Skip to content

Switch Frame Tap v0.6.0 - smaller streams and recordings

Choose a tag to compare

@TomasUribe TomasUribe released this 30 Sep 16:25
· 7 commits to master since this release

Smaller streams and recordings. About 15-20% fewer bits at the same picture quality.

What's new (Switch side)

  • P frames (the frames between keyframes) are now coded at a slightly lower quality step than keyframes (QP 22 instead of 20 at High), as software encoders do. The difference isn't visible, and they take noticeably fewer bits.
  • A better motion search: the encoder now starts from where each part of the picture moved in the previous frame, so fast motion is predicted more often instead of being coded from scratch.
  • Measured in a 1080p Mario Kart 8 Deluxe race: about 80 Mbps instead of about 100. A recording from the PC viewer at High quality is about 600 MB a minute instead of 650-750.
  • The manager's Quality setting now says what each level costs: Medium is about half of High, Low about a third.

We also checked the Switch's encoder against x264 at the same quality setting on the same frames: x264 needs about 89% of the bits, so the encoder was never badly tuned. The remaining size is simply the price of near-lossless 1080p60. A bitrate cap will come with the network (dock) streaming work, where it's actually needed.

Updating: unzip switch-frame-tap-0.6.0-switch.zip over the SD card root and reboot (settings and screenshots are kept). The viewers haven't changed since v0.5.0.