ROQs at absurd dimensions

[eezstreet]

Hi, so I'm making an ROQ with higher-than-normal dimensions...It seems like it takes forever to load the video though. First I tried 2048x1024 frames (200 frames), .bmp. It never actually loaded. Then I tried 1024x512 frames, .bmp. Still doesn't actually load. I'm wondering if this is just due to the .bmp format? Or perhaps something else?

 

(Maybe @@DT85 can clear this up?)

(Also, fwiw, JKA can't load ROQs with dimensions higher than 512x512 without OpenJK)

[Tempust85]

Tbh, I don't think the code supports larger RoQ resolutions still. I'm getting the same garbled video and paused audio.

[eezstreet]

@@ensiform supposedly fixed it, so I'm not sure. I suppose I could keep it at 512x512 as that's technically higher-res.

 

@@DT85, what resolution are you using, and how long does it take to load?

[Tempust85]

I use 512x512 which I don't notice any loading time issues. JKA's videos afaik also use 512x512.

 

 

What I'm testing with is 1024x1024 which doesn't work, unless the fix is MP and not SP?

[eezstreet]

The fix ought to be for MP and SP both, but you can test to see.

Also, I was outputting at 1024x512 and getting severe loading issues. I wonder if it just hates non-square ROQs. Regardless, I need to re-render my ROQ frames because I'm an idiot and overwrote my originals. :<

[OlgO]

It is said in roq tutorial:

 

3 How do I make a .roq?

3.1 The Standards

A roq file is made up of individual .tgas that are processed to make the movie. For a cinematic video or a menu video the source tgas must be 512x512, 256x256, or 512x256. Inside the game, they must be 256x256 or 128x128. No other sizes will work.

 

 

So theoretically it shouldn't hate non-square roqs in cinematic and menu video...

[eezstreet]

That's an interesting note, @@OlgO. However I'm kinda curious if they actually tested that, since even 512x256 causes massive load times.

[OlgO]

Thats why I said "theoretically"))

Anyway I just compiled a little 512x256 roq video (without sound, just didnt wanna bother with it) and put it as an openinglogos - everything played fine. Though it was a little 13-seconds video...

Can test it in a menu or in game if you need...

[eezstreet]

Test the text crawl, if you could. I don't remember the exact filename in JKA - I think it's JK0101_SW.roq

Thanks a ton.

[OlgO]

That was so strange)) Staring a level and instead of starry sky - my video and yellow text crawling on it)))

 

 

 

Well everything went fine, no loading problems. When my video ended it just stopped at last frame and text just keep on crawling...

[Circa]

Slightly off topic, but why not support MP4/MOV files instead? That's what most modern games use. Have I missed the reason, as I know it's been discussed before.

[eezstreet]

MP4/MOV files pretty much require you to write your own codec and adhere to it. They're also a lossy (and BIG) format, whereas ROQ is lossless (and also really small - a normally 50MB chunk of video can be compressed down to like 5MB). ROQ is actually a very, very powerful format and can render quite well.

It would probably be possible to rewrite sections of roq.exe to make it support conversion from MP4/MOV->ROQ, but you're going to have a loss of quality. Also @Razor couldn't get it to compile at all on Linux due to the complicated, out of date libraries being used by roq.exe.

 

@@OlgO, yeah, that's how the text crawl normally works. I was going to take the text crawl from Episode 3 and edit it/convert it to ROQ so that the quality could be higher. I'm just having a hard time getting my ROQ to come out. :<

[Circa]

I wasn't aware that ROQ was lossless. Probably because all the ROQ videos I've seen are horrible looking.

[eezstreet]

I wasn't aware that ROQ was lossless. Probably because all the ROQ videos I've seen are horrible looking.

It has more to do with the resolution the ROQ is being displayed at and the quality of input going into the ROQ.exe progarm more than anything, I think. ROQs in the base game are only created at like 256x256, which is really really small for something that's meant to be displayed fullscreen. Same deal for levelshots. Most of the base levelshots are really crappy in quality because they're created at like 256x256 (and are really low quality images to begin with I think too).

 

ROQs are basically sequences that tell the game how to construct a series of TGA images. The process is entirely lossless, but don't hold me to that as I haven't personally examined the format too hardcore. If they're not, we can always pump really stupidly high resolution (think like 4096x4096) ROQs to compensate (though these will jack up the load times considerably as it doesn't stream the video at all, it's preloaded).

 

If that's too terrible, I can see if I can port Theora video from JKG to rd-vanilla (or rend2). BobaFett wrote a very fast algorithm for streaming which is actually faster than what libtheora provides, but it's prone to artifacts. H.246 is the highest quality that I'm aware of, but I don't think that's open source or GPL-compliant (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong however). The cinematic stuff I believe is all designed to be modular to begin with, if I'm not mistaken.

[Archangel35757]

@Eezstreetand others -- try 1024x768.

[Tempust85]

I've tried a 768x768 and OpenJK screamed at me about power of 2.

 

P.S

 

Just confirmed that roq.exe is outputting a proper RoQ at any resolution with mplayerc

[eezstreet]

Noteworthy: rend2 doesn't require power of two textures.

 

Is it garbled in mplayerc? If not, it's definitely an issue with the games code.

[Tempust85]

Not garbled at all. It appears exactly how the sequence images are.

[eezstreet]

Well. With the video code refactoring, hopefully that will solve the issue. Though, there will be other formats supported too.

[Tempust85]

I guess the most used format by modders would be whichever is small in filesize, but has decent enough quality.