I'm wondering if Vinny/Drew could comment on plans for improving archive capture to 1080p for PS4/XB1 captures, at least for Quicklooks anyway? I know live streaming is going to be limited to 720p currently, but hopefully it's possible to run the archives at 1080p. And yeah, I know 1080p/60 is a lot of data... probably would need to be at least 10mbps.

I think I heard mention a while ago that 1080p was going to be difficult/expensive and possibly not supported by their current hardware setup, but I don't think I've heard anything recently. I know they capture 720p/60 today using component video and I wonder how well analog 720p is going to show off next-gen quality... For example are the consoles configured to output only 720p natively or is it being downconverted by the capture hardware? What sort of quality loss might this cause? Any issues with framerate (or lack thereof) are going to be questionable if they aren't running the consoles at the highest settings. I assume most consumers will be running at 1080p.

Anyway I'm sure they've thought a lot more about this than I have, so I hope we can hear about future plans for this stuff. :)

There's a bombcast where they discuss this, Vinny says something like how he'd rather increase the bitrate of what they already put out than just do a pointless, low bitrate 1080p.

Some say that Vinny wanted to stick with 720p, less of a logistical size-wise and compressing nightmare, but all of us have a resounding "no thanks" to that idea. Please.

Especially with games on one machine not always reaching 1080p and the other machine being 1080p 99% of the time. 720p KZ, Knack and the lot is pretty but it's not doing the games visuals a favour. Nor 4mbit bitrates of full quality HD videos. Sadly.

We need like the SAMOLED of video codecs. I acknowledge the software-technical things that stand in the way, but I do not want 720p PS4 and XB1 coverage AT ALL.

What do the new Gamespot videos output at?

Vinny answered this on his tumblr:

"We’re going to stay at 720p for the time being. Will probably move up when it benefits the user experience, but right now it’s hard for some users to even watch quality 720p streams."

720p is fine, if you need 1080p to sell you on a game...

720 is fine. I'm not at all bothered.

If you absolutely need to see a game in 1080p/60fps, there are sites like Gamersyde that specialize in delivering extremely high quality videos.

For the way that GB approaches videos, I don't know that it's really worth it for them to concern themselves with delivering video at that tier.

It's streaming video. They are not going to make "justice" for the games anyway. 720p is fine on GB, there are specialized sites if you want to get better quality video. That's not what GB is about.

I would love to see higher quality videos. When watching stuff like PC quicklooks it really shows how bad 720 is when you are playing in 1080, you can barely read the text in most cases.

@wannabe_hipster: A 720p stream with video compression isn't equal to a 720p game. If you're looking for hardcore visual quality in your videos, streams are never going to cut it. You really need to be downloading videos from places like Gamersyde. I just don't think GB is interested in hosting massive hour long video files at 1080p/60fps.

Nope, it's literally impossible to do that with the thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of hardware and software that Giant Bomb has access to, as well as the high quality upload bandwidth and multitude of video archiving services (both free and paid for) that are afforded them.

Streaming, of course, is a different matter entirely. Archives though, should be as shit hot as possible. I know Vinny was trying to defend their position on how they do things, saying that they use a good amount of bitrate on their 720p videos, the fact is that they do not (for their non-streamed, archived videos). A 4mbps combined rate + what looks to be a pretty old/inefficient compression system is not doing them any favours, they're getting left behind (purely from a technical, video quality standpoint) by stupid nerds on YouTube.

YouTube (an website that handles some an video content, an something) says this, for example:

Bitrates

Standard quality uploads

High quality uploads for creators with enterprise quality internet connections

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en-GB

I just wanna see Jeff's clean faces and big dirty booties in 8mbps 1080ps, really. Please.

I need this.

WRITE YO SICK BUSINESS CASE, V-DAWG! GET DAT 4K UP IN THIS!

@fattony12000: The streaming quality could definitely be refined and improved. Some of the recent changes on GameSpot should eventually migrate over to GB, so that will probably be a good start.

As far as high quality downloads though, it's not a matter of it being something they can't do, it's a matter of it being something that I don't think they're interested in doing. If you look at the recent removal of all downloads from GameSpot, it's clear that executive decisions are being made to move away from downloads.

I'm not sitting in those meetings, but I imagine there's largely two reasons. One, usage stats probably don't show enough people downloading to justify maintaining a huge and constantly growing archive of high quality video downloads. Two, streaming content likely produces more user "engagement" by keeping you on the site, and as a result, it increases the number of ad impressions they can squeeze out of you.

@chaser324: Sorry if I wasn't being clear, but I was not referring to downloadable videos at all, just archived versions hosted on places that deal with video content, such as an The YouTube (I know, I know. Giant Bomb/lots of people have issues and gripes with that place, but every day they don't come hard as a mother fucker [so to speak] into that ecosystem is yet another day of falling behind all the other chumps who have shitty content but know how to market). And yes, I know it's all way more complex than anything and everything.

I just want Giant Bomb to be as big as it can be, touch the most amount of people it can and be in the most number of ps it can possibly be in.

'Cause their content is just the dankest.

Premium videos and the archival/serving of such videos are another matter entirely, I agree. Hosting ALL OF THAT SHIT for the relatively small numbers that access it is a massive pain/cost.

And yes, the video player itself is an important part of the equation too. It's quite lame that a website built on serving video has had a shonky video player for a while now.

@fattony12000: Yeah, agreed on all of that. We all want the video content to be as dank as possible.

www.dankestruns.com

@fattony12000: I don't really feel like moving to California and getting all of the licenses necessary to operate DankestRuns.

Barely anyone I know can stream 720P to begin with, and taking more space on the archives for the benefit of a small subset of users is pointless. Besides higher Bitrate 720P looks just as good.

I'm fine with 720p if it means good bitrate and 60fps. I use the progressive player on the site, and it seems fine to me. The only thing that stood out recently that made me wonder if more bitrate would help this gen was Resogun, but I just watched the official trailer on Youtube, and it's just as problematic in the same spots.