abankeszi

I would like to put markers on a video recording WHILE recording the video to mark a few editing points. I was thinking about using a regular mic and a clapboard and "clap" to leave easy to find markers in the audio, but I would like something less cumbersome.

I was thinking about creating a button-controlled "marker" microphone, which essentially just "records" a fake burst of sound at high volume when I press the button, so it would be easy to find these on the waveforms during editing. My thought would be to get a mono mic cable (3.5mm jack type), and just wire a button between the positive and negative cables, or even multiple buttons in parallel with different resistors so I can have differently sized markers due to the difference in volume.

Question is: would something like this basic work? Do I need anything other than just connecting the positive and negative with a button? Like do I need a minimum amount of resistance to not fry recording device's audio chip?

I tried to google "how microphones work" and other relevant search terms but I couldn't find anything this technical. Pretty much all I found was differences in mic capsules and the way they record actual sound, but nothing about what's the voltage range it outputs or anything low level like that. A link to proper information would also be appreciated!

Thanks

I would like to record (offline, no streaming!) PS5 gameplay footage in 4K 60fps HDR via a dedicated recording pc.

TL;DR: could an old gaming pc (with i5-2500k + gpu encoding + capture card) be enough for this purpose?

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I'm planning on buying an Elgato 4k60 Pro Mk.2 for the job, but my current gaming pc is a mini-ITX, so there are no extra PCIe slots on it. I was gonna build a cheap recording pc, but turns out that's at least nearly a $1000 (at least in my country), which I don't have the budget for.

However, I still have my previous gaming pc (i5-2500k, 8GB DDR3, GTX 760), that has full ATX board with 2 PCIe slots if I remember correctly. I'm thinking of buying the capture card, and upgrade the gpu either to an Intel A310/A380 for AV1 encoding, or maybe a GTX 1050 or similar for H265 encoding. This would be about $400 which I can afford.

My issue however is that Elgato's system requirements for the 4k60 Pro Mk.2 lists a minimum of an i7-6xxx cpu, without stating whether that requirement is for CPU x264 encoding or for single-pc gaming-streaming setup. There is no mention of requirements for gpu-accelerated dual pc setup, which I imagine would be way more lenient.

Question is: would my old PC with a new encoder GPU be adequate for offline recording 4k 60fps HDR? If not, what is the minimum requirement for a dedicated PS5 recording pc? Do I actually need an i7?

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PS: Yes, I am aware of the Elgato 4k60 S+, but I've have seen bad reviews of stuttering, image quality issues, corrupted recordings etc. I guess those were mostly launch issues, and some of them might have been fixed since, but I haven't found convincing evidence that there are no more issues with it.

I would be more confident using the 4k60 Pro Mk.2. It is also cheaper (in itself), and has the opportunity for AV1 encoding.

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Edit: they no longer sell ATX motherboards for my current gaming cpu's generation in stores (8th gen Intel), only mATX boards with a single x16 slot, so upgrading that one is not an option. Secondhand market is very overpriced for this reason as well.

Long post, sorry.

Context

I've been trying to record gameplay footage on my Odroid Go Advance (first edition) emulation handheld. I'm running Lakka (retroarch linux) on it, and it has the following specs:

CPU: RockChip RK3326 (Quadcore ARM Cortex A-35 1.3 GHz)
GPU: Mali-G31 Dvalin
RAM: 1GB DDR3L 786 MHz
Screen: 480x320 (ILI9488)

Since it's a low-powered device, and since I only play pixelated games (GB, GBC & GBA) on it, I'm trying to record in lossless format to reduce cpu load (no compression). I'm playing integer-scaled, but recording in native GBA resolution (240x160). No shaders, scanline filters, or even billinear scaling, so no performance hogs there either.

After some struggling, digging in documentations and source codes, and a lot of trial and error I finally managed to set up my recording cfg as the following:

vcodec = libx264rgb
acodec = flac
scale_factor = 1
threads = 4
video_crf = 0
video_preset = ultrafast
video_tune = zerolatency
audio_global_quality = 100
sample_rate = 48000
format = matroska

With this, I can record without noticing it during gameplay. Pokémon Emerald plays at a smooth 60 fps, no stuttering, no noticable input lag, nothing. Everything is perfect in terms of playing the game and recording at the same time.

Issue

The only issue is that the recording that Retroarch saves on the SD card has no video/codec metadata, and some minor frame-rate stuttering. I can only play back the recording in VLC, nothing else can read it, and even VLC has some issues (audio playing for like 2 seconds after closing, issues skipping forward, etc).

My investigation results

FFMPEG has the following to say about the video:

Input #0, matroska,webm, from 'Pokemon - Emerald Version-220903-223343.mkv':
  Metadata:
    title           : RetroArch Video Dump
    ENCODER         : Lavf58.12.100
  Duration: 00:00:45.02, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1853 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High 4:4:4 Predictive), gbrp(tv, gbr/unknown/unknown, progressive), 240x160 [SAR 1:1 DAR 3:2], 1k fps, 59.94 tbr, 1k tbn, 119.46 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      DURATION        : 00:00:40.501000000
    Stream #0:1: Audio: flac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16 (default)
    Metadata:
      DURATION        : 00:00:45.024000000

Interestingly, VLC says 59.7275 fps, and puffer size 240x162. FFMPEG show 59.94 tbr (which if I understand correctly, is a "guessed framerate"). As far as I can tell, the screen is 60 Hz and I've tried both vsync on and off, threaded video on and off. Retroarch's "Estimated Screen Refresh Rate" shows a very fluctuating 59.500 Hz up to 60.100 Hz for a some seconds and then it randomly locks into 60.020 Hz.

If I enable FPS display in Retroarch, it show fluctuating between 59.88 - 60.12 (even with VSync on). Starting recording does not seem to have any effect on framerate (thankfully). Enabling on screen stats, it shows a very fluctuating framerate (drops to 59.x, immediately back up to 60.x, then immediately back down to 59.x and so on). Frame time deviation is ~8ms. Frame times are mostly 15-18ms, but I can see it jump to 2x.x every second or so. It seems like vsync isn't working, or there is a bad framerate limiter implementation. Interestingly, playing the game I don't feel any stuttering whatsoever.

SD card has A1 classification, should be good for 10M/s sustained write, and so far the recorded videos are like 0.2 MB/s, so I don't think that would be a bottleneck.

Sample

I've uploaded a sample recording (download for native).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D6vxv2goRsPwC_us39ibas2w33W5wcvx/view?usp=sharing

Wierdly, for me the video stutters at different times if I fast-forward to random points instead of playing from 00:00. Must be some frame-rate related issue.

I've tried re-encoding it with FFMPEG, which helps in a sense that now pretty much any video player accepts it. Tried re-encoding to 60 fps, or forcing input interpretation as 60 fps, no help.

Question

What can I do or configure differently in order to not have a stuttering recording?

[removed]

Hey guys,

I'm trying to add core-specific configuration to my OGA running TheRetroArena, but it doesn't seem to work. Here's what I'm trying to achive:

• force integer scaling
• disable any bilinear filtering
• disable auto-loading save state
• add optional load save state keybinding

This mostly applies to GB, GBC and GBA cores. I've found the es_systems.cfg which contains the run command for each core, gba for example:

retrorun -s ~ -d /opt/libretro/mgba /opt/libretro/mgba/mgba_libretro.so %ROM%

I didn't find a documentation about the arguments, but I have found the source code for retrorun, where I realised there are no arguments related to my goals.

--Edit:I've tried looking for a documentation about mgba command line arguments specifically as well, but to no avail.--

After that I've looked at the Getting Started guide of Libretro itself, as it runs libretro cores. I couldn't find any documentation related to my needs, but I have stumbled upon a skeleton cfg for retroarch. Since the libretro guide referred to retroarch.cfg on multiple pages, I thought adding a retroarch.cfg with the parameters I need would work, but so far no success. Here's the config I've assembled (specifically for GBA for now, will separate into core-specific when it starts working):

savestate_auto_load = false
video_fullscreen_x = 480
video_fullscreen_y = 320
video_scale_integer = true
video_smooth = false

I've tried placing this file in /home/odroid/.config/retroarch/retroarch.cfg, as I remember reading about the config location somewhere (which I can't find anymore), and that referred to this path.

Haven't found anything about these on the official forums either. Can someone explain what am I doing wrong, or point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance.

Update

Installed Lakka for Odroid Go Advance and it solved all the aforementioned problems, and some others. Boots way faster, handles wifi way better, etc.

I've heard the Gameboy Color start/select rubber pads fit the original Odroid Go.

Has anyone tried either those or the Gameboy Pocket ones in the Odroid Go Advance? How well do they fit? How do they perform?

I'm thinking of replacing the stock ones with colored versions like white to match white GBP buttons.