How To Negate GLideN64 Overscan Borderings

-------------------------------------------------How To Negate GLideN64 Overscan Borderings-------------------------------------------------



DISCLAIMER: You must set your Aspect Ratio setting to "Adjust" in your GLideN64 plugin settings for any non-4:3 resolution sizes. You can also reduce how much storage is used up on your hard drive if you lack sufficient space by changing my ffmpeg command to use a higher crf value (range is 0-51), such as -crf 20.



GLideN64 has a black border around its display which causes the emulator to output gameplay at slightly lower image quality. In this guide, I will be comprehensively explaining how to remove the border from gameplay recordings (most likely for N64 Tool-assisted speedruns) with a standardized native resolution. This is assuming you have already downloaded and become accustomed with Bizhawk.

First, download ffmpeg.exe by attempting to "Config and Record AVI/WAV" and instruct the use of FFmpeg to be greeted with a download prompt. After ffmpeg has downloaded to your Bizhawk folder, prepare to record your footage by examining the list of sizes that I have calculated below, and customize your resolution to the values on the right to get the values on the left. So, if you want your quality to be in 240p, you would use a 321x244 resolution, and if you wanted a 16:9 4k resolution, you would use a 3852x2189 resolution, and so forth. Keep in mind that N64 input/movie files can desync across different resolutions.

320x240p-SD-4:3 <- 321x244

432x240p~SD-16:9 <- 433x244

480x368p~SD-4:3 <- 481x373

640x368p~SD-16:9 <- 642x373

640x480p-SD-4:3 <- 642x487

864x480p~SD-16:9 <- 866x487

960x720p-HD-4:3 <- 963x730

1280x720p-HD-16:9 <- 1284x730

1440x1088p~HD-4:3 <- 1444x1102

1920x1088p~HD-16:9 <- 1926x1102

1536x1152p-2K-4:3 <- 1540x1167

2048x1152p-2K-16:9 <- 2054x1167

1920x1440p-2K-4:3 <- 1926x1459

2560x1440p-2K-16:9 <- 2568x1459

2880x2160p-4K-4:3 <- 2889x2189

3840x2160p-4K-16:9 <- 3852x2189

After setting your desired resolution, confirm that the movie syncs from start to finish if applicable. Initiate the FFmpeg writer within the A/V Writer list and choose the "AVI Lossless FFV1" codec format. Name your movie file without any spaces and then encode the video file in Bizhawk's dll folder. "Stop AVI/WAV" when you're done encoding the gameplay. Remember that you can configure "On Movie End->Pause" to keep the encode from continuing too long while it is left unattended, so that you can later stop the recording manually.

After the encode is finished, navigate to Bizhawk's dll folder and enter "cmd" in the file explorer bar. This will open up a command prompt. From here, you must type the following command according to the name of your encode and the desired resolution on the left:

ffmpeg -i GLideN64-CroppedVideo.avi -vf "crop=AXIS1:AXIS2:0:0" -c:v libx264rgb -crf 0 -pix_fmt rgb24 -preset placebo -acodec copy insert-desired-file-name-here.avi

For example, if the name of my encoded TAS was MyTAS, and I set Bizhawk's resolution to 1284x730 for the recording of my encode to ultimately get 720p in 16:9, then my command would be as follows:

ffmpeg -i MyTAS.avi -vf "crop=1280:720:0:0" -c:v libx264rgb -crf 0 -pix_fmt rgb24 -preset placebo -acodec copy asdf.avi

Here is one more example for achieving 16:9 1152p, the minimum resolution I recommend for YouTube uploads. This would assume you also encoded the TAS in 2054x1167.

ffmpeg -i MyTAS.avi -vf "crop=2048:1152:0:0" -c:v libx264rgb -crf 0 -pix_fmt rgb24 -preset placebo -acodec copy allyourbasearebelongtous.avi

After all of that, the resulting video file should be of prestigious quality with no bordering present within the frame. The oeuvre awaits your arrival at the dll folder ;). Resolutions of 1152p and beyond will result in the best-looking video quality for uploading to YouTube.

However, you can improve your quality even further by changing some of your GLideN64 settings, such as...

Aspect Ratio -> Adjust
Bilinear filtering mode -> Auto
Bilinear filtering mode -> ThreePoint
Copy Color To RDRAM -> SyncMode
Copy Depth To RDRAM -> SoftwareRender
FXAA -> True
HW Lighting -> True
Max level of Anisotropic Filtering -> True
N64 Depth Compare -> True

(Suggestions from https://tasvideos.org/EncodingGuide/VideoDumping#N64)



This is the end of my guide. If something doesn't work or if you have questions, please reach out to me on my discord account at bruceshankle or email me at [email protected]. I'm also on YouTube if you're interested in any of my past or future works.

Hoping this helps other preventionists out there who wish to avoid wasting frames both in the sense of time, and the frames themselves!

- Bruce Shankle IV, December 23rd 2023, GMT-05:00 19:41