So, what’s the final time ? 8min30sec ?
9:27 I think (as per one of the past uploaded videos on YT)
Information related to the run will be in the details of the YouTube video, once that finishes uploading. I thought it would have been done, but it seems the upload stopped in the middle of the night and I have to start it over again. :-/
It’s not the point with XviD, it’s just not suited for HD since it doesn’t have GPU assisted decoding. You may be able to play it with your high end computer, but others won’t. I can play the Avatar Bluray on a cheap laptop, just because of the DXVA, whereas your video won’t even load. Also why do you think ALL HD videos are encoded with H264? I mean at SDA, HDRIP, Youtube, etc… there must be a reason.
And the part with vdub is just that it is an old tool, not updated anymore , that uses old avi headers.
And look here https://forums.sourceruns.org/index.php?topic=373.60
We told you to go with x264 and mkv/mp4, several persons did.
About the run itself, I preferred the first one without OOB, it’s not as entertaining I guess. A run with all the new routes but without OOB would be great, nice work anyway.
Your post here:
https://forums.sourceruns.org/index.php?topic=373.msg5455#msg5455
I couldn’t do that option because, as I said above, I did not have enough hard drive space left.
I use H264 for most of my videos on YouTube. I did not go with it here, because I captured the footage in Xvid. The reason I used Xvid is because I couldn’t get any other options (like x264) to show up on the dropdown here:
https://forums.sourceruns.org/index.php?topic=373.msg5453#msg5453
So, I kept with Xvid, and just stayed with it because I saw no quality-per-byte gain out of that and switching to H264. It may be processed differently, but I can’t tell that. If your computer can’t play it, then don’t spend the time downloading it. That’s why I posted the specs for the video quality versions, so people would know which one to download.
Oh. I did eventually get x264vw to show up, but it was causing syncing issues with the sound in the ‘startmovie’ recorder.
If you want, you can download the Insane version and re-encode it yourself. Tell me the results you get in terms of compression and quality. Then, I’ll know for next time.
Edit: Also, I couldn’t figure out how to use mp4/mkv as a container in VirtualDubMod. If you know another application that is simple like it is, allows me to edit clips and combine them without creating a project, and does encoding of any encoders you have available on your computer, let me know.
MeGUI is currently the most powerful tool you can find, but not very easy to use. Avidemux is known as the new vdub, take a look at it.
Space isn’t the problem since x264 have way better ratio than XviD, for the same bitrate the size would have been way lower.
As for the specs, the same video with hardware accel would play fine, that’s why it’s unfortunate you went for XviD.
x264vfw is a weird project, they just try to make x264 do things like other codecs, so it’s better you didn’t use that, for mp4/mkv it’s not the more important, at least with XviD, for example the software I named above won’t let you make an avi with x264, as it’s not in the standards.
For instance, with a 1/2DVD size (2.18 GB), the bitrate should be around 20k, quality still at the top.
Thank you. I have MeGUI installed, but I believe that only handles encoding. I’ll look into Avidemux. Also, in the future, don’t tell me something is ‘impossible’. Look what happened to Portal because of that. 
I’ll see what I can do about it for future projects, but for now, you get what you see. Portal 2 will be interesting indeed.
YouTube video is up!
DemonStrate - Portal Done Pro - Speedrun - 9:25.567 - WR:
I am uploading the commentary video right now, so check it out as it becomes uploaded on my YouTube account:
Edit: Commentary Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=359B764A0A3B8188
Enjoy!
You can add it to dropbox now. Thousands of people are viewing it on my YouTube… GOOD GODDDDD!!!
Also, on Kotaku: http://kotaku.com/5710758/portal-gets-broken-in-the-worlds-fastest-speed-run
I’m watching the commentary video right now and I must say it’s a real blessing after watching the run and not understanding anything whatsoever. So good job on the run, obviously, but also kudos for taking the time to explain everything so well. Are you planning to release the commentary video as one file as well or will this be limited to the youtube version?
Holy fuck, I remember when that video had about 100 views, now it’s up to 137,000! That’s so awesome! And here we are still with 4,000 views for our Ep1 run 
Link to Sourceruns in the video description 
Also, you are not supposed to use Dropbox for file mirroring, I’m uploading to my server at the moment, but uploading 4.7gb takes its time 
EDIT: The lower 3 qualities are complete, IQ is just past 50%, been uploading for almost 10 hours.
They can be found here: http://dl2.sourceruns.org/portal/
Oh my god… AviDemux is like 10 times better than Vdub ever was. Jesus. It actually does what I want it to do. Thank god. Yeah, thanks for that tip. I’m trying to compare the differences. It is really interesting. It seems this program can basically encode any format into any container. I never really got the differences between containers. Does it even matter at this point (avi vs mp4 vs mkv)?
Well for most of the people it wouldn’t matter, but it as still something to do with what I called “standards”.
AVI is pretty old, it can’t hold that much information about the streams, and more important it was not designed to hold something else than the old codecs back in the days, nor multiple streams.
Thus said, you’re left with MP4 and MKV. Basically they have the same features, and they are able to handle properly newer codecs (like x264), multiple streams (audio and subtitle).
Now, MP4 would be the safer choice, because it’s used by a lot of programs and for example w7 is able to play them natively. Now, MKV would be better, but it is not -that- common, even if, since it’s used in the scene release of Bluray, it tends to get more and more used.
Oh and MP3 is like XviD, an old codec, you can have way better results with AAC for example.
Long story short, don’t ever use AVI again (nor MP3), MP4 with AAC is fine, it will play nearly anywhere and is quite simple to work with, MKV will become (in my opinion) the standard once and for all, since it has all the features possible and a lot of tools to do exactly what you want to do with it.
It may not be clear, perhaps due my English, I’m sorry for that, but if you’re still wondering which one you should use, in this case I’d go for:
- MP4 for Low, High and Meduim
- MKV for the Insane, people who are downloading that one will know how to deal with it
- AAC variable bitrate each time (you can even let the quality at max since the size is ridiculous compared to the video).
Two more things:
Use a recent build of Avidemux, since it has a recent build of x264 http://avidemux.razorbyte.com.au
(SVN Builds (beta) are often 100% working)
And I saw you MPC-HC config, using Bilinear as resizer is probably why you can play your videos, but it’s also not the best resizer.
Try to set it to Bicubic A (1.00 is better), you should see an amazing difference, especially for SD videos, but it’ll also impact the performances.
If you have more questions, I’ll be glad to help you out with everything concerning encoding and stuff 
So far, I’ve messed around with encoding with different options in AVIDemux. From what I could tell, if I do an Insane one at CRF of 20, it gets really good compressions with extremely minimal quality loss. Do you have a recommended list of CRF’s for the different quality versions? AAC at maximum (384kbps) versus the default (128kbps), I couldn’t really tell any difference in both size and quality. I was using this guide:
http://www.my-guides.net/en/guides/linux-dvd-video/180-how-to-convert-a-video-to-xvidx264-using-avidemux
Maybe the “dynamic range compression” on the audio is what is causing that to happen, but I’d probably just make it all 384kbps either way.
Also, I have changed my output option in MPC to Bicubic A and have not really noticed any difference (in video playback or quality changes). I can still play the master file without any lag. I was just looking at some old AMVs that I have and didn’t notice a difference either.
Overall, AVIDemux is awesome and I won’t use VDubMod anymore because that program pissed me off anyway. I’ll probably keep most things as MP4, because then I can play them on my phone without any re-encoding. Thanks! If I have any more questions, I’ll shoot them your way. 
Bah I guess it depends on others factors then, but that’s not very important.
I don’t have a specific list, CRF works that way I guess, you have to test different values for everything.
0 would be lossless compression, and after that it increases the size exponentially, but the quality will stop increasing at some point. I tend to use CRF 18 or 21, but it really depends on the size you want (since you can hardly guess the bitrate/size with CRF, if you really want a defined size/birate, go for the 2-pass method).
For the audio, I just checked and Avidemux doesn’t let you choose anything but the bitrate (I’m used to MeGUI), so yeah go with the max, or a little less for lower qualities.
Speaking of that, I would also lower the framerate for these versions, 30fps for the low and 40 for the rest (maybe 50 but that’s not common) would be proper low/medium/high quality, keeping 60 only for the insane. There is a filter for that, and the quality of low-bitrate versions would be a little higher.
But yeah MP4 is the safer choice as it can be played by a lot a devices nowadays. (And I think SDA requires MP4 anyway)