Replay Mod Forums

I tried my first attempt at making a small trailer from an event we had months ago, I loaded up the 2 hour recording, and after waiting an eternity for it to scan ahead, I started putting some markers in, I went moved the playhead back only 2 mins and the plugin crashed. After moving my minecraft to the standalone java and giving it 4GB ram I tried it again, and moving the playhead backwards takes absolutely forever, its barley usable.
If you focosed entirely on making the performance for using the timeline better, so its instant like using a video editor many more people would use this plugin, it such a shame such an amazing plugin is being hindered by such a performance issue.

I cant even trim it down, when I go to the "editor" it only lists my recordings from 2015, I cant scroll to any others, that editor needs to have "in" and "out" points like a video editor instead of putting in timestamps.

Is there any way to make the timeline dragging instant? Like disabling things being show in-game, and then once all the adding of markers etc is added then render it out with full shaders etc.

The Replay file itself is not a "frame by frame" record of the session. Replay does not keep each moment in time as a complete snapshot of the world status.

The Replay file is a record of the *changes* that occur to the game session as they happened. Thus, to skip to a later part of the timeline *requires* Replay to *literally* play through all the changes until it reaches the time point you want to see.

It's more like following a recipe than moving a play head. To skip to the cake you still have to go through all the steps adding and mixing the ingredients.

This means that effectively *you can only go forwards*. If you want to "go backwards" Replay has to start again from the beginning of the session and go forward to the point you selected.

The reason Replay files have to work this way is because of the amount of data generated.

If you bear these issues in mind, and acknowledge that Replay is a totally different environment to a video or audio editor, you'll find it a lot easier to work with.

It makes it impossible to scroll through the footage to set key points, it literally makes it unusable, which makes the plugin completely unusable as that's why people are recording in the first place, its such a massive, massive shame there is such a major flaw.
Im sure its possible to do in a better way, I wouldn't know how tho.

Why is this not the main focus for all the developers? it boggles my mind, this could be such an amazing plugin.

"It makes it impossible to scroll through the footage to set key points, it literally makes it unusable, which makes the plugin completely unusable as that's why people are recording in the first place, its such a massive, massive shame there is such a major flaw."
No, it's not impossible, people have done it before. It may however be inconvenient.

"Im sure its possible to do in a better way, I wouldn't know how tho."
Great. I wish programming was this easy.
I disagree btw. And I've spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours working on this mod.

"Why is this not the main focus for all the developers? it boggles my mind, this could be such an amazing plugin."
Have you ever considered that none of us (that's a mere two people btw):
- are regularily using the ReplayMod to make videos ourselves
- are getting paid to work on it (I'd be happy if you changed that, I doubt you will though)
- have things which we'd much more prefer to spend our spare time on than working on something which some people tell us is "completely unusable"

Some side notes:
- This thread and its replies are probably highly relevant
- Saying that the game crashes without providing a crash log is almost always completely useless, also: read the relevant sticky posts
- The RM is not a "plugin", it's a "modification" (short: "mod"). There are technical and practical differences.
- The editor does support selecting markers instead of timestamps
- I've added the replay selection issue in the editor to the bug tracker

Yup, sure that's a good reply to give yourself piece of mind to not fix it, but nevertheless it doesn't fix the performance issue hindering the entire "mod".

I too like bullet points to get across facts (your custom made forum software doesn't have proper bullet points in your WYSIWYG Editor, may I suggest https://www.tiny.cloud/)

- Maybe people would donate if they could use it? Fixing the performance scrolling footage would mean its usable.
- I cant even export video, it just flickers. Here you go, I just made this 10 mins ago, trying to test it again https://streamable.com/1nwge
- I also spent HOURS battling the performance issues to try and learn your use of setting time keys, and position keys, only to render it out and it comes out all flickery after what would be hours rendering.
- I come back a day later to see if I can change the settings in the render to fix the flickers and ALL of the hours setting the key's have just vanished, they were not saved!!! After battling the performance of scrolling footage.
- Do you expect new users to be able to Learn your mod if they cant use it? I tried it years ago when I signed up here, but couldn't understand it at first because I learn from doing things, which is impossible if you cant even scroll through the footage to set key points, so anyone new that uses this will inevitably just give up.
- I cant view 95% of my old footage as its not backwards compatible with the latest minecraft.
- If you are limited by using the minecraft client as an editor, why not look at other pre existing solutions? Find a way to import that data into an existing 3D application like Blender or something.

"give yourself piece of mind to not fix it"
You seem to be under the impression that I am in any way obligated to fix this, so I'll just be very clear: Neither am I obligated to fixing this, nor do I (currently) have any personal interest in doing so.

"- Maybe people would donate if they could use it? Fixing the performance scrolling footage would mean its usable."
I'm not going to do work in the hopes of maybe getting money at some point in the undetermined future when others are offering me substantially more money for concrete tasks with clearly stated goals.
So, if you want me to do something specific, you'll either have to offer me a sufficient sum of money or convince me that either I need it myself or it'll be lots of fun to do.

"- I cant even export video, it just flickers."
That's Optifine. Either remove it or downgrade to D3. Optifine is constantly breaking stuff with almost any minor update. I'm just as sick of it as most users of the RM are which is why I've just opted to tell people to dowgrade instead of spending days figuring out what changed after every Optifine update.
This also isn't the first time I've mentioned that on the forum. And yes, I'm aware that the search functionality is horrible which is why I'm generally not blaming people when they open a new thread with that issue.

"- I also spent HOURS battling the performance issues to try and learn your use of setting time keys, and position keys, only to render it out and it comes out all flickery after what would be hours rendering."
See above.

"- I come back a day later to see if I can change the settings in the render to fix the flickers and ALL of the hours setting the key's have just vanished, they were not saved!!! After battling the performance of scrolling footage."
I'm gonna guess that you just quit MC without saving the keyframes. In that case, yes ofc they were not saved. Have you RTFM?
And yes, I do agree that the mod should probably always save keyframes in the background to prevent them being lost when it crashes which is why that's on the TODO list.

"- Do you expect new users to be able to Learn your mod if they cant use it? I tried it years ago when I signed up here, but couldn't understand it at first because I learn from doing things, which is impossible if you cant even scroll through the footage to set key points, so anyone new that uses this will inevitably just give up."
Want the honest answer? No, I really don't care about it. My life is far better off if I only have to deal with people who are capable of using the mod despite its flaws.

"- I cant view 95% of my old footage as its not backwards compatible with the latest minecraft."
That just seems wrong. We're using the ViaVersion library to allow old (unmodded) replays to be loaded on newer Minecraft versions and from my automated testing, about 4500 of the 5000 replays uploaded the ReplayCenter back then were working just fine.
If you're using other third-party mods which add content to the game, then get used to it. Modding in Minecraft is generally not a thing which tends to be backwards compatible.
Also, feel free to yell at Mojang (not that that would get you anywhere). Updating to new MC versions is generally not a fun or rewarding experience anyway and I'd rather not do it.

"- If you are limited by using the minecraft client as an editor, why not look at other pre existing solutions? Find a way to import that data into an existing 3D application like Blender or something."
Interesting idea, I actually did try to do something like that (rendering to an animation in Blender instead of a video) a few months (might even be a year) ago because I thought it'd be fun to do. Unfortunetally it turned out that the result was actually unusable with blender using up to 16GB of ram just to load as little as 5 seconds of animation. I might even pick that one back up if anyone can tell me if there's a more efficient way to store a linearly interpolated value for object positions in the .blend file than fcurves and some nice algorithm to convert multiple unconnected sets of verticies into a single object with multiple shapekeys without having blender's ram usage explode.
I might also go back to re-using parts of that code and combining it with the quick mode I described in the thread I linked in my previous reply. I.e. you'd be able to convert a trimmed down version of the replay into a blender project, then setup camera paths, etc. and then import those back into the mod for rendering.

If I might contribute a point or two here:

* Replay Mod is usable. YouTubers like Grian, MumboJumbo, Xisumavoid, Falsesymmetry, ImpulseSV, SkizzlemanMC, Shannooty, Scriptuz, Jollyjake13 and many many others are able to use Replay Mod to create epic visuals. Replay Mod is only unusable insofar as you expect it to conform to your preconception about how you should be able to use it. If you get into a car expecting to control it via an xbox controller, you are going to find it 'unusable'.

* You write of a "fundamental flaw" in the software as if you honestly believe the authors have never noticed in all their years developing the code. I can assure you that the authors are well aware of the limitations and failings of the code. That they are not working solely to correct this flaw illustrates the difference between amateur and commercial development. Mojang had an entire development team, backed by the resources of Microsoft no less, spend over a year to correct the fundamental "block limit" flaw in Minecraft. Replay Mod is written and maintained by a pair of volunteers who do this in their spare time backed by the resources of no-one but themselves. I feel confident in guessing that Replay Mod *only* exists because they realised that it *could* be done, and done in the algorithmic manner that you complain is fundamentally flawed.

* Replay Mod *is* an amazing piece of kit. If you think you can do better, learn to write code. If you think you can solve their problems, learn to write code. Personally I'm fluent in four programming languages and am familiar with many more; I have multiple products to market and have been writing code since 1983 - just so you know I'm not speaking from a place of ignorance. In case you hadn't realised, Replay Mod is *not* meant to replace software like OBS Studio, Premier Pro or Vega for making Minecraft videos. It is a completely different animal that complements and enhances the typical gameplay/recording paradigm.

* Check your privilege. The software provides *unique* functionality at a cost to the user of almost *nothing* except that you learn to use it the way it needs to be used. Yet you seem to feel that you are entitled to harangue the authors as if you were not only a paying customer but in the position of commissioning the software. Actually that is not true: I have dealt with customers commissioning software for tens of millions of dollars and none of them behaved anything like this.