Daggerfall Workshop Forums

Hello Folks,

I would like to announce that I discovered that in the Bethesda's Daggerfall Website (https://elderscrolls.bethesda.net/en/daggerfall) was made available a better quality version of the Live Action Intro (which is in 920x512 - a little bit more than 480p), without that pixelation present on the normal game, as you can see here in this comparison I made: https://i.gyazo.com/67c80145d0ec50a11c1 ... 5af9fe.png. Now, I've already contacted Interkarma about this and for now, let's see if Bethesda authorizes it's use on Daggerfall Unity, since would not be okay to just rip it from the website and add into Daggerfall Unity. Also, if they authorize, I would like to recommend it to be an option you could turn on and off on the options menu like "better FMV" or something like that.

Updates on the Intro:
Here I answer some of the questions you may have!

Anyway, I hope you have a great day

Thomas Eric

Thank you for posting Thomas!

And what framerate does it have? The original video had 50 fps.
Do you think it is worth upscaling a little bit more up to the modern standarts? I think I could try, when I have some spare time.

Nice find, really.
- Is it truly highter quality video, or is it just different handling by the video player during playback (applied filtering or something like that)?
- I do not really see a reason to upscale the video if you do not plan to do some advanced editing (understand manual and very tedious). I would leave the upscaling to be done realtime during playback, that way it will get upscaled to the desired resolution exactly.

Just my 2 cents... Personally, I would consider editing/tuning the live footage a waste of time. That part was never very important to me. And the result would likely never be satisfactory anyway. What comes to my mind is to recreate the footage, but not live ofcourse... but to model the scene and animate it... with the original audio. Maybe that would be less of a waste (althoug it would surely require more time in the end).

Damn thats a nice find, I hope Bethesda allows it for a DFU usage. Maybe its not a important part of the game, but if DFU aims to be a remaster - than this original but higher quality video "directly from the source" will fit greatly. Fingers crossed.

Interkarma wrote: Thank you for posting Thomas!

No problem. Thanks for being supportive of my work and answering on e-mail!

rhymer wrote: And what framerate does it have?

The video on Bethesda's website is in 30 FPS, but I'm not sure about the raw video. Let's hope they can offer Interkarma, the best version they have at their hands.

ifkopifko wrote:- Is it truly highter quality video, or is it just different handling by the video player during playback (applied filtering or something like that)?

Yes, it's a higher quality video. I've done a bunch of tests that confirm so. I've zoomed in 10x on it I saw better quality artifacts in the Bethesda one.

ifkopifko wrote: I would leave the upscaling to be done realtime during playback, that way it will get upscaled to the desired resolution exactly.

Me as well.

King of the Worms wrote: Damn thats a nice find, I hope Bethesda allows it for a DFU usage. Maybe its not a important part of the game, but if DFU aims to be a remaster - than this original but higher quality video "directly from the source" will fit greatly. Fingers crossed.

Thanks man! I knew about this for a while now, but I thought that Interkarma already knew about that and I didn't bother to create an account here until now...

Thomas_Eric wrote:Yes, it's a higher quality video. I've done a bunch of tests that confirm so. I've zoomed in 10x on it I saw better quality artifacts in the Bethesda one.

Well, not saying it can't be so, but today I have also made a few tests with the original .VID and it seems, that the website_video is the same thing - made from the original .VID.

The lack of pixelation is because of different playback... with filtering.
They also used a denoise filter, that is why the artifacts are not visible... and probably also some very light color filter.
Also, the original video is 10fps, website_video is 30fps, but each frame is present thrice.

So no new information/detail is present as far as I can see.

ifkopifko wrote:The lack of pixelation is because of different playback... with filtering.
So no new information/detail is present as far as I can see.

I don't think that is true. It may be the version present in the website is just less compressed, or just like the original but there is something weird happening when you compare between both versions. About the denoise filter and the bilinear (I think) filter, they may have affected the video, but it cannot affect on how the image was compressed. I don't blame you for thinking that, some parts of the image above does confirm what you said, like the lips and the chin. The problem here as you can see is that some other parts aren't following the way the game compression works like the ears, cheek and eyebrows. Those things the you mentioned cannot add more details like that. Between the cheek and the mouth region we see a line that was very pixelated, until the filter was applied. That is what the filtering does. It doesn't however add a new information to the video we are already seeing.

This is an misunderstanding, I never said that denoise and filtering can add more detail. I am sorry, I do not really see what you mean (that part which does not follow the way game compression works), but I do not consider myself an expert in this area.

I really see no additional detail/information in the new video. I tried to run the original video through Handbrake with some denoise filters and the results are fairly similar to what you can see in the new video.
In fact, I can see more detail in the old video on some occasions... two reasons come to mind...
a) The new video got upscaled two times (first from the original 200p video to 518p, then to the resolution of my 1080p screen), while the original got upscaled only once.
b) They also applied a mild film grain filter to the new video. I definitely see something there, but I am not sure whether it is film grain filter, or some other filter I am not familiar with. It seems to add some fuzziness to contrasting edges.

ifkopifko wrote: I really see no additional detail/information in the new video. I tried to run the original video through Handbrake with some denoise filters and the results are fairly similar to what you can see in the new video.

Don't worry, I thought I was clear that I can totally see where you are coming from. I'm also not suggesting that you said "denoise and filtering can add more detail" on my first response to you.

For me, I can see those differences on the encoding and compressing of the video very clearly. You must have mistaken the absence of the same compression as some sort of a film grain? I'm not sure. I wouldn't worry so much tho. You are making a remarkable job! You, in your personal life also, should always take statements of others with a gran of salt. I'm deeply thankful that you took your time to write these posts questioning me, because If I was wrong and nobody had point out it would look silly.