Bay 12 Games Forum

Hey, everyone. So, I'm working on a story at the moment. Not one I can share. Thing is, one of the characters is a lawyer. I'm not, and while I have tried to do research, there are still certain things about the job that I'm unsure about. The law aspect of the story may not be the central part of the narrative, but messing up on little things like that bugs me.

So, are there any lawyers on the forum who would be willing to answer a few questions and help me in my research? We'd be talking in PMs. I know it's kind of an odd thing to post, but I couldn't find any other place to ask, and I figured I might as well have a go here.

A friend of mine is having trouble with a USB drive that has suddenly become "write locked". Very annoying. Does anyone have any idea how to fix that? I tried to use the basic search engine and got a result about a software tool to use, but I have no idea if it was legitimate.

Hi, guys. I have a rather large problem at the moment, and I'd really like your help. I recently decided to do an LP of Persona 5: Royal. Or at least, I'm TRYING to do one. Nothing's been posted yet due to persistent technical issues involving my Elgato capture card and OBS.

I didn't know that the Elgato doesn't cooperate well with OBS. I just knew that an LPer I watched managed to get it to work. Since I first started using the Elgato, I have encountered the same problem, and by now, I'm more inclined to throw it away and get a new capture card to avoid this nonsense. In fact, I did order one, but it won't arrive for two weeks. So I thought I'd ask here for advice to see if it's possible to fix this, or maybe pinpoint the problem more exactly, because I just don't get it.

I'll go over everything in as much detail as possible, because I don't know what's relevant.

I've mostly been recording in a small office room. I have a small TV on a table, the PS4 in front of it, and my microphone, a Fifine model (for reference: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XCKGLTP/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) in front of that. When I first recorded, I found audio issues. For one, I had faint audio repetition, as in, I heard the game sounds twice, once faintly, and then a second or two later, the full volume game audio. So it was like:

_{Stop, Joker!}... Stop, Joker!

This became particularly noticeable during Kasumi's introductory cutscene, if you know the game. Furthermore, while the faint audio was in sync with what was going on in the game, the full volume audio was not.

Now, I presumed that the faint audio was just the TV being picked up by my microphone. I'm still inclined to think that, but now I'm not 100% sure. I tried putting the microphone further away by having it on my lap, putting a good little bit of distance between myself and the TV, and also turning the TV volume down to 6. One of my tests seemed to have fixed the faint audio, but the desynced game audio remained.

I tried recording in a larger, more open room. That didn't work. Based on some advice, I tried working with Sync Offset under the Edit -> Advanced Audio Settings. I set Audio Offset for Persona 5: Royal to 2000 ms, but that didn't change anything. Then I tried the other direction, going for -199 ms, because that was as far back on the negative I could go. That didn't work. Based on some other advice, I also changed the sample rate for OBS to 48 kHz, to match the Elgato.

I did a test with just the sample rate change, no change. I did another test with the sample rate change, and Sync Offset for P5R set to -199 ms. That seemed to fix the problem. I heard no double audio in Kasumi's introductory scene, and no desynced audio, either.

But then I tried recording yesterday, and the only difference from the day I tested and my recording yesterday was that the TV volume was up a couple points, and yet... the problem came back.

I'm totally at a loss, guys. Is there a way to for sure fix this nonsense? Is that faint audio I'm getting really being picked up by my microphone? I don't know. If it also helps, in Advanced Audio Properties, Desktop Audio, Mic/Aux, and Persona 5: Royal have all six track check boxes checked. I tired messing with that once, I forget the result. I don't know if that's a factor.

Please, can anybody help me untangle this? I really need help.

EDIT 12/25/20: I forgot I wrote this. But a while back, I managed to fix the problem with an obscure sound setting. Just letting everybody know.

Hi, guys! I have another Let's Play project going now, and that is Epic Battle Fantasy 5 Version 2.0. If you haven't heard of it, EBF5 is the final part of a great series of games that transitioned from a side scroller to a proper RPG, and became one of the best games out there, IMO. It's full of fun battles against a wide variety of enemies, and LOTS of humor and game references, not to mention it's very, very, very well built. And it has some fantastic music.

Version 2.0 just came out on Steam yesterday, so I'm checking it out, and if you're interested, you can check it out with me. This new version has three new dungeons, custom game options, cheats and challenges, the ability to save loadouts for each party member, 52 new enemies (many of them sub-bosses), new equipment, new quests, and more.

And if you want a better look at the game, here's the trailer for the original version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkzRbc2VlXY

And here's the trailer for version 2.0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO6z2LgZXQQ

My playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzeiup0Qs9qv5ycil-TRAFdwhI4UYYQ8k

So... anybody interested?

Okay, so I messed with the profile and changed it to

Target: MP4 (h.264)
Video Profile: HD 720p 23.98 fps (1280x720)
Quality: High

Also, under the profile, I saw "Other: DAR 16/9, SAR 1/1, Interlaced: False"

Same experiment. Took out 1 minute of a 5 minute video that was 7.12 MB to start. The resulting file was 28.6 MB. A little smaller than the other tests, but still several sizes larger than the original, which just confounds me.

On another note, I tried using a different video editing software, Shotcut. I don't know if anybody has used that one before. I did the same type of experiment. But the resulting video was 12.2 MB. I still don't get how the edited video is larger than the original, but hey, this one is only almost twice as long instead of nearly 4 or 5 times, so that's something.

It's definitely weird. But thank you for the advice about checking the bitrate.

I've sort of managed to work my way around the problem... sort of. I took the time to upload one of my earlier test files that was 2.something GB to YT (after several hours of waiting) and then downloaded the file again to something that was 400-something MB, and uploaded THAT to YT. That 400-MB something file is what I'm going to keep, since the footage is of excellent quality and not shrunken at all.

I still need to figure out this problem, though, because I doubt it's going to go away. But first, I'm going to have to create a new file to play with, something smaller in file size to begin with so I can test it out faster.

I'll update you guys when I have some good data.

I forgot to update this thread. I managed to figure out how to increase the size of the game area. But now I've run into a new problem.

I already said it before, but I'm doing an LP (which I mentioned here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=174785.0) and things have been going fine so far. But when I recorded last time, the phone rang and I had to take it, resulting in a minute of near silence. I figured I'd just edit it out, since I'd discovered how to cut footage in the editing program I used (OpenShot). But I ran into problems today, and I'm hoping you technologically savvy people can help me once again. 

I imported the unedited footage, and used the Razor tool to cut the video at the beginning and end of the bit where I was away from my laptop. Then I removed the clip with the unwanted bit and put the remaining pieces together. No fancy transitions or anything. Once I did that, I exported the video.

Now here's the thing that frustrated me. This video, minus the bit I took out, should be around 33 minutes, and should also be around 300-something MB, similar to other videos I've done. But when the edited video finished exporting, it was 3 GB.

As I said, I messed with the settings some, and I got smaller file sizes (none under a gigabyte), but those were all corrupted and unwatchable.

I don't understand how the video could be so large when exported. This should be simple, cutting out a minute of footage. Is anyone familiar with OpenShot? If so, can you tell me what I might be doing wrong? I admit I'm not very good with technology, but this just doesn't make sense.