swtor poor cinematic quality

[Darli328]

Not sure if anyone else has had this issue. The intro cinematics were/are really grainy and pixelated. I have all the graphics settings in the game set at 1920 by 1080. I'm not sure if there's anything I can do to fix this. The in game graphics are fine and I have no issues there. If it matters I have a Nvidia GTX 580 graphics card and an intel i7 2600K processer. Thanks

 

[PrayForDeath]

Sometimes game companies do that, and it pisses me off. Just download the 1080p version off youtube or something.

 

[Darli328]

Ha, that's party why I thought something is/was wrong. Usually the youtube version is worse than the version on a disk... Anyone else have this issue also?

 

[sigurros81]

Even if you view a video in 1080 on youtube doesn't mean it's the best quality you can get, it all comes down to how compressed the videos are, which on Youtube, compression is high for bandwidth purposes. But yeah, the cinematics in the game are very grainy for me as well. The low quality is only more noticeable if you have a big monitor.

 

[SunnyD]

#1 - the cinematics in a game are pre-rendered at a given resolution, usually 720p these days. You're playing them likely on a 1080p or 1200p resolution screen... obviously they're going to be upscaled and stretched to fit the resolution, and thereby be "grainier" than original resolution.

#2 - Being pre-rendered, your machine specs have absolutely ZERO bearing on the quality of the cinematic scene being shown.

#3 - Bioware used a "filming style" akin to what Lucasarts used in the original Star Wars series - just look at the stellar background on the flying text right at the beginning of the game, you can see some of the "visual defects" that were present in the same scenes back in the day. It's kind of funny, and actually made me smile when I saw it the first time.

 

[Darli328]

#1 - the cinematics in a game are pre-rendered at a given resolution, usually 720p these days. You're playing them likely on a 1080p or 1200p resolution screen... obviously they're going to be upscaled and stretched to fit the resolution, and thereby be "grainier" than original resolution.

#2 - Being pre-rendered, your machine specs have absolutely ZERO bearing on the quality of the cinematic scene being shown.

#3 - Bioware used a "filming style" akin to what Lucasarts used in the original Star Wars series - just look at the stellar background on the flying text right at the beginning of the game, you can see some of the "visual defects" that were present in the same scenes back in the day. It's kind of funny, and actually made me smile when I saw it the first time.

Thanks for the info, I wasn't really sure if I was doing something wrong there. I am playing on a 27 inch monitor so that has to be part of it...

 

[PrayForDeath]

#1 - the cinematics in a game are pre-rendered at a given resolution, usually 720p these days. You're playing them likely on a 1080p or 1200p resolution screen... obviously they're going to be upscaled and stretched to fit the resolution, and thereby be "grainier" than original resolution.

Sometimes they are worse than 720p. The cut-scenes in Arkham Asylum were atrocious compared to the actual game IQ. Maybe they were 720p but with horrible compression.

I don't see why game companies do that. AA's cutscenes were pre-rendered in the game engine (not sure how TOR's are), but I'm baffled when game companies use high quality CGI videos, spend tons of money on making them, and then present them in a crappy compressed format in the game. If you spent so much money making these videos, why don't you show them in their full 1080p glory?

 

[Veliko]

Sometimes they are worse than 720p. The cut-scenes in Arkham Asylum were atrocious compared to the actual game IQ. Maybe they were 720p but with horrible compression.

I don't see why game companies do that. AA's cutscenes were pre-rendered in the game engine (not sure how TOR's are), but I'm baffled when game companies use high quality CGI videos, spend tons of money on making them, and then present them in a crappy compressed format in the game. If you spent so much money making these videos, why don't you show them in their full 1080p glory?

They take up a lot space. If you are downloading it from Steam that all adds up.

 

[Dankk]

I don't see why game companies do that. AA's cutscenes were pre-rendered in the game engine (not sure how TOR's are), but I'm baffled when game companies use high quality CGI videos, spend tons of money on making them, and then present them in a crappy compressed format in the game. If you spent so much money making these videos, why don't you show them in their full 1080p glory?

I suspect it's because they're using some special effects or editing that couldn't be reasonably displayed in real-time. However, I'm not saying that's always a great excuse; it doesn't necessarily mean they couldn't have cut some corners and tweaked it to make it run in real-time. You're mostly right. 99% of FMV/pre-rendered cutscenes look like ass. I played through Bulletstorm last week, and it's one of the most beautiful-looking PC games of 2011, despite most people not acknowledging it. Unfortunately however there were a few sections where they decided to use FMVs for their cutscenes rather than doing them in-engine. Really breaks the immersion for me on my 1080p monitor, where I can suddenly see compression artifacts everywhere and degraded IQ.

There are a few situations where it's acceptable. The intro movie in The Witcher, for example, was really well-made. Although it was pre-rendered, it was the only pre-rendered FMV in the entire game. It was tastefully compressed and optimized for hi-resolution computer monitors, with very little artifacts or loss of quality. Finally, since they planned on making it pre-rendered anyway, they decided to do it outside of the game engine entirely and make it with much higher-quality graphics.

 

[PrayForDeath]

There are a few situations where it's acceptable. The intro movie in The Witcher, for example, was really well-made. Although it was pre-rendered, it was the only pre-rendered FMV in the entire game. It was tastefully compressed and optimized for hi-resolution computer monitors, with very little artifacts or loss of quality. Finally, since they planned on making it pre-rendered anyway, they decided to do it outside of the game engine entirely and make it with much higher-quality graphics.

Don't forget the ending cinematic

On a side note, that's one of the longest FMV movies I've seen in a game.

edit: The Witcher 2 would be a great example of in-game cinematics done right. It has zero pre-rendered cutscenes, everything is done in the game engine, and it looks beautiful. This is a great example (there's a autosave for this part if you wanna watch it in-game.)

 

[sigurros81]

Some how I don't see the Old Republic engine being capable of rendering fluid motion-captured animation like the Witcher 2. Best I've seen are bodies twitching and arms waving around and force choking bitches during dialogue cutscenes

Unfortunately, the reason why the pre-rendered stuff in Arkham Asylum looks like shit on the PC is because the videos were compressed for consoles. 720P on an HDTV screen looks much better than it would on a PC, for a few reasons. One being you're farther away from your TV.

 

[Veliko]

Some how I don't see the Old Republic engine being capable of rendering fluid motion-captured animation like the Witcher 2. Best I've seen are bodies twitching and arms waving around and force choking bitches during dialogue cutscenes

Unfortunately, the reason why the pre-rendered stuff in Arkham Asylum looks like shit on the PC is because the videos were compressed for consoles. 720P on an HDTV screen looks much better than it would on a PC, for a few reasons. One being you're farther away from your TV.

It's got nothing to do with the consoles, video like that has been compressed for years.

 

[sigurros81]

It's got nothing to do with the consoles, video like that has been compressed for years.

I don't know man, the pre-rendered stuff from Blizzard looks pretty damn good on my screen. The movies in WoW and the pre-rendered ones in Starcraft 2 come to mind.

 

[IonusX]

Not sure if anyone else has had this issue. The intro cinematics were/are really grainy and pixelated. I have all the graphics settings in the game set at 1920 by 1080. I'm not sure if there's anything I can do to fix this. The in game graphics are fine and I have no issues there. If it matters I have a Nvidia GTX 580 graphics card and an intel i7 2600K processer. Thanks

you not mad that it has no AA support? what heresy is this!

 

[Veliko]

I don't know man, the pre-rendered stuff from Blizzard looks pretty damn good on my screen. The movies in WoW and the pre-rendered ones in Starcraft 2 come to mind.

The short intro to Quake 3 had poor compression. As did the C&C games.

 

[sigurros81]

The short intro to Quake 3 had poor compression. As did the C&C games.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make or you're even hitting the point at all. Quake 3 came out years ago when 800x600 was the popular screen resolution. The point I'm trying to make is that developers can release high quality movies in their games if they choose to. 1080 resolution is pretty popular these days, and harddrive space is cheap, so there is no excuse to not get high quality looking movies. Given the examples of Blizzard's games, they always put a high production value into their movies, so the videos always look great. A lot of games that are port over from consoles with pre-rendered movies tend to look like shit on a monitor screen. Best example I can think of right now is the new Deus Ex game. I have it on the PS3 and the movies look great on my HDTV, recently I bought the game during the steam holiday sale and the movie looks like ass on my monitor.

Most developers are just too lazy to put in a nice high resolution/definition movie for PC gamers, guess it saves them money to just give us the movies that are sampled for HDTVs.

 

[Veliko]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make or you're even hitting the point at all. Quake 3 came out years ago when 800x600 was the popular screen resolution. The point I'm trying to make is that developers can release high quality movies in their games if they choose to. 1080 resolution is pretty popular these days, and harddrive space is cheap, so there is no excuse to not get high quality looking movies. Given the examples of Blizzard's games, they always put a high production value into their movies, so the videos always look great. A lot of games that are port over from consoles with pre-rendered movies tend to look like shit on a monitor screen. Best example I can think of right now is the new Deus Ex game. I have it on the PS3 and the movies look great on my HDTV, recently I bought the game during the steam holiday sale and the movie looks like ass on my monitor.

Most developers are just too lazy to put in a nice high resolution/definition movie for PC gamers, guess it saves them money to just give us the movies that are sampled for HDTVs.

My point is that is blaming low quality cut scenes on consoles is rather bizarre given that historically PC games have often had them.

This is especially true for the game that the OP started the thread about, a PC-only MMO.

 

[sigurros81]

My point is that is blaming low quality cut scenes on consoles is rather bizarre given that historically PC games have often had them.

This is especially true for the game that the OP started the thread about, a PC-only MMO.

I guess we're both trying to say the same thing in different ways. Bottom line is that developers are lazy, they can give us high res, nice looking movies if they choose to, good example is Blizzard. However I'm not far off to say that alot of games ported over from console also get the lazy treatment--why spend time and money re-sample movies to higher quality when they got movies already made to package with the PC version of their games.