The
goal of the project
is to play through Panzer Dragoon Saga and record the whole experience
and then encode the highlights to distribute on the internet. I won't
be using a walkthrough for this; I dislike using them for initial play
throughs, even if this isn't my first time playing the game (I last
played through the game in 1999, so I've pretty much forgotten
everything important anyway).
It is my hope that these videos will aid people who haven't played the game in understanding the storyline and give them a strong idea of what the gameplay is like. The game isn't cheap these days (it goes for around $150 on eBay right now, and I've seen it sell for around $200 more than once), so I hope that at least one or two of these videos will be enough to inform someone as to if the game is right for them. Additionally, I hope that these videos will aid those playing Panzer Dragoon Saga via an emulator (SSF, Giri Giri, etc) so that they understand what is an emulation bug and what isn't. I'd love to redo this project in high resolution via SSF at some point in the future (and as a sidenote, I believe that all emulators should have input recording/playback support along with AVI Output support :) ).
Unfortunatly, I don't have an s-video cable for my Saturn, so I'm capturing these videos via composite. Not the best image quality in the world (actually, it sucks :( ), but the videos here are quite a bit better than you're likely to find elsewhere (Gamespot and IGN, I'm looking at you...). There's some nice, high resolution screenshots taken from within GiriGiri available at PanzerDragoon.Net (which is where I got these cd scans from, incidentially).
Everything here is encoded at 640x480 XviD and bitrates between 950kbps to 1200kbps (depended on what yielded the most acceptable image quality for the file size). Total play length is just a hair over 6 hours long, which is roughly half the length of time to took to actually play through the game. If you plan on editing it all together into a single movie (PLEASE DO!) and need additional footage for any single point, please let me know and I'll gladly capture whatever you need.
Disc 1 |
Disc 2 |
Disc 3 |
Disc 4 |
mini-F.A.Q.
General
Q. Is this a speed run?
A. No, this is just large chunks of the video showing off all of the key moments of the entire game...and then pretty much the entire end sequence.
Q. Why didn't you edit these into one movie?
A. Because I suck at video editing.
Q. Can I edit these videos into one movie?
A. I don't know. Can you?
Q. Why didn't you do X on Y at point Z?
A. Because I didn't use a walkthrough and I haven't played it in years, so I was just finding my own playstyle to use instead of following someone else's. While I'm pretty sure my style was far from the most efficient, it worked well enough for me!
Q. Why did you use Fileshack?
A. Because all of these videos together are 4.76gigs, and while I have a nice amount of bandwidth available to me, I don't have THAT much.
Q. Will you torrent these up?
A. Give me a Torrent Tracker that's available for general use and doesn't also host \\`aR3z and moviez and I'd be happy to.
Q. Can you send me the ISO+MP3 so I can play PDS in GiriGiri?!?
A. Hahahahahahahahahaha
Technical
Q. I get audio but no video!
A1. Install ffdshow.
A2. Use VLC.
Q. I get video but no audio!
A. That doesn't even begin to compute, but feel free to use ffdshow or VLC.
Q. Why does it look like crap?
A1. I was using composite cables to capture
A2. It's a Saturn, not a PS3.
A3. It's 8 years old
A4. I recorded to MPEG2 (extremely high bitrate MPEG2, but MPEG2 all the same) and then transcoded to XviD.
Q. What hardware did you use to capture all of this?
A. I used a Leadtek Winfast TV2000XP Deluxe, which cost me about $45 from NewEgg 2 1/2 years ago. Now a days they have the TV2000XP Expert for only $35, which is a pretty damn good deal for such a nice piece of awesomeness. For recording, I used Leadtek's WinFastPVR software, which isn't on par with DScaler for cleaning up video inputs, but supports recording to mpeg2 (which is incredibly important when dealing with recording an hour or so of footage at a time). I also have an svideo/composite switchbox that I run all of my systems through so I can change systems on the fly.
Personal
Q. Did you know that you suck?
A. Nope, thanks for letting me know!
Q. Do you not have a life or something?
A. I'm a janitor at a high school. Do the math.
Q. Well then why did it take so damn long for you to do this?
A. We're short staffed at the high school.
Q. Why did you waste your time with this? This project sucks, your FAQ sucks, and your mom has a small penis.
A. Thank you! You have a nice day, too!
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