Products
Examples
Interview
Simultaneous Release On Three Platforms
The Role of Middleware in The SOULCALIBUR II Project.
Platform
Products Installed
CRI ADX / CRI Sofdec / CRI Clipper
An encoder's nightmare! Welcome to the world of image encoding.
Facilitator: Did you have concerns about whether certain scenes would be properly encoded?
Onda: Well, yes - the first fog, or mist, covered scene. When we did a trial encoding at Namco, it came out terribly. At that point, to be perfectly honest, we weren't sure if CRI would be able to handle it.
Yabuno: Yes, that one was certainly difficult. We have a library of standard techniques and know-how, but none of that helped with that particular scene. We had a lot of trouble, and finally made adjustments by trial-and-error. It was, after all, the intro movie. That represented a lot of pressure. Also, the Nightmare scenes were very difficult.
Obama: Absolutely. When we first tried it at CRI, it was full of block noise - a real mess (laughs).
Yabuno: Other high-difficulty spots included Taki's fight scene, and the boat-crossing scene. These scenes had a lot of movement, and tended to exhibit noise.
Oshimi: The fact of the matter is, no matter how much effort you put into the encoding, there is going to be some problems. So one of the important decisions becomes where to allow the problems to show through. This decision is largely based on artistic sense - it's not something that can be taken care of with a cut-and-dried method. Encoding methods change depending on the types of images,objects, and philosophy of the person in charge of direction. But there is a common misconception that encoding is something that is done with the "press of a button". Unfortunately, it isn't that simple.
Obama: Yes, that's true. It's hard to know how difficult encoding is unless you actually do it yourself.
Onda: It's essential to have a good artistic sense. It's not all technical. On the surface, CRI appears to be a magnet for technical types - but this is obviously not the whole story, from what I can tell. I think people at CRI have a strong artistic streak as well.
Yabuno: Well, that's the first time I've been told that! (laughs). But think about it - how could a SOULCALIBUR fan let Cassandra's visuals get smudged? It's unthinkable!
Onda: (Laughs). Indeed, Cassandra was the most anticipated character of this game. And thanks to CRI's faithful encoding of the images, Cassandra's allure remained intact. In fact, if anything, think she became more attractive.
Sasaki: Well, that may have been linked to Yabuno's abnormal level of interest in Cassandra (laughs). It depends upon the machine which scenes are difficult to encode. With SOULCALIBUR II, I was in charge of the PlayStation 2 and Yabuno, the Xbox and GameCube. On one of the machines, we had trouble with a scene where a black bird flies across the screen. The movement for that scene is intense, and the bit rate was hard to raise - it was a real bear. Ivy and Taki's fight scene - it felt like WE were fighting the relentless block noise. How did these turn out on the other platforms?
Yabuno: You know, they weren't bad at all. But, those were scenes where we could pretty much freely change the atmosphere of the graphics - and as a result we had a hard time deciding on the best way to tie it all together.
Sasaki: A character I really love - Talim - has a meadow scene that I took pains to do well. I continued making adjustments until I got Talim to look exactly like I wanted her to (laughs).
