Yet strangely, all the cut scenes appear to use in-game resources. Barring the fried eggs. Because that's important. Like, really important.

I noticed some of the compression artifacts in a couple of the cut scenes, which struck me as being odd, almost to the point where I wasn't quite sure whether it was pre-rendered or not. There was only one sequence in the end that had particularly bad compression artifacts that were the telling sign that pre-rendered video was used sparingly. Of course 90% of the cut scenes aren't, most of which can be confirmed by Snake's octocamo.

Don't know, almost certainly, because I have been able to every single time I tried. In that cutscene I had not adjusted my octocamo before

^ Bolded. You know what that means, don't you? It's not strange at all.

Those cutscenes were probably rendered by the same engine which is used in the game, but they would have a low framerate if they were calculated in real-time. Meaning that a PS3 at Konami probably rendered them and the result was the FMV which is later played in the game.

The important question then is, why didn't they compress the video a bit better to eliminate compression artifacts? Oh well, it's not like most people would notice, but it does make me wonder why prioritising uncompressed audio over well compressed video.

they are all in-game

All ingame, and don't use jpgs to prove posts about compression artifacts.

I can think of a few reasons actually. Maintain continuity in visuals rather than have a noticeable shift. The cutscenes with identifiable artifacts were probably among the last resources to be encoded into the game. From what I was able to tell by watching the production video, they were literally doing revisions down to the last week just prior to burning the master copies.

As for doing the pre-render on a PS3 dev kit, unlikely. They don't run any faster than consumer models as they share the same basic hardware components.

I was originally under the impression that all of the cut scenes were supposed to be prerendered so that they could be encoded at a full 1920x1080 resolution, but as upscaling was used on all resources, both in game generated and pre-rendered, no differences were present. Of course pre-rendered wouldn't have worked with scenes involving user controlled flashbacks and with Snake wearing octocamo even though the game never reflects what weapon the player had him using last. It's always either the M1911 or the M4.

You really have to go through most of the video with a magnifying glass to notice the shifts; most people won't even be aware of the changes which means the transitions were by in large smooth enough. I was scrutinizing blank fields, skies, etc. and the only time it was clearly evident was a scene near the very end when the game reverted into a movie.

It was not supposed to be proof, that's why I asked for the opinion of more people who have the game. Seeing as even folks who have the game are saying some of the cutscenes have compression artifacts, that tells me it's very likely they're right. It's not like real time graphics have anything resembling those defects...

There's no problem with rendering FMVs on dev-kits no matter how slow they are. After all, you don't need to do the rendering in real time as you're just recording it for later use (the same way any CG movie is made).

The rest of your post makes sense though.

I can only recall that one instance where the flag went up. Truth be told, I've only watched the ending once, so I could probably go back and double check.

I could go through the Act III conclusion cut scene again, but it was hardly obvious using the tried and true methods of visual detection. I can only assume some of those cuts were pre-rendered simply due to the amount of on screen activity, objects, characters, effects, etc. with no change in frame rate.

Amen, brother. I can't believe nobody else pointed out the irony of using a heavily compressed image format to demonstrate compression artifacts in the source material. And why the red ring? There are compression artifacts visible across the whole image.