A Lot Of Videos (ALOV)

Bonus Optional Addon: Relay Jump Remaster (LE2)

For Ultrawide Users: ALOV Ultrawide - 21:9

What does this mod do?
ALOV is a project inspired by A Lot of Textures (ALOT) by CreeperLava, that remasters all of the prerendered cutscenes in the Mass Effect Trilogy, that cannot be fixed or upgraded with texture/content mods, to stunning 4K resolution (and in most cases 60fps)

Mass Effect games have 2 types of visuals displayed in them:

1. Real-time rendered visuals, which consist of things like 3D models, textures, menus etc.
2. Cutscenes and loading screens that are just video files due to the technical limitations of rendering them in real-time.

While BioWare claimed to have upscaled/rerendered the prerendered cutscenes to get them to 4K resolution, in most cases this is a white lie at best. The majority of the videos in Legendary Edition are 1620p resolution, but most of them can be downscaled to 1080p or even 720p with no difference in quality whatsoever.

That's where ALOV comes in. Our project uses a far more aggressive and carefully considered upscaling approach. Every single shot of every single video has been analyzed and upscaled with individual settings that produce the best possible result. This meant that on a shot-by-shot basis, the videos were downscaled to their 'true' resolution. upscaled with the best suited AI model, sharpened with manually calibrated AI settings, interpolated to 60fps (in most cases) and then encoded at a much higher bitrate than vanilla. In a few cases, we were able to recreate a video completely from scratch by recreating the scene in-game and recording natively at 4K 60fps. Additionally, several visual bugs such as mesh clipping, rogue UI elements, glitches etc have been corrected.

We are also perhaps the very first mod project to ship videos encoded in the Bink 2 format.

The ALOV project has been featured many outlets such as Eurogamer, IGN, DSOGaming, Overclock3D, DFTG and TheGamer.

How this was done:
Mass Effect Legendary Edition features 601 Bink 2 videos, weighing in at 16GB
After certain videos were omitted (such as a few videos that truly were 4K and were not suited to interpolation, or weren't worth upscaling), the remaining videos were either given the full AI treatment or fully remade in-game.

Downscaling


Upscaling


Sharpening


Interpolation


Post-FX / Correction


In-game Remakes


Delivery


In total, ALOV for LE contains 500 videos weighing in at 23GB

Compatibility:
ALOV for LE is fully compatible with all mods. If you are a mod author who intends to ship videos in your mod, please get in touch as I'd be more than happy to grant you access to our upscale archive, or even help you make the videos themselves.

You must run your game at a minimum of 60fps in order to ensure smooth performance with this mod. If you run the game at 30fps, many
videos will play at half speed, resulting in severe desync issues.

For those who play at resolutions below 4K, ALOV is still recommended as you will see massive improvements over vanilla even at 1080p resolution - especially due to the 60fps interpolation.

For those using Ultrawide (21:9) displays, you should consider downloading the Ultrawide Version of ALOV by MrBeansworthy


Installation:

1. Download the newest version's 7z file
2. Drag into ME3Tweaks Mod Manager
3. Click Apply Mod

Note: ALOV is an exception to normal mod installation rules. It is NOT a texture mod. Nor is it a traditional content mod as it does not contain any game package files. This means you can install ALOV whenever you want. Before textures, after textures, whenever. No need to restore your game to vanilla to install!

Team and Credits:
Project Lead: Audemus
Upscale Runners: Kholdstare (MVP), Mellin, 1x4x9, AstralStorm, marsher, Nihren, NotQuiteRadiant, ormr_kin, Solinus, ClearanceClarence, MrBeansworthy, UltraSun
Ingame Recreations: HenBagle, Sil
ALOV Sanity Check Script: HHL
ALOV Bink 2 Patcher: d00telemental

Special Thanks:

• bosp - For providing the Nextcloud ALOV development and download mirror server.
• BioWare - For the source videos. At least some of them were actually 4K.
• Adobe, Topaz Labs and RAD Tools - For the awesome software needed to make ALOV possible!

Additional thanks to our Discord communities:
Mass Effect Modding https://discord.gg/nN9zxs3
ALOT https://discord.gg/R8FfcTh
ME3Tweaks https://discord.gg/73XVYPz