Vegas Pro.
The biggest downside to capturing uncompressed is the significant demand on your PC/Mac hardware. If you don't have either a huge SSD or hard drive RAID setup, don't even bother.
To answer the actual first part of the question—yes, I will change to an Intensity Shuttle Thunderbolt soon, along with a new desktop computer to meet the demanding needs of capturing uncompressed.
Q: Any thoughts on what you believe is the best video editing software?
A: I have always liked and recommend Sony Vegas Pro or Sony Vegas Movie Studio to others. It's timeline based editor and interface is one of the best and easiest to use.
I also enjoy using iMovie and Final Cut Pro X on Mac at times, when I need to do some more cool looking visual effects and transitions (Sony Vegas doesn't come with a whole lot of awesome, jaw dropping visual effects and transitions).
Like I mentioned earlier, if you just want basic editing including trimming and light filtering, AVISynth and VirtualDub together makes an awesome combination.
Q: HDMI vs Component. Is there really a quality difference?
A: Nah, not really. I tested both and at most you'll gain a 5% quality increase with HDMI compared to component, most being HDMI being a tiny bit sharper. Another benefit of HDMI is that its completely digital instead of analog like component. So if you live in an area that has a lot of analog interference, HDMI can completely get rid of these for you.
The only prominant reason to have the need to use HDMI is if you plan on capturing in 1080p. Then again, most PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U games today aren't even 1080p native. What you are essentially doing is forcing the game to stretch to that resolution.
Capturing through HDMI with the PS3 also doesn't work because of the so-called HDCP copy protection. There are ways around this, but they usually involve converting the HDMI signal to component. What's the point?
Q: Any tips for HD video capturing?
A: I have lots of tricks and tips in this post I made in July!
Recently, I received an e-mail from someone (who I decided should remain anonymous here), asking if there was a way to resign game saves on the Xbox 360 as easy as the PS3 with no modding required.
I'm glad he/she asked, because just a few days ago I had to resign a Lost Planet 2 game save on the Xbox 360. But yes, resigning game saves on the Xbox 360 is just as easy if not easier than the PS3.
So here's how you do it:
Requirements:
Game save you wish to resign
Game save of your own from your own console and profile
USB stick/drive (configured to Xbox 360 specifications)
STEP 1: Format/Customize USB stick in Xbox 360 and copy a game save to it
The first thing you will need to accomplish is to configure your USB stick in order for the Xbox 360 to read and write files to it. This can be easily done by inserting a USB stick in your Xbox 360, going to System > Storage, select the USB stick and select "Configure Now".
When it's done configuring, copy any of your own game save to the USB stick from your profile. It doesn't have to be from same game as the one you're trying to resign.
STEP 2: Obtain game save you wish to resign
You will now need the game save you wish to resign. For this guide, I'll be using a Lost Planet 2 100% save I downloaded from a gaming forums.
The game save has to be a complete game save and not a character save. If you want to learn how to resign character saves, go down to the section labeled "How to Resign Character Saves".
Put the game save somewhere you can remember.
STEP 3: Download Horizon
Horizon is a tool set for working with Xbox 360 configured USB devices. It has a built-in save resigner tool and that's what makes it important and crucial for this guide.
Once downloaded, run the installer to install the program. Do not launch it yet.
STEP 4: Resign game save with Horizon
Plug in your USB stick to your PC and then run Horizon. Proceed to update the software if necessary.
When it opens, click on the "Tools" tab and then click "Package Manager". It should launch a new Package Manager window.
Click the blue "Open" button and select the game save file you wish to resign.
Click the "Device Explorer" tab on the right. It should spring load the explorer window with your USB stick contents.
Go to "Games" > "Your Game Name" > "Your Game Name Save", like below:
Double click the game save to open it up. It should launch another Package Manger window. Your screen should now look something like this:
Now, what you want to do is to copy the "Profile ID" of the game save from your USB stick and paste it to the "Profile ID" of the game save you want to resign.
Leave the "Console ID" and "Device ID" alone and do not copy it over.
Once that's all done, click the red button labeled "Save, Hash, and Resign".
Now, click on "Save to Device" and select your flash drive. Click "Yes" to the confirmation dialog.
All done!
STEP 4: Final moments
Remove your USB stick from your PC and plug it back into your Xbox 360.
You can either now just play your game and launch the game save directly from the USB stick or copy it back into your Memory Unit or HDD.
How to Resign Character Saves
Sometimes you may encounter or want to resign a character save rather than a complete game save. Character saves are usually labeled as SaveGame.sav while complete saves are Save0001.sav.
What you want to do here is to create and save a dummy character in your game, copy it over to your USB stick, then open the game save in Horizon.
Click the "Contents" tab. Right click the "Entry Name" and select "Replace". Select the character save you downloaded/obtain.
Don't forget to click "Save, Hash and Resign". Afterwards, you should be good to go.
NEED HELP?
Please post a comment directly in this post or send me an e-mail.
Now why would you want to do this? The following scenarios can make weapon modding a valid choice for you:
* You wish to avoid the laborious and semi-lottery style weapon tempering process in the game completely.
* You wish to not have to waste any materials such as weapons and weapon materials.
* You don't have the materials for tempering and don't want to waste time obtaining them.
* You want one or more perfectly tailored weapon(s) with the exact affinity, elements and element levels instantly.
* You want to change one or more current elements and/or affinity on a weapon.
* You want to experiment with different element builds without punishment.
* You are doing tiers/rankings.
Now this guide will be essentially the same as the Japanese version. The only difference will be in the elements list and rewording of a few things (due to official English translations).
Remember, all you need for this is an ordinary PS3 (does not have to be modded in any way), USB stick, a PC equipped with Windows and 5-10 minutes of your time.
There is NO extra experience or knowledge required, except being able to match up numbers with words!
HxD hex editor (built-in with Bruteforce Save Data)
STEP 1: Copy your game save to your PC
You will need to have your game save stored and accessible on your PC as you will be modifying its contents. The easiest way to do this is to insert a FAT32 formatted USB stick in your PS3 and copying the game save to the stick, then copy it onto your PC.
The game save should be located on your USB stick in PS3\SAVEDATA. Copy the entire NPUB31234-SAVEDATA or NPEB01364-SAVEDATA folder to your PC and leave it somewhere you can remember.
Important! Always make a backup of your game save in case anything ever goes wrong. I recommend creating a new folder called "SAVEDATA BACKUP" and putting an extra copy of your game save there. I will not be held responsible for any damages caused to your game save if you fail to make constant backups.
STEP 2: Download and configure Bruteforce Save Data
Bruteforce Save Data is a powerful game save data swiss army knife for Playstation 3. It allows one to decyrpt and encrypt game save files, add cheats, transfer region, transfer saves to another owner, and more. For this specific scenario, we will only need to use it to decrypt and encrypt files.
Once it's finished downloading, extract the RAR file and run the installer. Do not run the program yet. Create a new folder on your desktop or anywhere else you like and name it "SAVEDATA". This folder will be the folder where you store all your game saves for usage with Bruteforce Save Data. Make sure that wherever directory you store it in is NOT write protected! Drag/copy your Dynasty Warriors 8 save folder (NPUB31234-SAVEDATA/NPEB01364-SAVEDATA) to this "SAVEDATA" folder.
Download this pre-configured game.conf file and replace the existing game.conf in your Bruteforce Save Data program folder (located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Bruteforce Save Data). This will update the database with Dynasty Warriors 8 game keys so the program can decrypt and encrypt the game save.
Now it's time to run Bruteforce Save Data.
Windows Vista, 7 and 8: Run Bruteforce Save Data as an administrator by right clicking the program icon and then selecting "Run as administrator". This is very crucial! If you don't wish to do this every time you re-open the program, go to the BruteforceSaveData.exe in Windows Explorer, right click and select "Properties", then go to "Compatibility" tab and check "Run this program as administrator". Alternately, you can simply disable Windows User Account Control (UAC).
Windows XP: You can just simply double click the program icon to launch. Although, if you run into strange issues, you may want to try running as an Administrator.
If you receive an error message regarding msvbvm50.dll missing, you need to install Visual Basic Runtime 5.
You may be also requested to download Microsoft Visual Basic C++ 2010 (x86) if you don't have it installed in your system. Downloading and installing this is a must!
If all is well, you should be greeted with a nice big window.
It may ask you to download the latest cheats file, simply ignore this and close the window. Ignore any of the program's requests to input a console ID and User ID. You don't need to setup a PARAM.SFO template either. Just leave them all at default.
The first thing we need to do is click on the "..." button and select the "SAVEDATA" folder of where our game saves are (the one we created earlier). So go ahead and do that. Once selected, your save files should show up.
SAVEDATA folder selected as the path.
Take note of the "Key" section, there should be numbers in this field. If it's empty, you have forgotten to replace the game.conf file as directed earlier and must do so before continuing.
STEP 3: Decrypt game save files
In the Bruteforce Save Data window, make sure NPUB31234-SAVEDATA/NPEB01364-SAVEDATA is selected on the top window and click on "Decrypt PFD" button then "Decrypt All Files". You can also simply use Ctrl + D to decrypt.
How to decrypt the game save files.
After it has successfully decrypted, you should see the window turn green. This indicates the game save files are decrypted. Ignore any disc hash key errors you get.
Game save files successfully decrypted.
STEP 4: Open APP.BIN with hex editor
The APP.BIN is the file that contains all of our actual game save data. Since we decrypted it earlier, we can now open it directly with a hex editor to modify its contents. You can do this by double clicking the APP.BIN file within Bruteforce Save Data. It will open the file in HxD.
Initial opening of APP.BIN in HxD.
Once opened, you should see a bunch of scary looking hex data that no regular being can decipher. Don't worry, you will know exactly what to edit soon.
Make sure your APP.BIN file looks very close to this when you open it in HxD. It should have LOTS of 00s. If it doesn't, you didn't decrypt it or something wrong went with the decryption.
STEP 5: Obtain hex values for weapons you want to edit
Since there's no easy way to locate the exact locations of where certain weapon values are stored on the APP.BIN file, we need to refer back to the actual game to fish them out.
With that being stated, leave your PC and go to your Dynasty Warriors 8 game running on your PS3. Head into any mode where you can access full information about your weapons. Select a particular weapon you want to edit and take a note of its elements. The type of weapon you select doesn't matter. You can even edit gold and treasure weapons if you want.
Now, take a look at the list below. This list details all the weapon elements available in the game and their respective hex values.
FF = Empty/No Element
00 = Thorns
01 = Awareness
02 = Survival
03 = Frenzy
04 = Barricade
05 = Aggression (Musou)
06 = Flurry
07 = Velocity
08 = Chain
09 = Inferno
0A = Frost
0B = Thunder
0C = Cyclone
0D = Slash
0E = Venom
0F = Flash
10 = Spurt
11 = Recovery
12 = Uplift
13 = Enlightment
14 = Explosive
15 = Induction
16 = Vigor
17 = Jolt
18 = Desperation
19 = Resolve
1A = Swiftness
1B = Agility
1C = Aggression (Affinity)
1D = Protection
1E = Fear
1F = Awe
20 = Morass
21 = Jubilation
22 = Roar
23 = Triumph
24 = Greed
25 = Fury
26 = Ridigty
27 = Whirlwind
Look at the weapon you want to edit again, and match up the elements on it with their hex values. On a notepad or piece of paper, write down the element hex values in the order they appear on the weapon.
Need an example? Say my weapon elements are Flash Jubilation Triumph Thorns Flurry Swiftness. So looking at the list, I would write down 0F 21 23 00 06 1A.
The weapon I chose to edit.
A weapon will not always have six elements. So in these cases, simply write down all the element hex values it does have, then append FF to each element that it doesn’t have until it equals six total (e.g. 0C 1E 07 12 FF FF, for a weapon that only has 4 elements). To be certain you don’t edit the wrong weapon during the actual hex editing process, you’ll definitely need a weapon that has at least 4 elements attached to it.
If you plan on editing more than one weapon, take this opportunity to additionally write down the element hex values for all those weapons you're going to edit. Make sure you are using memorable labels for each, as you can get easily confused as to which hex values belong to which weapons later on.
STEP 6: Edit weapon hex values in APP.BIN
It's finally time to actually edit your weapons!
With the APP.BIN file still opened in HxD, hit Ctrl + F to open the find tool. Enter the hex values to the weapon you want to edit in the “Search for” text box. Change the datatype to “Hex-values” and check “All” under "Search direction".
The hex editor should now find your exact weapon location in the file based upon the hex values you provided it. If it fails to find anything, check back in the game and ensure that you did not write down the wrong hex values for the elements or write them in the wrong order.
You can now alter the hex values to your liking, i.e. changing the affinity, attack power, elements and element levels the weapon is currently stamped with. To change the elements, simply change the current six highlighted hex values to hex values of the new elements you want—using the list mentioned earlier as a guide.
You can use the picture below to see where each weapon data is positioned:
Changing affinity:
The hex values for each affinity are as follows -
00 = Heaven
01 = Earth
02 = Man
Changing attack power:
You can’t just simply input any number here you like and expect it to work. You will need to use a decimal to hex converter first, such as http://www.binaryhexconverter.com/decimal-to-hex-converter. The max value or attack power you can use is 255, or FF in hex.
I never change this value as doing so will break the game's rules, which I don't condone.
Changing element levels:
Element levels are from 01-10, but in hex format 10 is actually 0A. Hence, if you want to edit the level to level 10, you must use 0A as the hex value. Values for non-existent elements are marked with 00.
Here, I will change that Eagle Claw to the following: Affinity: Man Elements: Cyclone Lv.10, Velocity Lv.10, Explosive Lv.10, Induction Lv.10, Thunder Lv.10, Slash Lv.10 The end editing results looks like this:
Red indicates values that have been changed.
To edit another weapon, bring up the find tool again (Ctrl + F) and input your next weapon hex values, hit "OK" to find its location, edit it to your content, then simply repeat the process as necessary.
Caution if you have an interim save: All of your weapon data may be doubled when you have an interim save. Hence, you may need to find the weapon you want to edit twice and edit it twice. Otherwise the modified weapon may only appear on the interim save and not elsewhere or vice versa.
Once you're done editing, save the file by hitting Ctrl + S. You can then close the hex editor.
STEP 7: Encrypt the game save files
This step is simple and quick. In Bruteforce Save Data with NPUB31234-SAVEDATA/NPEB01364-SAVEDATA still selected, click the "Update PFD" button then select "Update PFD (Partial)". You can also just hit Ctrl + U. Do not use the Encrypt PFD option. The green will vanish and the window will return back to white color.
Re-encrypting the game save files.
This will now re-encrypt the file, allowing it to be then safely transferred back to your PS3 without any issues. If you forget to do this step, the game will tell you the game save is corrupted and force you to delete it and create a new one (when you transfer it back to your PS3).
Game save successfully re-encrypted.
STEP 8: Transfer game save to PS3 and test it out
You can now copy the modified save data back into your PS3. If all is well, you should have your weapon(s) modified to your desire without having to deal with any of the game's annoying in-game nuisances. Best yet, you can modify a weapon into a dream weapon in under 5 minutes compared to hours doing it in game!
Weapon change success!
Have fun, and remember—don't use this method to purposely gain an unfair advantage in the game. Meaning, create legit weapons and not illegit weapons that has impossible stats. Don't go just starting into the game and decide to mod your weapons either. You should only use this to shed time off attempting to get good weapons with the game's poor tempering system.
I NEED HELP!!!
E-mail me. It is the fastest way to get me to respond.
VIDEO GUIDE
Thanks to XthemastaX, he created a video detailing the steps and process.
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