• For NES, SNES, and SGB, the resolution must be 256x224 or 256x240 (or 512x448 in the case of the SNES HiRes mode).
• For GB/CGB/GG, the resolution must be 160x144.
• For GBA, the resolution must be 240x160.
• For DS, the resolution must be 256x192 per screen.
• For SMS, the resolution must be 256x192.
• For Genesis, the resolution must be 320x224, 320x240, 256x224 or 256x240 (the latter two are only for games that use the low resolution mode for the entirety of them, such as Shining Force).
• For N64/PSX, the resolution can be 320x240 or greater (see below).

Some consoles (currently, Genesis, PSX and DOS) display content at multiple resolutions. In this case, an exception is allowed to allow content to be scaled either to the resolution most commonly used in the run (ensuring that the video content most often seen is free of scaling artifacts) or to the largest width and height of all present video content (such that no data is lost in scaling).

If an emulator is not capable of producing output that matches pixels on the actual emulated system 1:1, then this requirement is relaxed (example Mupen, Dolphin).

For those consoles which are intended to be displayed on a TV or on CRT monitors, the video must specify the correct display aspect ratio (often 4:3), as the video output for those consoles is normally displayed at that aspect ratio. Handhelds or other consoles not intended for TV/CRT display don't need AR correction, because their resolution is always fixed to match the display matrix pixel-for-pixel without any kind of stretching involved; thus, any AR that doesn't match the native resolution will distort the image.

Logos are subject to approval by the senior publisher.

Some examples of currently-in-use logos can be seen at SiteHistory/EncoderLogos.

For a logo creation guide, see Encoding Guide/Logo.

1. What game is being played in the movie
2. Who created (played) the movie
3. The length of the movie, directly derived from the number of frames
4. The rerecord count
5. A pointer to this website (https://TASVideos.org/)
   • Please be careful to not make typing errors in the address. A simple mistake to happen is adding www into the address, don't make this mistake.
6. A mention that the movie is tool-assisted.

The total duration of the subtitles should be approximately 10 seconds, divided into two parts of five seconds as follows:

The first part:

  Title in hh:mm:ss.ss
  by PlayerName
  Rerecord count: number

  This is a tool-assisted recording.
  For details, visit https://TASVideos.org/

The subtitles should appear within the movie once gameplay has started, while not blocking any relevant parts of gameplay. The rational for this is to ensure that full segments of gameplay ripped from an encode will still show the information described above. Therefore, subtitles should appear after any intro scenes.

If a run has multiple fully independent segments, there should be subtitles near the beginning of each of them. As an example, Super Metroid which has Ceres Station and Planet Zebes segments, subtitles should appear close to the start of both of those. This only applies to games which feature an often ignored intro level or similar. In order to determine the need for additional subtitles, use your judgment to decide if realistically people who have only seen the latter segment(s) of a game would believe they've seen all the necessary gameplay.

For very long runs, it is also advisable to add more subtitles throughout.

• Constant rate factor 20 (--crf 20) is considered the site standard for video quality; it is recommended unless this provides an unacceptably large bitrate.
  • Good average bitrates vary between 140-250 kbit/s for NES, SMS or Game Boy games and 200-600 kbit/s for other consoles, depending on the video content. Some Genesis games and most N64 and PSX games may exceed this.
  • Using CRF 16 is really recommended in 3D N64 games, since at CRF 20, the encode gets a lot of artifacts and it could be unappealing to the viewers.
  • If you are aiming for a specific bit-rate, use multi-pass encoding. It nearly always improves the quality-to-size ratio.
• Use the best motion detection settings you can afford. Our expert encoders normally use exhaustive searches (esa or tesa) with range settings around 32 (some encodes have used up to 64 for tougher to encode games where the file size needs to be crunched down even further to keep inside the site's size-to-length ratio limit). This slows down the encoding speed but the size and quality benefits are very much worth it.
• Use 15 or 16 reference frames (--ref).
• Use maximum subpixel refinement setting if your game uses subpixel motion (N64 uses always, SNES sometimes, NES never). If it doesn't, you don't need to use the maximum setting, though, again, the quality and size benefits are usually worth it if you don't mind slowing down the encoding speed.
• Use bframes, which almost always reduce video size.
• Do not set the keyint value too high, as this reduces the ability to seek in the video and inconveniences viewers. The default is 250; values higher than 600 are discouraged. Most published encodes use either 600 or 300.
• Do not use "noise reduction". Emulators do not simulate antenna or tape signal degradation, so there's no point in trying to reduce it.
• Use duplicate frame removal (by means such as AVISynth's DeDup plugin or sgrunt's dedup.c filter); this virtually always reduces file size at no cost in quality.

For some data on tuning x264's more relevant settings, see this thread.

• Use the maximum anti-aliasing setting.
• Use the maximum full-screen anti-aliasing setting (FSAA).
• Use the maximum anisotropic filtering setting.
• Ensure that in your display card settings, there is no color-correction/skew curve active.
• Record the movie at a high resolution (such as 1280x960), then downscale it to target resolution with a lanczos or bilinear (only when scaling to half the original resolution, for instance 1280x960->640x480) scaler before or when encoding it. Yes, it will drastically slow down the sampling, but the quality difference is worth it.
  • When capturing at higher resolutions, use integer ratios so that the image won't be unnecessarily blurred upon downscaling. For example, N64's native resolution is 320x240, so capture at 640x480, 960x720, or 1280x960, and so on.

For more info and examples on antialiasing settings, see this thread.