WinUAE tips & tricks

[NewDeli]

Thanks for your remarks & comments.

Originally Posted by Anubis

And I have to pay $299 + tax to be able to record in game movie?

Actually, I believe if you have a real Amiga at hand, with about 60 box you could get a Hauppauge card and make 50 fps recorded movies from the PC effortlessly.

Originally Posted by marco pedrana

1. infamous picasso mode? to whom?
   
2. the bit about "winuae massive GUI"? if somebody is reading at that point, wanting to record an AVI, it is probably someone who's already past the basic use of Winuae interface.
   
3. Amiga inc. and Haage & Partner, is that relevant to the guide?
   
4. "A fraction of the MorphOS etc." if it's a fraction who has varied reactions etc, the rest what does it have? and again is it relevant?
   
5. "people should be set free etc..." well of the two options they have both already, so i miss the point...

1- Please refer to the 32nd step of the 'how to install Picasso96' chapter of the Green Alien guides

2 & 4 refer to the French MorphOS community scepticism relatively to UAE. On MorphOS, you have the ability to load classic apps & games almost natively, and they support more actively E-UAE since they have an exclusive frontend for it. From what I've understood, they consider most if not all of WinUAE options could be accessible as command line instructions.

3 - At first, I had planned to make a video retrospective of Amiga games (the tribute stuff you find on YouTube), so people might have wondered where I got this nice Workbench I use to load games (Amikit, AIAB ?). But then, I found a way to nicely embed individual game videos on my web site.

5 - I agree this part is a candidate for being labeled Deleauvive's 2cent . I'll see if I put the idea of 'freedom of choice' differently.

Oh, and about the technical qualities of my guide, I try my best to give people the ability to reproduce the results. This first game video is a testimony that my 'weird' setup can lead somewhere (I'll upload it without the YouTube 'treatment' if you like) and I already lended a hand to a couple of newbies on how to setup v3.9 OS.
This said, there's still room for improvement, provided I receive proper feedback & flaming comments are kept to a minimum, of course.

[Marcuz]

so basically your winuae tips and tricks can be resumed to:

"You didn't know it before, but if you are not a fanboy, you can choose between Winuae and Morphos.
Now you know.
But before you do silly things with Winuae, the proper way to use it is as a plugin of commercial Windows software."

well now it's more clear, thank you

[NewDeli]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Lowering sound quality is stupid.

Rich sound fx and music are among the best assets of Amiga games. So for personal enjoyment lowering it is a no-go, of course.
At first, I wanted to have a 'WinUAE on steroids' config with 48 KHz, quad stereo and so on...

Then I realized...

• There is a limit to what the human ear can perceive and this limit doesn't exceed the 20 khz range.
• I used the not 100% accurate sound emulation, because I wanted to let it fluctuate a little, since some of the games I am willing to capture bear tremendous variations in the music intensity (noticeable when changing levels in Battle Squadron, for example).
• You can see here :

http://www.birdys.de/default.php?page=configs&menu=4
all the amigahistory.de site UAE config files have suboptimal audio settings

• I leave the A500 filter activated, as it should make the sound less strident. Some guides suggest to remove it .
• As for stereo separation, someone has to confirm it, but I am not sure how well it is perceived with quality stereo speakers (I have a 5.1 kit), may be also perceived differently with headphones...

About the 20 KHz hearing limit, I am not trying to be ponderous, it's a simple fact of life . If dogs could appreciate music, they would enjoy the wider range WinUAE offers.
(See here : http://www.lsu.edu/deafness/HearingRange.html)


Ok enough of that

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Deleauvive

[*]There is a limit to what the human ear can perceive and this limit doesn't exceed the 20 khz range.

You misunderstood this sound setting. In normal stereo setting TWO Amiga channels are mixed to left channel (and another two to right). This mixed result will be in 20KHz and you will very easily hear the difference.

EDIT: and because Amiga samples have different sample rates, resampling also lowers quality without high enough final sampling rate.

[exoticaga]

Originally Posted by Deleauvive

As for stereo separation, someone has to confirm it, but I am not sure how well it is perceived with quality stereo speakers (I have a 5.1 kit), may be also perceived differently with headphones...[/LIST]About the 20 KHz hearing limit, I am not trying to be ponderous, it's a simple fact of life . If dogs could appreciate music, they would enjoy the wider range WinUAE offers.
(See here : http://www.lsu.edu/deafness/HearingRange.html)

Have a good read of this it will change your mind on human hearing.

Why use a windows scren recorder when winuae has one built in. Making the it a lot easier for new users and the ancients to use. In time possibly winuae will have an up to date avi container, for winuae to record into directx, opendml. Atm the screen recorder fully working so i read, well stopping the recording is a problem for some. A tinziest glitch, Toni will have that swatted before you've finished reading this.

And for splitting stereo why do people do this with mp3s, they have no idea. Once split it can never be reconverted again to near it was previously. Besides split stereo in mp3s sounds terrible, isn't it called jointed for mp3 or similar. Stereo is always the best way, true audio sound every time. I was put of mp3 with high bitrate for a long time. Until i found the reason why. Now listening to wavs converted to mp3s with stereo not steroe jointed. I think mp3s are ok. But will never be as good quality as wav, flac etc. For portibily they're ok. Sorry for that OTT bit, Back on topic again.

Here and at wiki is a good place for all winuae guides, old and new ones.

[Jerry]

Two points: 1. If you want to represent a 20KHz signal digitally you have to use a sampling frequency that is at least two times as high (read approx 40KHz, that's why audio cds operate at 44100hz). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_rate.

2. At least the joint stereo mode in lame (many other/old encoders apparantly suck in that domain) usually leads to better quality as the encoder is able to explore l-r-channel coherence. Consider a cbr mp3 with approx 192kbit. If you use true stereo separated mp3 each channel is fully encoded at effectively 96kbit. If you use a joint-stereo mode and the two channels are very similar the encoder may assign eg. 160kbit to one channel and 32kbit to the channeldifference information, resulting in better audio quality. AFAIK the encoder in lame even decides which mode (true-stereo/joint stereo) is selected on a per-frame basis.

Sorry for joining ot.

Anyhow, I would always go down the internal grabber route when capturing Winuae videos.

[NewDeli]

I am not sure whether you're trying to distract me from the impression that 44000 or 48000 Khz puts a higher stress on the CPU with WinUAE (may be v1.5 series will change that) considering your CPU is in the 1 to 2,5 GHz range, or if you're simply concerned with watching YouTube videos with a slightly degraded audio.

As for the latter, I am not into making 7.1 EX DTS soundtrack for the games I am willing to present, but if you are then good for you. Head to
Recorded Amiga Games
and have fun following their tutorial (the recommended way, why go for less ?).

Also, you will have a hard time communicating on the foolishness of setting the frequency to 22050 Hz, since when the most famous tutorials were made at the time WinUAE was in v0.8 or so, it was all about using conservative settings to run games faster (and Fellow still received some praise, because it's GUI was lightweight).

As for the joint stereo problem, it's a different matter I think. Joint stereo in mp3s was a bad habit with earlier versions of lame (that is, before it clearly emerged out of the encoder competition). A modified mp3 codec bundled with DivX even proposed to set stereo for each bitrate. But this is history, it is safe nowadays to encode mp3s with joint stereo inmho, and you shall hear the two channels unmixed.

The setting I applied in WinUAE was removing stereo separation which results in dual-mono if I may say so (two similar audio channels), which again makes things a tad easier for the CPU. I'll say it again, even if I had to get a quad-core CPU to make my encodings, I wouldn't give up on the A500 filter, and believe it or not, even 48000 Hz without it is truly atrocious.

Finally, you're welcome to make your videos with the internal encoder and still pick up the bits that interest you in my tutorial. Problem is you will miss the steps which consist in inserting audio comment, captions, highlights and so on. Camstasia expands the steps which leads to the produced video (a bit in the Macromedia's Flash fashion, the .camproj being the .fla & the .avi being the .swf) , which gives you more control over both the final size & the 'features' of your videos.

[Marcuz]

i think that, just for resume the objections moved in this thread, it's not a matter if the way you describe has or not better audio, captions etc.

it's a matter if the way you describe should be a standard (as it is supposed to be in a guide) or not.

of course with a production software, Avid, Premiere, whatever, you can add all sort of highlights, effects, voice-overs, anything!
but the first purpose of grabbing videos from winuae is to show the thing you capture as possibly like it was on original. whatever you add for whatever reason later is a peculiar need, so not a standard.

But going through the internal route, it allows you to have a fatter output that you can postproduce later with best result (if that's your intention).

[exoticaga]

Originally Posted by Deleauvive

Then I realized...

• There is a limit to what the human ear can perceive and this limit doesn't exceed the 20 khz range.
• I used the not 100% accurate sound emulation, because I wanted to let it fluctuate a little, since some of the games I am willing to capture bear tremendous variations in the music intensity (noticeable when changing levels in Battle Squadron, for example).
• You can see here :

http://www.birdys.de/default.php?page=configs&menu=4
all the amigahistory.de site UAE config files have suboptimal audio settings

• I leave the A500 filter activated, as it should make the sound less strident. Some guides suggest to remove it .
• As for stereo separation, someone has to confirm it, but I am not sure how well it is perceived with quality stereo speakers (I have a 5.1 kit), may be also perceived differently with headphones...

About the 20 KHz hearing limit, I am not trying to be ponderous, it's a simple fact of life . If dogs could appreciate music, they would enjoy the wider range WinUAE offers.
(See here : http://www.lsu.edu/deafness/HearingRange.html)


Ok enough of that

Ok my post didn't catch the quote, should've checked it, this what i was replying to.

Yes the human hearing can percieve and hear more than 20 KHz, see my link above for more.

Thanks for clearing up joined vs unjointed. Though i think it is more that many do not know how to convert audio to good quality mp3. Most rely on the converter to do all the work, click'n'go. Its the main reason i prefer to find only lossless versions now of what i need. At least it is same quality as original. I've a big collection of mp3 to find now i try and find for lossless. It is a shame that the early encoders made a mess for mp3 quality, those files are still shared far and wide.

[exoticaga]

BTW which do everyone prefer winuae internal recorder or external screen recorder. Which do you like the best for quality and ease of use.

Which do you prefer to get the results, to a ready to be played media file.

I don't there there's a need to ask which you think produces the better quality do i ?

[NewDeli]

"Lossless" is not the same quality as the original. Differences tend to be unnoticeable is a relatively quiet environment, but they still exist. Also, MP3s made from FLAC, Monkey Audio, or even "HQ" OGG will sound similar if made properly, I think. As you may know, EAC is the best CD encoder toolset out there, and its accurate mode is really something, if a bit hard to configure.

Properly tagged MP3s will bear the version of the encoder and even the bitrate chosen, and most of the MP3s I have bear an average of 224k, except for those I downloaded to fill my USB audio player.

I think the tendency to use lame (no pun intended) encoders is even worse when it comes to making 1CD DivX, as the dialogues & special (& spacial) fx (center channel) suffer from not being output as multichannel (There were plans for 5.1 mp3s...). I guess it's the same people who use the speakers of their monitors to watch DVDs, instead of buying a 5.1 or even a 2.1 set .

Over the years, I think I found the right combination of codecs and tools for my needs (does Smart Bitrate Control sound familiar to anyone ?), please pm me if you're willing to discuss those issues.

Originally Posted by exoticaga

BTW which do everyone prefer winuae internal recorder or external screen recorder. Which do you like the best for quality and ease of use.

Make a poll .

[NewDeli]

Rejoice retro'ers ! I have almost completely rewritten the "Quick'n dirty video capture how-to". It is still partly based on Camtasia Studio features, sorry for those who would have preferred a HowTo based on the AVI Output feature of WinUAE.

There is a FAQ also, to address some of the issues raised here above.


Just waiting for a GM to tell me the best place (subforum, the wikis ?) for me to publish it.

[cosmicfrog]

so no WinUAE tricks and tips then