Nico Nico Douga (also known as Nicovideo or Niconico) is a very popular Japanese video-sharing site. One of its most notable features is a scrolling comment system.
How to register for Nicovideo
You can register for Nicovideo through its English interface.
If the site is currently showing some language other than English, you can change the language option at the bottom of the page. Click on the option beside "言語" (Language) at the bottom of the page and select "English (US)". It is recommended to set "Region" to "Japan".
How to log in to the main site
At http://www.nicovideo.jp, click Login along the top. Then log in with your e-mail address and password. You know you are logged in if you see your username along the top.
Important note about user account levels
There are two user account levels. The one that is used with no charge is "ordinary account"; the other one, "premium account", must be paid (~5$/month or something).
This article is written assuming that you have an ordinary account.
Important note about language mode
Nicovideo uses a form of language segregation for parts of its interface. Details below:
- Videos are common across all language modes.
- Titles and description text are common across all modes unless they are specified to be different via "translation" in which case they are mode-specific.
- The category tag (i.e. "ゲーム" or "Games") is common; all other tags are mode-specific.
- Uploader comments made through the uploader module are common across all modes.
- User comments are mode-specific.
Thus, if you are using Japanese mode, you will get all comments and tags made on the Japanese side. If you use English mode, you will get comments and tags made on the English side, of which there are (of the time of writing) next to none.
You must use Japanese mode if you wish to interact with and see comments from the Japanese Nicovideo community.
The following is written with the assumption that all videos have been uploaded in a Japanese-oriented manner.
How to play a video
You must be logged in to play videos directly from nicovideo.jp. However, there are offsite viewing sites such as nicozon.net.
To play a video, click the link to a video page. Wait for it to load, then click the play button.
Occasionally, playback will fail, and the video will be black. This happens occasionally and at random. If playback fails on nicovideo.jp, then a white pop-up will appear as well.
If this happens, just wait for a while, and hopefully it will work later.
Nicovideo also has a low-quality mode during busy times. The interface will inform you when this occurs.
How to turn off scrolling comments
If the scrolling comments bother you, as it might when you first watch Nicovideo videos, you can turn them off by clicking the icon with the "..." in the bottom right corner of the video.
Note: If you are on the main site in English mode, there is probably no problem.
How to search for video game TASes
Video game TASes show up very often on Nicovideo. In fact there is even a video series dedicated to tracking Nicovideo ranking of TAS videos for each month.
List of recently uploaded TASes
If you just want to see a list of recent TASes uploaded there, just enter "TAS" in the search bar and click "Search". Change the search sort (option menu below the search bar and to the left) to "Newest Uploaded".
Finding a TAS for a particular game
If you want to find an upload for a TAS of a particular game then do the following:
- Find the name of the Japanese version of the game you are looking for. Hint: Use Wikipedia.
- If the game does not have a Japanese version, then put the English name and hope for the best. Most likely there is no result.
- Copy the Japanese name into the search bar. If the name has a title and a subtitle, avoid copying the subtitle, because the uploader might have used only the short name. Make "TAS" another search term along with it.
- Click "Search" (to the right of the search bar).
- It will give you some results, hopefully. Enjoy!
For example, let's say I want to search for a TAS of "E.V.O. Search for Eden".
- First, I go to Wikipedia and search for E.V.O. Search for Eden. The Wikipedia page for that game tells me that the Japanese name for "E.V.O.: Search for Eden" is 46億年物語 はるかなるエデンへ.
- If for some reason the page does not give the Japanese name, then search the language links on the left margin for 日本語 (Japanese). Click on it, and most likely the page name is the title of the J version.
- Then I go to nicovideo.jp. In the search bar, I type "TAS " and copy and paste ４６億年物語 so the search bar says "TAS ４６億年物語".
- Then I click Search to the right of the search bar, and nicovideo.jp returns someone's upload of the the current publication. Note that due to upload restrictions, it is broken into two parts.
It is not guaranteed that the search will return any TASes. If the game is obscure, it probably doesn't have a TAS uploaded there. If the game does not have a Japanese version and it does not have a cult following in the Japanese video game community, then almost certainly it will not have a TAS there.
Interest in unknown or obscure game covered by video
If you come across a TAS for some game that you don't know, you can try to find the English or romanized name.
The game name is most likely the blurb of text at the beginning of the title, after "【TAS】" if that is at the beginning.
Copy the game title, paste it into a search engine's search bar, and search for it. Locate any link with a Wikipedia page. If it is a ja.wikipedia page, check the left margin for language links and look for "English". If you are lucky, you will get the English name.
If the above doesn't work, try the same thing on the first tag that isn't "TAS" or "ゲーム" (Game). You must be in Japanese mode to see the tags.
If the above still doesn't work, you can ask someone who is familiar with Japanese, even remotely. Some games are obscure to Western audiences and have no easily accessible English name.
Uploading to Nicovideo
Before going on, note the following restrictions on upload:
If uploading an MP4 file:
- H.264 / AVC, Baseline profile, Main profile, High profile
- 1920x1080: 12MBps or more.
- 1280x720: 6MBps or more.
- 540p or less: 2MBps or more.
For ordinary accounts:
- Each account is limited to 3GB of upload a video.
- A Total of 50 videos can be uploaded to the site, for a single account.
(Premium accounts get Unlimited amount of videos to upload, 8GB per account and the MP4 restrictions do not apply. Global 100MiB restriction still applies in all cases.)
Since MP4, MKV and AVI are containers with hardly any difference in resulting filesize, you should upload as MKV or AVI.
How to upload
Click "Upload" along the top bar.
In the browse bar, browse the movie file. Then click the black "Upload Video" button below. It will ask you if you are sure; click OK. Then wait.
If the upload succeeds, the first thing you should see is three screenshots. This is what you do:
- You can click "Generate Random Thumbnail" to generate random thumbnails. You can also generate thumbnails by specifying a time. To do that, click on the link below the button ("Time and Thumbnails". Enter the time (minutes, seconds, milliseconds) and click on "Create by Specifying Time", and Nicovideo will try to retrieve a screenshot close to that time. Choose a screenshot, then continue.
- Beside "Video Title", enter a movie title. Title is limited to 100 bytes in UTF-8 (33 Japanese characters). There is an indicator (right above the text box) that will tell you if you go over the size limit. See TAS upload conventions below.
- Beside "Video Description", enter a movie description. Description is limited to 1000 bytes in UTF-8 (333 Japanese characters). See TAS upload conventions below.
- You are permitted to link to any other Nicovideo movie using its sm code, which is the code at the end of its URL. For example, if a movie has http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm17517479 as a URL, then its sm code is sm17517479. So you only need to put sm17517479 to link to it.
- You can also link to a time in the current movie (the one you're uploading) using #mm:ss. For example, #1:45 links to 1:45 in the movie.
- You can use the supported tags listed below if you wish. For example, "<br>" to make a line break. (This is a recent addition; it was formerly not allowed for ordinary accounts.)
- For "Category Tag", select "Games" or whatever you want as a category tag, including no tag at all.
- Leave the "Tag" field blank for now. (Note: If you are in English mode, any tags you enter here will only show on the English side. You must manually enter the tags on the Japanese side if you do it this way. If you are in Japanese mode, tags entered here will go directly to the Japanese side.)
- For "Privacy Settings", you can set the movie to "Private" if you want to see whether your upload worked first. To set it public later, edit the movie (see below) and set it to "Public". Be aware that if you set the movie private for too long before setting it to public, it will generally reduce the number of views it will get.
- When you are done, click the black button at the bottom ("Upload now!") (Note: "Upload now!" refers to this form, not to the video, which is already uploaded and encoding). If it doesn't work, check that you have entered the title and description without going over the size limit. It will preview what you have entered; click OK.
- Be aware that the movie will not appear on your video page right away. It must encode the video completely, then register video information before it will show.
- If you accidentally lose access to the video information form, the site will allow you to access it (through "Menu -> My Uploads" on the top right) once it finishes encoding the video.
- Once your upload is complete, view your uploaded video. Change the language at bottom of page to 日本語 (Japanese). You are now in Japanese mode. Scroll back up. Below 動画説明 (movie description) and beside the 登録タグ (registered tags) icon, click 【編集】 (edit). Enter any tag you want in the text field and click 登録 (register). Do this until you have all the tags you want. Click ★ロックを設定 on any tag to lock it; ロックを解除 to unlock it, 解除 to delete it. You can only lock up to 4 tags (5 if you delete the category tag). Each video has up to 10 tags, at least 5 of which any Nicovideo user can change by deleting and adding. You can change back to English mode when you are done. See TAS upload conventions below.
TAS upload conventions
- The title should have "TAS", game name, and goals if any, at the very least. Most people put "【TAS】" (note the unicode characters) but this is not strictly necessary as long as you put "TAS". If there is a Japanese name for the game, you must use that as the name (hint: use google and wikipedia).
- The description should have author name and rerecord count. Author name is clearly marked with 制作 or 製作者, and rerecord count with 追記 or 追記回数.
- If there are multiple parts, the description of the current part should link to at least the first part, the part before, and the part after.
- You are permitted to link to any other Nicovideo movie using its sm code, which is the code at the end of its URL. For example, if a movie has http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm17517479 as a URL, then its sm code is sm17517479. So you only need to put sm17517479 to link to it.
- If there are any related TASes on Nicovideo (such as an older run), the description should link to them.
- If the TAS is from tasvideos.org, there should be a tasvideos.org link to the submission or movie as well.
- The movie should have, as tags, "TAS" and some text identifying the game or its series (usually game name is good). This must be done on the Japanese side (see above). Note that if your title and description is properly done, and the game is not obscure, this step is technically optional, since Nicovideo users will find the video and put those tags anyway. But it is probably not a good idea to rely on that.
For example, http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm16962634 :
Title:
【TAS】ロックマンX5 "X, 100%" in 59:10.1 (1/2)
Description:
合計プレイタイムでsm15472807から1分25秒ほど更新されています。 ZERO(100%)→sm15336314 part2 sm16962743 制作: Bernka氏 追記: 43590回 ! #3454: Bernka's PSX Mega Man X5 "X, 100%" in 59:10.10
Tags:
ゲーム TAS ロックマン ロックマンTASリンク ...
How to edit movie and check stats
Go to http://www.nicovideo.jp/my/video to see your videos. Alternatively, go to "Menu -> My Uploads"
You can edit things related to the movie by clicking "Edit" beside the movie you want to edit after mousing over it.
- Select "Change Video Details" to change topic, description, or public settings.
- Select "Edit Uploader Comments" to add or edit comments as an uploader.
- Select "Edit Comments" to make anyone's comments invisible, including your own. Hopefully you will need no reason to do this.
- Select "Delete Video" to delete video. Don't do this unless you have a good reason to, or if no one watched the movie except you.
Nicovideo last edited by adelikat on 2023/8/31 02:09
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