System Shock 2 High Definition Cutscenes (SS2HDC) released!

RejZoR on 26/5/2015 at 08:21

I'll make a shameless self promotion here, letting you all know I've just released a visual enhancement for legendary game System Shock 2. This time, a video cutscenes conversion into HD, to supplement the existing awesome visuals enhancement mods like SHTUP and Rebirth. Mine is unfortunately not as dramatic since there is no easy way of magically getting HD image out of nothing, but I think I've done a pretty decent good job, making this epic game look few years younger :)

INTRODUCTION
System Shock 2 High Definition Cutscenes (SS2HDC) is an attempt to bring some fidelity into aging low resolution video cutscenes of System Shock 2 game.

Original cutscenes arrived in 640×480 and 320×240 resolutions, the new HD cutscenes are all encoded at 1280×960 (4x original resolution) with special sharpening process applied that restores certain details (mostly texts and simple visual elements). It is technically impossible to obtain video quality out of thin air (except in C.S.I. TV series hehe), but this is probably the closest thing we can get with current technology and certainly far better results than with Bicubic or Lanczos resampling.

COMPARISON SAMPLES (sort them by name):
(http://s14.photobucket.com/user/rejzor/library/SS2HDC?sort=3&page=1)

MORE INFO, SAMPLES AND DOWNLOAD
(https://rejzor.wordpress.com/2015/05/26/system-shock-2-high-definition-cutscenes/)

Let me know what you think, spread the word and enjoy this epic game!

voodoo47 on 26/5/2015 at 11:49

the maximum resolution that is supported by the Dark video player is 640*480, so your videos that were upscaled to 1280*960 get downscaled to 640*480 when played, and this can't be good under any circumstances. be glad that the videos are not crashing the game.

as mentioned quite a few times before, the only proper way of redoing the videos is to set up and record the scenes in Shocked again (the only existing Cutscene Rebirth video has been created this way). trying to reprocess the original lowres cutscenes will always yield questionable results - by reprocessing a video, you can only lose quality.

RejZoR on 26/5/2015 at 13:08

I disagree. Try them and you'll see they in fact look better despite this limitation. Also, the only video recorded at 640x480 is CREDITS video. The rest are 320x240. Which means the game engine will either way upscale videos with its crappy scaling engine (which most likely uses bilinear resampling) up to 640x480 (if at all) and then it gets further upscaled to fit the screen, making them a horrible blocky mess.

Videos are now ready at 1280x960, if anyone has any idea how to bump up the video playback limit, that would make video quality even better. Game is using FFmpeg engine for video playback so apprently there are ways to "hack" things. Has anyone tried it or no one even bothered since there weren't any videos with higher resolution anyway?

voodoo47 on 26/5/2015 at 15:39

I was talking about a project named "Cutscene Rebirth" that aimed to recreate all the SS2 cutscenes properly (re-recording them in Shocked) in the 640*480 res and using updated resources such as SHTUP. in the end, just one cutscene has been produced, the (https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=7266.0) one that's played right before you start the actual game on von Braun.

also, I'm not commenting on the filters and other things you might have used to manipulate the videos, I'm just saying that from a purely technical standpoint, feeding the engine with videos that are four times the resolution its video player can handle is a bad idea, and I mean bad BAD.

RejZoR on 26/5/2015 at 17:47

Which is why he probably only recreated CS2. Did a really good job though, but this video is mostly in-game content. CS1 and CS3 have bunch of resources not found in game as well as animated SHODAN which would require a lot of work. My aim was to enhance original content as much as possible without altering (recreating) it. There is no other way in doing that other than actually processing the original video.

As far as saying that feeding a higher res video into an engine that supports less is a "really really bad" idea, I see you don't quite understand how things work. You can easily play 4K video on a 720p screen and get excellent sharp image. Playing 720p on a 4K screen however doesn't work that well, because you can't get video data from nothing. I'm doing the first example in a way...

voodoo47 on 26/5/2015 at 18:09

I've been working with the Dark long enough to know that you shouldn't try to upset it, and ramming a video four times the supported size down its throat definitely sounds upsetting.

and you won't like Dark when it's upset.

Judith on 26/5/2015 at 18:23

Voodoo is right, quite a few of us already experimented with 'hi-res' cutscenes and ended up with reverting to 640x480 anyway. There is no benefit in using 1280x960 resolution in the game. There's barely any difference, as it's scaled down to 640*480. If you want people to see your cutscenes outside the game to appreciate the quality, you may as well upload them to youtube o vimeo.

As for what you've done, I'm sorry, but all I see is median filter slapped onto old videos. It looks cartoony and doesn't seem to improve old cutscenes in any meaningful way. It would take much more work to do it right, like what Muzman did.

ZylonBane on 30/5/2015 at 19:41

Jesus, this again? Seems like every few years someone comes along with a "high res cutscenes" mod that accomplishes pretty much nothing.

PigLick on 2/6/2015 at 11:32

or you know, you could say good job, its brillliant that you have enough love for SS2 to even do this.
NEGATIVITY ITS WHATS FOR BREAKFAST

voodoo47 on 2/6/2015 at 13:36

it's not that we want to discourage people from modding the game, but if someone is doing something.. unwise, he should be, and will be told. again, this is not about the filters, colors or whatever, it's about the potential problems that may arise by not respecting the (known) limitations - be it cutscenes with four times the max resolution supported by the video player, non power of two textures, loads of uncompressed hires textures etc. all these may sort of work - but can cause issues in the long run.

the rule of thumb here is, if someone who has been around for the last decade is telling you that you are doing it wrong, then you probably are, and if you think you aren't, you better be prepared to back it up properly. "I know I'm right because I'm right" won't cut it.