The Warlocks of the Fates Footage, Restored to 4:3

Digmac

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Hey guys, recently The Warlocks of the Fates has piqued my interest and I found the footage of the game uploaded on Nico Nico. The original was stretched in a 16:9 aspect ratio, and was dark to where some of the detail in the backgrounds were hard to make out. I downloaded the original footage from Nico Nico, restored it back to 4:3, and slightly edited the color contrast so the dark backgrounds would be easier to see detail in. Since this is the only known gameplay footage, I thought it would be nice to have it looking like it originally should.

Check the fixed footage here: https://youtu.be/d6Xg7U_qgr4
 

awbacon

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Hey guys, recently The Warlocks of the Fates has piqued my interest and I found the footage of the game uploaded on Nico Nico. The original was stretched in a 16:9 aspect ratio, and was dark to where some of the detail in the backgrounds were hard to make out. I downloaded the original footage from Nico Nico, restored it back to 4:3, and slightly edited the color contrast so the dark backgrounds would be easier to see detail in. Since this is the only known gameplay footage, I thought it would be nice to have it looking like it originally should.

Check the fixed footage here: https://youtu.be/d6Xg7U_qgr4

Nice work! What did you use? Resolve can do a ton for detail still in an image but hidden
 

Digmac

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Nice work! What did you use? Resolve can do a ton for detail still in an image but hidden

I actually used an older version of iMovie from when it supported 16:9 to 4:3 conversion, and then I edited the brightness of the darker color range to bring out the dark backgrounds a bit more. I also increased the audio level since it was pretty quiet in the source file. I have three files now, the original source video from Nico Nico, that video restored back to 4:3, and then the edited version which is now on YouTube. I’ll be sure to check out Resolve though, as it sounds like more of a fully featured program. I plan on playing with the source video more to see if more improvements can be achieved.
 

yagamikun

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Thanks, man! Nice to see this as intended. Great job with the editing work!
 

Heinz

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Great footage, thanks for sharing. Now if the owner could do us all a favor...
 

Digmac

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Thanks guys, I'm glad this can be helpful. On the topic of Warlocks, I also uploaded the features the game had in Neo Geo Freak magazine Vol. 1 and Vol. 3. Even using Google Translate, there's some interesting info about the game that can be learned from them.

Check them out here:
https://imgur.com/a/kyOwXN7
 

2D_mastur

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Fucking hate it when people play 4:3 in 16:9... it makes me almost as mad as it does Southtownkid.

Thanks for clearing this up.
 

awbacon

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I actually used an older version of iMovie from when it supported 16:9 to 4:3 conversion, and then I edited the brightness of the darker color range to bring out the dark backgrounds a bit more. I also increased the audio level since it was pretty quiet in the source file. I have three files now, the original source video from Nico Nico, that video restored back to 4:3, and then the edited version which is now on YouTube. I’ll be sure to check out Resolve though, as it sounds like more of a fully featured program. I plan on playing with the source video more to see if more improvements can be achieved.

Yes. The basic (well it just doesn’t allow 8K and multi GPU config) of Resolve would be useful to use.

Generally something like iMovie will make adjustments to areas you don’t want adjusted. Resolve will allow adjustments to different waveforms of the image. So you can adjust mid tones while not touching highlights or shadow. It gets infinitely more complex from there but it’s a nice starting point
 

awbacon

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If you want I can take a stab. I don’t want any credit / won’t upload it to my channel, but I do junk like that for a living (Color work) so I don’t mind helping out

Or I can just feed you advice. Whatever! Happy to
 

Viewpoint

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Waiting for a certain someone to show up and say Gentlemen!
 

awbacon

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in Resolve you could also use clip attribute overwrites to interpolate to 4x3. Since the resolution does not change in the SOURCE clip, you can easily conform it to 4x3.

Additionally you can perform some pretty nice upscaling to bring it to 1080p. I did that with the VHS captures of the M2 version of D2, and that was also a VHS captuure
 

Digmac

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If you want I can take a stab. I don’t want any credit / won’t upload it to my channel, but I do junk like that for a living (Color work) so I don’t mind helping out

Or I can just feed you advice. Whatever! Happy to
Well, I have to say thanks for turning me on to Resolve! It’s awesome! I just did a quick edit using some of the tools, and I think it’s turned out better than the one I uploaded on YouTube. I’ll upload it as an unlisted video once it’s done rendering so you can tell me what you think. Rendering times are pretty gnarly for long videos it looks like.

Edit: New video render is sharper, but kinda looks like crap. I'll have to check into upscaling like you said.
 
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awbacon

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Well, I have to say thanks for turning me on to Resolve! It’s awesome! I just did a quick edit using some of the tools, and I think it’s turned out better than the one I uploaded on YouTube. I’ll upload it as an unlisted video once it’s done rendering so you can tell me what you think. Rendering times are pretty gnarly for long videos it looks like.

Edit: New video render is sharper, but kinda looks like crap. I'll have to check into upscaling like you said.

Resolve is CPU intensive for rendering and real time playback of unaltered clips, but make sure your GPU rendering is turned on. It will offload some tasks more suited for the core structure of a GPU vs a CPU. Once you go into the Color panel though every setting you touch and every node you add will be handled by your GPU. If for some reason you are using onboard graphics via an Intel CPU though make sure you uncheck GPU tendering, as that’ll get worse than using logical processor cores.

You may also need to change your render output settings. I’d go h.264 output. It might be trying to force a variable bit rate as well, which in the instance of a VHS capture, could negatively affect the final output. So you may want to deselect variable bit rate.

Send me the link once it’s done. I’ll check it out and see if I can spot anything and what settings you’d want to change for a better output.

Resolve is easy once you know it, but some of the settings and menu items can be in some very esoteric spots. I’ve just been using it forever and teaching it to college kids for a few years now. But whatever I can do to help just lmk. I can also source you some of the info and links I give to my students on certain topics since I’ve got syllabi full of them
 

awbacon

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Oh and for rendering a 1:1 scale is considered good as a benchmark for your machine, so long as you haven’t layered on the effects to an insane degree. So ten minutes should render in approximately ten minutes (unless you are transcoding formats from something very odd like AVCHD...then the time will just skyrocket)

2:1 and its upgrade time (well if you do it for a living) and .5:1 if you drop some serious cash on some 12+ core Threadripper business. I keep mine at 1:1 and it’s always been enough for me not to get too impatient with the render output.

If you right click on the video in the timeline and select clip attributes you should get the data on the source file codec. Or you can turn on “inspector” (top right of application) and view info there. I usually use attributes.

If you want to really dial in all the details in the video, under the Color tab you want to be using the waveform graphs to monitor what detail may still be recoverable, and make sure you aren’t altering levels in a manner that starts clipping the waveform (or pushing it too far in any given direction) as it’s a fine line between “recovering detail” and “trading a gain here for a loss there”

Ok sorry I think I just wrote a post like I’d email a student lolol. I’m sure you’ve got this!
 

kingcuckmelon1

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I know this game's roms been dumped and all that but... that cart in the Japanese store must be a fake. Unless they plug it in and show it running I'm calling it FAKE NEWS.
 

Digmac

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Send me the link once it’s done. I’ll check it out and see if I can spot anything and what settings you’d want to change for a better output.

Resolve is easy once you know it, but some of the settings and menu items can be in some very esoteric spots. I’ve just been using it forever and teaching it to college kids for a few years now. But whatever I can do to help just lmk. I can also source you some of the info and links I give to my students on certain topics since I’ve got syllabi full of them

I'd totally appreciate the info and links for Resolve, thanks for offering! Go ahead and shoot me a PM with them and I'll get this new render I did uploaded. We can work on it from there. Thanks man!
 

awbacon

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I'd totally appreciate the info and links for Resolve, thanks for offering! Go ahead and shoot me a PM with them and I'll get this new render I did uploaded. We can work on it from there. Thanks man!

NP! Pm sent
 

awbacon

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I can’t even remember what the story on Warlocks is anymore? Lemme guess : dumped and “protected” but not available? Lol
 

Digmac

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I can’t even remember what the story on Warlocks is anymore? Lemme guess : dumped and “protected” but not available? Lol

Basically, yeah. There's a lot of drama surrounding this game because of Dion supposedly having it, SNKP raids supposedly finding copies, and NCI supposedly finding it. No concrete evidence was shown for Dion or NCI having it, so that's snake oil. SNKP finding copies in their raids, it's possible, but I don't think anyone knows what became of that. Even the cart located in Mandarake Nakano is believed to be fake because they've refused to demo it running, and they refuse to give out info regarding it. A large five figure offer was made for the cart but was refused.

In 2005, screenshots of the game surfaced that don't look to be from a magazine scan. This might mean that it's been dumped but that also doesn't have concrete evidence either, that a ROM was available at some point. What we have to go on is this footage of the game, uploaded in Japan in 2013, which was obviously ripped from VHS. It's unclear that the uploader was the person who actually played the game and recorded the footage. It seems unlikely. Neo Geo Freak Magazine had two features on the game, which I posted above. The second feature, in Vol. 3, seems to be the same build of the game as the video footage.

I want the game to be released and preserved as unlikely as that is. What needs to be done to make progress on that, I have no idea.
 
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