Emulation in YouTube Videos. Yea or Nay?

[CGQuarterly]

I'm curious what the opinions are among YouTube viewers concerning the use of emulators to record video game footage for YouTube videos. Just so that you guys know where I'm coming from, I'm a bit of a perfectionist who is trying to learn everything that I can about video production so that I can make the highest-quality videos that I personally can (with my limited talent and number of brain cells.) And I feel like my methods and the results they produce make the game play footage the weak link in the chain.

 

Currently, I use a console DVD recorder to record footage in s-video from all of my consoles. I then rip the DVD on my computer and import the footage into my video editing app. The good thing is that I am playing the actual game on the actual hardware. The bad thing is that the video quality is not what it could be. It is also a bit more time-consuming, I go through a lot of blank DVDs and I have to have a dedicated review station (desk space, a monitor, and the DVD recorder) set up in my office.

 

I play all of my consoles in RGB (except the 2600, of course) so I am used to high video quality. It kind of bugs me that I'm playing the games in s-video, and the transition from an s-video recorded DVD to a digital file causes problems of it's own. For instance, de-interlacing the video makes anything that's blinking on the screen disappear completely. But if I don't de-interlace it, then it looks bad. Additionally, consoles with grounding issues (like the Atari) create an audible buzzing. The only way to actually record analog RGB from a video game console is to buy a specific video capture card, and I don't even own a PC to put it in.

 

Basically, my other option is to use QuickTime to make high-quality recordings of game play footage using OpenEmu on my Mac. This emulator simulates the look of an RGB CRT better than any I have ever seen, producing beautiful footage. The problem is, it looks so good that no one would think it was anything other than emulation. And I've seen people get called out for recording emulator footage, through I know not why.

 

Here is a test video I made. Watch it at 720p, and preferably in full-screen. Even after YouTube compression, I think it looks great.

 

 

So my question is this: Assuming that there are no emulation errors (bad or incorrect sound effects or music, graphical glitches, etc.) do you guys think that it's kosher to use emulator footage instead of legit recorded console footage in YouTube videos?

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

I have used both. YES you will get the DIE HARD "EMULATION SUCKS" comments but honestly, I think for the purpose of reviews or showing games you should do what is easiest / best for you. I think fair enough if someone is always using original hardware they might state it, if you are using emulation simply do not make a point of mentioning it (I find a lot of youtuber's do this) really most people wont know the difference and will simply enjoy the crisp clear video.

[+FujiSkunk]

It don't matter. Seriously. Unless your video is focused specifically on something that can only be represented by the actual hardware, it don't matter.

 

If you're making a video on how programmers used NTSC artifacting to get more colors out of computers like the Apple II and Atari 8-bits, then you should probably record that video with the actual hardware. On the other hand, if your video is focused more on a particular game and less on the hardware that's running that game, it won't really matter where the video comes from.

 

Incidentally, there are ways to deinterlace composite and S-video without losing flickering. I can offer a bit of AVISynth code if you're familiar with that tool. The catch is the resulting video is 60fps, which YouTube's conversion tools may or may not like.

[AtariLeaf]

When I first started I used emulation simply because I didn't have a capture device at the time so I just used Stella, for example, and filmed my monitor. I'll still film tv screens even now for the same reasons. I PREFER capturing footage from actual hardware if I'm doing a review but it's not always possible without spending more money on capture hardware. Something I'm reluctant to do at the moment and one of the reasons I haven't made too many videos lately.

[Austin]

You could try getting a HD capture card (like an Elgato Game Capture HD), then record your footage straight from your upscaler. It will look much better. It will also save you from having to copy the footage from a DVD to your hard drive, which will save you time. DVD recorders are great for people that don't use upscalers or run their games in RGB, like me.

 

The emulation route isn't bad either just to get demonstration footage. It will look crystal clear. Just make sure to crop out any border defects or obvious things that shouldn't be there (like framerate counts, like with what you see in Jag emulators).

 

*edit: I am watching your Genesis Launch video right now, and the footage looks fine. Far better than what my USB capture device grabs (granted, I'm not using S-video). I don't think you have much to worry about.

 

*edit again: One thing you could do (and this is just friendly advice), is crop out the colored borders found in the footage. That's not something you see when playing on a standard CRT (or at least I don't on my TV). In doing so you will also get rid of the distorted line at the bottom of the video footage. Just an idea, try it in your software and see how you like it.

Edited May 8, 2014 by Austin

[CatPix]

DVD recorders are great for people that don't use upscalers or run their games in RGB, like me.

Unless you are in Europe. I have a DVD recorder that can be set on RGB input from SCART; so it's the best choice in you don't have an upscaler, since I never saw any solution to record SCART RGB anywhere (or analog RGB for that matter)

[Austin]

Unless you are in Europe. I have a DVD recorder that can be set on RGB input from SCART; so it's the best choice in you don't have an upscaler, since I never saw any solution to record SCART RGB anywhere (or analog RGB for that matter)

 

Man, you guys are lucky, haha..

[CGQuarterly]

You could try getting a HD capture card (like an Elgato Game Capture HD), then record your footage straight from your upscaler. It will look much better. It will also save you from having to copy the footage from a DVD to your hard drive, which will save you time. DVD recorders are great for people that don't use upscalers or run their games in RGB, like me.

 

The emulation route isn't bad either just to get demonstration footage. It will look crystal clear. Just make sure to crop out any border defects or obvious things that shouldn't be there (like framerate counts, like with what you see in Jag emulators).

 

*edit: I am watching your Genesis Launch video right now, and the footage looks fine. Far better than what my USB capture device grabs (granted, I'm not using S-video). I don't think you have much to worry about.

 

*edit again: One thing you could do (and this is just friendly advice), is crop out the colored borders found in the footage. That's not something you see when playing on a standard CRT (or at least I don't on my TV). In doing so you will also get rid of the distorted line at the bottom of the video footage. Just an idea, try it in your software and see how you like it.

 

I have an HD capture device, but I don't have an upscaler and don't really want to buy one. I bought the capture dealio to try and record PS2 footage using a component cable, and quite frankly the results sucked.

 

I think I'm just going to start using emulation when it's the better option, and DVD recording when it's the better option. I think emulation is perfectly fine for anything through the 16-bit generation, but for N64, Jag, PSX, and Saturn it would obviously be better to go with the real deal. Or of course any game with emulation issues. My ultimate goal is to make the best quality videos that I can, so I need to use ALL of the tools at my disposal to make that happen in each situation.

 

And yeah, that Genesis launch video has all kinds of border issues, and that's actual hardware. Had I used an emulator, none of that would be there. I hadn't yet figured out how to crop out borders. I did it on the Explosive Diarrhea vid, though, so now I'm up to speed.

 

Thanks for all of the comments so far!

[Austin]

And yeah, that Genesis launch video has all kinds of border issues, and that's actual hardware. Had I used an emulator, none of that would be there. I hadn't yet figured out how to crop out borders. I did it on the Explosive Diarrhea vid, though, so now I'm up to speed.

 

What editing suite are you using?

 

Also, I thought I read that you are using an upscaler.. I think I might have to go re-read that, haha.

 

You will likely still have the borders appear in emulation as well, depending on how you grab the footage. If you use a desktop recorder they may not show, but if you capture the video through an emulator function, they may still appear. Either way, cropping is easy and is one of the better ways to clean up the edges of any piece of footage or image clip.

 

Either way, your videos are great right now.

[CGQuarterly]

I use Final Cut Pro X to do the editing, but I rip the DVDs with MPEGStreamClip, which allows one to crop the video while ripping it.

 

I don't use an upscaler. For some systems, I use an RGB -> s-video device (downscaler?), like my SNES (I have the mini, so no s-video), but I've managed to get s-video cables for most of my systems, and I have an s-video-modded Genesis.

 

Thanks a lot, man. I'm a fan of your channel, so that compliment means a lot coming from you.

[Reaperman]

As long as the aspect ratio is right, I don't usually mind watching emulation vids. It seems to work especially well for handhelds with lousy screens.

 

I've only used real hardware myself--switching over would up my quality, but I don't care. Still, I've gotten a fair number of those "emulation sucks" comments. And yeah, it does suck. Maybe they were just being informative. As much as it does suck, it mostly impacts the player and not the viewer.

Edited May 9, 2014 by Reaperman

[Austin]

*edit: Oh, it just came to mind, if you decide to record emulator footage, first try to record from within the emulator itself (some emulators will record video clips for you). See how large the file sizes are. Then, try a desktop recorder and see how large the clips are in comparison. I say this because using a desktop recorder typically results in extremely large file sizes when recorded at the best quality (which you will want to be doing). A high quality desktop-recorded clip of about a minute or two's worth of play is going to be close to 4GB on its own. This will make backing up the footage more difficult and it will make the editing process a little more cumbersome/slow due to the added memory requirements needed when working with lots of massive clips. I doubt your DVR footage is that large in comparison, and in under 4GB you can probably record an entire one to two hour playthrough and still have pretty decent quality. That's another angle to consider.

 

 

I use Final Cut Pro X to do the editing, but I rip the DVDs with MPEGStreamClip, which allows one to crop the video while ripping it.

 

Very cool! If I had a Mac, I would be using the exact same thing. Maybe one of these years.

Edited May 9, 2014 by Austin

[CGQuarterly]

What I wish I had was a stand-alone DVR that I could easily copy files off of. My DVD recorder is actually a combination hard drive-based DVR and DVD recorder, but there's no way to copy files directly off of the hard drive.

[+Random Terrain]

Before my DVD recorder stopped working, I recorded to DVD, then put the DVD into my PC and extracted the files.

 

Now I just play a game in an emulator and record it with Bandicam. In case you don't know, Bandicam is the best and easiest thing I've ever used to record emulator video games. I don't have to jump through flaming hoops to get it to work the way I want. It just works without any hassles and it doesn't make my PC sluggish like some other things out there.

[Mr SQL]

 

It really depends; phosphor trails and hexagonal pixels look much better and artifacting is gorgeous; this is the same Atari game!

 

It would be awesome to see a VCS emulator add artifact colour support like the CoCo emu's

 

 

[Osgeld]

I prefer the real deal, honestly I dont care

 

what I hate though is exactly what mr sql shows, a off kilter "video tape the tv" that shows the black bar as they two refresh rates fight and the camera constantly changes iris as the brightness of the screen changes.

 

though I dont produce youtube videos what I have found to be really good mix of both worlds is a cheap tv tuner card (i got one a few years ago from tigerdirect.com for 9.99 with a 10$ rebate). Its included software SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS, but a program called Dscaller (windows , open source and free to use) works great with it.

 

Dscaler is a bit complicated in its setup but when you get it right oh man, you get a nice picture and recording, only bad thing about that setup is on super fast games (like sonic 2 on a speed run) or games that pull magic tricks, you might see some deinterlacing bars (typical of the el-cheapo tv tuner chipsets)

Edited May 9, 2014 by Osgeld

[Gamemoose]

I'm fine with emulation as long as it's pretty dang close to the original. I used emulation for a comparison video I did a few years back of "Ghouls n' Ghosts" between Genesis and SuperGrafix and I didn't own the latter. So to maintain clarity I used emulation for both.

[CatPix]

Man, you guys are lucky, haha..

Just to say I don't try to brag about it, just that it's an option Euro players have; especially since I never saw any capture devices able to capture analog RGB (or sometime, professionnal hardware that was in the 3 digit price... and not on the lower rank. No thanks).

[Mr SQL]

I prefer the real deal, honestly I dont care

 

what I hate though is exactly what mr sql shows, a off kilter "video tape the tv" that shows the black bar as they two refresh rates fight and the camera constantly changes iris as the brightness of the screen changes.

 

Osgeld,

that is an off kilter screenshot that is not fast enough to capture the animation, but shows the artifact colours quite well; it is not possible to display two colour 3D walls, outlined sprites and lighting and shadow effects (4-switch only) via emulation right now, though the CoCo emu's have this feature so it could be added!

 

Here are some video clips that are not off kilter and shot at high speed so that you can barely see the refresh:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aghqgf6qqRw

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3IlUdxMbJo

 

What do you think?

[Rybags]

Doesn't matter. You use the best you have available.

 

Not everyone has a capture card or dongle handy.

 

I'd prefer a colour-errored emulator capture complete with it's filled graphics rather than CRT scanline artifacts to a hamfisted camera job (usually complete with irrelevant background noise and barely audible sound from the actual device being recorded).

[karokoenig]

People like Reinhard Klinksiek use emulation for their longplay videos. I find that perfectly okay, as long as they don't claim to have played on the original hardware. So many games (in this case C64 ones) are so insanely hard, frustrating, unfair - it would be impossible to record a full playthrough without savestates. So if you want to archive these kinds of playthroughs, you pretty much have to use emulation.

[mbd30]

It depends on the console. Some consoles such as the SNES have emulation that has been perfected to the point of being indistinguishable from the real thing, apart from the small amount of lag resulting from playing it on a computer with an LCD monitor and USB controller. Generally if it is a popular console from the 80s or 90s (especially from before the 3D era), then emulation is going to be fine for most games.

 

I guess emulation makes cheating easier with save states, tool assisted speedruns, etc. If you're kicking ass at a game in emulation, people are more likely to accuse you of cheating than if you're playing on the real thing.

Edited May 9, 2014 by mbd30

[+FujiSkunk]

For reference, I create screencaps and the occasional video using actual hardware connected to an ancient Radeon All-in-Wonder, one of the first video cards, maybe the first Radeon, that offered both hardware 3D and video capture on the same video card. Of course the 3D hardware isn't so impressive nowadays...

 

Anyway, I connect consoles using S-video when I can, though I've done composite and even RF captures. I use VirtualDub's record mode to make the raw capture and an AVISynth script to deinterlace, crop and resize. Then I use VirtualDub's edit mode to trim the final video or pick out individual frames for still shots and animated GIFs. You can seen the results in the screencaps I've taken for my website, and also in the videos I've shot of Atari 2600 Zippy the Porcupine, Atari 5200 Tempest and Commodore 64 OutRun.

 

One reason I prefer using the real hardware is because I'm comparing how the same games play on different systems, and the best, fairest comparisons must take the hardware into account, from the Apple II's intentional artifacting to the Atari 2600's color smearing to the NES's marching ants and rainbows. If I were making a video about one particular game on one particular system, I might be less concerned about a perfectly accurate presentation. In the end, though, I still say use whatever you like, as long as it helps you make your point fairly. If emulators are easier to capture and look good enough, go for it.

 

I actually have used emulators in a few rare occasions for making screencaps. So far this has mostly been for Atari 2600 games that have an off-spec frame rate, which my capture card gets persnickety about.

[Nebulon]

I'm cool with emulators as long as the game that's being captured is running at the correct speed and the audio is correct (and as long as obvious cheats aren't enabled).

 

In a perfect world it would be the real thing with a video recording setup that captured it cleanly, but that's not always an option.

 

For MAME, you could try enabling scanlines for the raster games. And for vector games, a setting of 1.7 for both the Gamma and Beam Width (with a bit of flicker) should come out looking pretty authentic.

[HatefulGravey]

If you have something to say that will inform/entertain me I don't care how you recorded the footage. if you feel the need to keep the trolls at bay show yourself putting the real game into the real console (like AVGN often does for example) and cut the footage that best suits your needs. Maybe just have the real game and console in the background during the review when you can or something. Most people wont be able to tell a difference anyway and they will enjoy the quality of the recording more.