Season video?

[dreadnaut]

I woke up in the middle of the night, and while waiting to fall asleep again I started thinking that it'd be cool to see a "Best of" video at the end of season. I thought there were a couple on Youtube, but I can't find them right now.

Should we organise something like that? We could split the tracks among us, look for cool parts of replays, collect files and time ranges, and then someone puts the video together with some cool 2020 music (if any exists).

Who's up for making history?

[Cas]

I like that idea very much!  I think Overdrijf's most recent replay for the last race in Race For Kicks (which ended up not being valid for that race, but is still posted in the tracks' permanent competition) is something that shouldn't be forgotten, so I propose the replays from R4K can also participate in this... like a video about the most amazing Stunts occurrences of the year. Besides cool music, good commenting would be great. You guys just tell me how I can help.

[Duplode]

I thought there were a couple on Youtube, but I can't find them right now.

Here is some prior art:

• ZakStunts 2008 Champion - Ayrton
• Wonder Ride - A Tribute to Mark L. Rivers
• The scent of the speed - SDR RH races golden moments
• NORH Stunts Races - The real drive
• International Stunts Master 2010 - Promo

[dreadnaut]

Maybe the 2008 video is the one I had in mind. But instead of focussing on a single pipsqueak, more about the podium winners and any other interesting piece of driving.

Overdrijf magic carpet was a brilliant one, maybe it deserves its own video

[Cas]

It occurs to me that some races or part of them could be shown with the screen divided in four and the four top final replays showed simultaneously, as if watching the race. If it were to be just part of a race, the last part would be ideal, so we can see how they arrive one by one. I would say top 3, the podium, but then there'll be holes in the screen, unless the #1 is shown in half the screen and #2 and #3 in quarters.

[dreadnaut]

Related article I saw today: https://ottverse.com/stack-videos-horizontally-vertically-grid-with-ffmpeg/

[Cas]

Wow!    I tried it on my computer. Just saved four videos of about 30 seconds with DOSBox and stacked them 2x2. The output was produced in about 10 seconds. DOSBox does not transfer the normal3x factor to the final video (that is, is outputs the video with the original screen size of 320x200, which is what I wanted). The output works exactly as I would want. Quality is not excelent. I assume the quality of the source videos is already not so good, so I wouldn't blame ffmpeg, but it perfectly serves its purpose.

Hey, as I see it, this is so easy and fast to do that every race could have its own video. I think I'll make the experiment of replaying Race For Immortality and make a video with the replays to see how it goes

EDIT: I did it!  And the result is somewhat disappointing, but I guess it can be done better. Closely examining both the source and output videos, it becomes clear that the quality of the input is much better than that of the output. I'm pretty sure this can be changed with option in the ffmpeg command line. I have to see. Another thing I noticed is that audio is not included, but that's fine. It'd be a mess otherwise. I can just put some background music and that's it. The source videos, of course, don't have a border, so it looks a little confusing, and they don't have a title saying who's the driver for each. I have the feeling that these two things can also be handled with ffmpeg. I have to dig more into its options and capabilities.

EDIT TO THE EDIT: Aha!  I found the reason of the quality drop. The input files (generated by DOSBox) are AVI. For some reason, if I use AVI as the output, I get a decreased quality. I tried with Theora/OGG and and MP4. Theora gives a different result, albeit with the same degree of crappiness. MP4 looks a lot better (and renders faster than Theora... AND produces a smaller file that AVI). Just for testing, I am now making a try with WebM. It's taking an eternity. In the preview, I saw it looks just like the MP4 version. File size so far is small, so it looks like it's going to be more or less the same size. Conclusion: go for MP4