MAME Movie Maker released

[sWampy]

How about an option for a movies directory, so listgen can no not to add existing movies to the batchfile?

[Buddabing]

How about an option for a movies directory, so listgen can no not to add existing movies to the batchfile?

I would rather modify the makemovies.bat file:
if not exist foo.avi batch.bat foo 320x240, etc.

or I could modify batch.bat

if exist %1.avi exit (or whatever batch files do)

I'll make the change, I'm going to release new code tomorrow to cover the changes we discussed today.

[Silver]

This is a bit of a not-that-important request, but I was wondering if there is any way on controlling a programs focus (at launch) from a Batch file?

i.e Ideally I'd like the batch to launch mame/virtualdub minimised so that I don't have windows popping up in the foreground as I'm working. I'm not sure this is possible from batch, it may require a program (I normally launch stuff minimised from VB)

[sWampy]

How about an option for a movies directory, so listgen can no not to add existing movies to the batchfile?

I would rather modify the makemovies.bat file:
if not exist foo.avi batch.bat foo 320x240, etc.

or I could modify batch.bat

if exist %1.avi exit (or whatever batch files do)

I'll make the change, I'm going to release new code tomorrow to cover the changes we discussed today.

I had added it to the batch file, just figured at some point it might be better in the program that produced the batch files, where you could just edit one ini file, and also sometime listgen could get a feature that tracks driver changes, so if a drivers status changed from colors pelimanary to working, listgen could add it to the list, otherwise it would leave the existing one.  Would also be nice for new/improved game list  in frontends.

[Silver]

Ok google answered it for me....

in the batch:

start /min /wait mame......
start /min /wait virtualdub.exe ......

seems to work nicely - nothing pops up (unless it errors) so it all happens in the background! If you wish you can set priority of each app too. Start /? for the full info.

NB in Vdub, you may have to open it manualy and de-select "show status window" in the options menu before use. It remembers this setting once set.....

[BuZz880]

I use:

if exist %1.avi goto filefound

in batch.bat with no problems whatsoever and I think its nice because it makes it easier for those using external apps/sources to make their own makemovies.bat

[Buddabing]

I was thinking that if a change is detected, the program could copy the current png and overwrite all the previous pngs. That way, no audio fudge factor would be required.

That would be perfect.

I would like to test this code. Are there any non-CHD games that have this issue? I don't think I have carnevil.chd, and I know I don't have the cryptklr rom.

[BuZz880]

try this one, i'll give you more later

qbtrkts

[BuZz880]

here's another that doesn't give the -100 error but complains something about the resolution of one png doesn't match the specified resolution.

shngmtk


These are others; some with the -100 error some with other errors that to me seemed related to resolution unfortunately I was only logging the rom name at that point and not the specific errors.  You will notice a few chd's on this list too.

teamqb
videopin
warlords
anteatg
caterplr
cbaj
griffon
hvnsgate
hyperdriv
psyforce
psyfrcex
raystorm

[Buddabing]

I've made a new release. Get it here (EDIT: removed link)
Here's what has changed:

- ESC stops MAME but still creates movie
- new batch.bat is quieter and does not recreate already existing movies
- ListGen now parses the listxml data if history.dat is present
- detect resolution change (I hacked in test code for testing)
- detect weird resolutions. I tested on missile, wcbowl, and capbowl.

Regards,
Buddabing

[Popcorrin]

I would just like to say that mame moviemaker rocks!!
Thanks to Buddabing and all involved.

[Trimoor]

I would just like to say that mame moviemaker rocks!!
Thanks to Buddabing and all involved.

I'm glad to see my efforts were appreciated. (Even if the only thing I did was come up with the idea )

[sWampy]

Something really strange is going on with my windows mce 2k5 machine, the ones encoded with xvid look washed out then played back.  The blacks are grey, and everything else looks washed out.  Should I need anything for proper playback other than the xvid codec from xvid.org?   Other than that, I'm up to encoding D's.

[Buddabing]

Something really strange is going on with my windows mce 2k5 machine, the ones encoded with xvid look washed out then played back.  The blacks are grey, and everything else looks washed out.  Should I need anything for proper playback other than the xvid codec from xvid.org?   Other than that, I'm up to encoding D's.

Unforrtunately, I don't have a clue, Silver will have to answer that. All I can suggest is to try one of the other supported codecs, Divx (-movievideo 1) or Cvid (-movievideo 2)

[sWampy]

Unforrtunately, I don't have a clue, Silver will have to answer that. All I can suggest is to try one of the other supported codecs, Divx (-movievideo 1) or Cvid (-movievideo 2)

The other codecs play fine, it's so strange, I was hoping someone would have seen it before.  The xvid ones play fine on other computers.   I've tried reinstalling media player 10, xvid, video card drivers (nvidia geforce 5600). 

[BuZz880]

Not sure how close to 100% you guys want to get this thing it definitely works very well as-is.

Keep in mind my list that I am working with for testing so far includes only lightgun games, trackball games, games newly added since .80 and games that support 3 or more players plus a few stragglers that wouldn't be there if I tightened up the sql a bit.  Next phase I will be trying to do my favorites list and some of the more popular games. 


That said, I still get the -100 error on these:
anteatg
caterplr
griffon
qbtrktst
vaportrx
slither
teamqb
videopin
warlords

and a couple minutes of blank screen but full sound with these:
cbaj
shngmtkb (this is mahjong or something so i doubt anyone will care too much)

[BuZz880]

Far less likely to get the above mentioned errors on movievideo 2 rather than 3 though this about doubles the file sizes.

[Silver]

The other codecs play fine, it's so strange, I was hoping someone would have seen it before.  The xvid ones play fine on other computers.   I've tried reinstalling media player 10, xvid, video card drivers (nvidia geforce 5600). 

If the xvid avis made on YOUR computer playback fine on someone elses computer - then obviously they are being made correctly, then it is a playback issue:

1) Check the colour depth of your desktop - try setting it to 32bit if it is lower. It sounds like you do not have enough colours available to playback.

2) Open the Xvid Decoder options (should be in start menu after installing Xvid) and make sure Film effect is off (although should not look like you are saying)

3) Goto display properties and turn off hardware acceleration, then try playback.

If none of the above work, or avis made on your pc do NOT play back fine on ANOTHER pc, then open the XVID encoder options and click on "set defaults" and try again. The code includded in the Vdub script should actually override these anyway, but its possible we missed something.

[Silver]

That said, I still get the -100 error on these:
anteatg
caterplr
griffon
qbtrktst
vaportrx
slither
teamqb
videopin
warlords

and a couple minutes of blank screen but full sound with these:
cbaj
shngmtkb (this is mahjong or something so i doubt anyone will care too much)

I'll look into these. Annoyingly sounds like another weird resolution that will need to be added to the workaround.

[Silver]

That said, I still get the -100 error on these:
anteatg
caterplr
griffon
qbtrktst
vaportrx
slither
teamqb
videopin
warlords

and a couple minutes of blank screen but full sound with these:
cbaj
shngmtkb (this is mahjong or something so i doubt anyone will care too much)

@BuZz880
All of these - apart from vaportrx - work perfectly 1st time for me using Buddabings most recent, a few posts up. Try opening virtualdub, opening the Xvid video compression, clicking on Set defaults and then retrying...

If they still don't work, post with more info here - or even zip all the pngs for a game that does not work - along with the .vdb file - and email them to me: Silver@silverfoxy.plus.com

VaporTrx is a resolution problem.

@Buddabing
 VaporTrx creates PNGs at 511x256. The 'capbowl' fix will work for this one.

On this note (geeky tech bit coming up) - the odd-resolution error is to do with MPEG4 compression (not just Xvid) and due to Macroblock pixel sizes. Xvid appears to 'deal' with sizes down to 2x2, which basically means it does not seem to like resolutions that are not divisible by 2 (all the ones that fail so far have an odd number of pixels in x or y, and the fix supplied simply knocks one pixel off x or y to make it even.) I'd like to test this more, but you may prefer to simply check for an Even number of pixels and adjust if they are odd - this would future-proof the fix I believe.

If that does not make sense, I'll supply more info and examples.....
Note you have to go by the size of png. Vaportrx reports that it is 512x400 size, but the pngs are all 511x256......

[Buddabing]

That said, I still get the -100 error on these:
anteatg
caterplr
griffon
qbtrktst
vaportrx
slither
teamqb
videopin
warlords

and a couple minutes of blank screen but full sound with these:
cbaj
shngmtkb (this is mahjong or something so i doubt anyone will care too much)

@BuZz880
All of these - apart from vaportrx - work perfectly 1st time for me using Buddabings most recent, a few posts up. Try opening virtualdub, opening the Xvid video compression, clicking on Set defaults and then retrying...

If they still don't work, post with more info here - or even zip all the pngs for a game that does not work - along with the .vdb file - and email them to me: Silver@silverfoxy.plus.com

VaporTrx is a resolution problem.

@Buddabing
 VaporTrx creates PNGs at 511x256. The 'capbowl' fix will work for this one.

On this note (geeky tech bit coming up) - the odd-resolution error is to do with MPEG4 compression (not just Xvid) and due to Macroblock pixel sizes. Xvid appears to 'deal' with sizes down to 2x2, which basically means it does not seem to like resolutions that are not divisible by 2 (all the ones that fail so far have an odd number of pixels in x or y, and the fix supplied simply knocks one pixel off x or y to make it even.) I'd like to test this more, but you may prefer to simply check for an Even number of pixels and adjust if they are odd - this would future-proof the fix I believe.

If that does not make sense, I'll supply more info and examples.....
Note you have to go by the size of png. Vaportrx reports that it is 512x400 size, but the pngs are all 511x256......

I think it makes better sense to chop 1 pixel off the odd-sized pngs. I'll do that.

[BuZz880]

Thanks Silver resetting my desktop size and color depth appears to have moved me past the recent rash of -100 errors I was getting.  I'll go back and retry the above games later but I think those were a different issue.  My desktop resolution/color depth changed after I was playing some games last night and I didn't realize it mattered but the above listed problems ocurred under normal desktop settings I think.

[Popcorrin]

I was trying to edit the batch.bat file so that the videos get saved in a separate directory rather than the mame root directory.  I was wondering if someone could help me out with the changes I need to make.  Thanks!

[Silver]

The avi destination is actually set in the *.vdb files that Buddabing's Mame creates, not the bat. I presume he just fills in the current mame dir as destination directory.

The easiest solution will be for you to add this line to the batch file, say after the '@del snap\*.png' line:

@move /Y %1.avi c:\mame\attractmovies

Obviously put your desired directory as desired. Note that you will have to create the directory manually first. The /Y option will overwrite any existing avi file, so I suggest you also alter the 1st line of the batch so that:

@if exist %1.avi goto end

becomes

@if exist c:\mame\attractmovies\%1.avi goto end

This will skip the creation if you have already made some avis.

[BuZz880]

Last line in batch.bat (before :end) should be:
move *.AVI c:\destination path\

try that.

[sWampy]

If the xvid avis made on YOUR computer playback fine on someone elses computer - then obviously they are being made correctly, then it is a playback issue:

1) Check the colour depth of your desktop - try setting it to 32bit if it is lower. It sounds like you do not have enough colours available to playback.

2) Open the Xvid Decoder options (should be in start menu after installing Xvid) and make sure Film effect is off (although should not look like you are saying)

3) Goto display properties and turn off hardware acceleration, then try playback.

If none of the above work, or avis made on your pc do NOT play back fine on ANOTHER pc, then open the XVID encoder options and click on "set defaults" and try again. The code includded in the Vdub script should actually override these anyway, but its possible we missed something.

Turned out to be the nvidia drivers, updated to latest beta version and problem went away.  There was some strange thing where the release version thought I had both interfaces of the dual head card hooked up, and even though the driver was set to 32 bit color, it seemed to really only display 16bit color. ;-/

[Popcorrin]

Thanks for the batchfile guidance.

[Buddabing]

January 11, 2005

Hello,

I've made a couple of minor changes in my MAME movie maker build and in my ListGen utility.

The latest zip file is available here (EDIT: removed link)

Movie Maker:
- removed the -virtualdub option
- changed the default skip_warnings to 0
- added code to detect all odd screen sizes on movies and correct them
- changed the default batch.bat to create a 'movies' subdirectory and move created movie files into it.

ListGen:
- attempted to improve MAMEWah list generation by better conforming to MAMEWah's case standards.

Please post any VirtualDub errors to this thread. I really want this program to be able to generate some kind of movie on all games.

[BuZz880]

A couple observations:

- Movie Maker seems to be progressing better than before... it is running against the list of problems I had before .. i'll keep you posted.  Using XVID (Videomode 3) the only problem I have had so far is with altbeast, maybe someone can test theirs to see if its just mine?

- Listgen, I notice the controllers/inputs are still different than Mamewah and no Catver Category flag appears in the output.  I assume you knew this but just in case I thought I'd mention.

[Buddabing]

A couple observations:

- Movie Maker seems to be progressing better than before... it is running against the list of problems I had before .. i'll keep you posted.

[2600]

A couple observations:

- Movie Maker seems to be progressing better than before... it is running against the list of problems I had before .. i'll keep you posted.  Using XVID (Videomode 3) the only problem I have had so far is with altbeast, maybe someone can test theirs to see if its just mine?

Have you made sure you can run altbeast from the command line.  Roms were recently changed and I know I can't until I get an updated set.  I ran altbeas2 instead for the attract mode and it made it fine.

[BuZz880]

I noticed no change in lightgun vs Light Gun in Mamewah; stuff like tat.

As for the category; listgen omits the last line (category):  I am not sure what is going on with the status either.  I believe I have all my ini's in the right place.

from mame-0.lst
GALAGA
Galaga (Namco rev. B)
1981
Namco


Raster
Vertical
8-Way Joystick
Status Preliminary
Color Preliminary
Sound Preliminary
Shooter / Gallery

from listgen
GALAGA
Galaga
1981
Namco


Raster
Vertical
8-way Joystick
Status Imperfect
Color Good
Sound Good

[Buddabing]

I noticed no change in lightgun vs Light Gun in Mamewah; stuff like tat.

As for the category; listgen omits the last line (category):

[BuZz880]

That's what I'm talking about!  Looks perfect from here; when i'm home later I'll run it through the gears with my on-the-fly list generation bat.

AS for Moviem it has now made 16 videos of some sort successfully with only one that didn't work which as has been pointed out here may well be a rom problem (altbeast).  If you consider all of these were games that failed with the last version, I'd say you have really improved it today.

[Rocky]

I just stumbled upon this thread and software.

[Silver]

My only problem is that I don't know how to alter the listgen program and it's trying to make videos for roms I don't have (using .71)

Open the listgen.ini file, and set audit roms to 1 not 0. This will create a batch that will only do videos of roms you have.


On a more general note, you will get a virtualdub error "file not found" if mame was unable to run the game.  (ie no romset, or some roms not found etc....). If you have a problem like that, run "mame romname" to see if you can play the game normally. This will help by weeding out problems that are not to do with the moviemaking process.

Buddabing, you may be able to trap the mame error returned, to skip virtualdub if there was not successful movie pass. The simplist way may be for another If exist... line on the vdb file??? Or  you may think this is overkill.

[Buddabing]

I just stumbled upon this thread and software.  Wow, this is great 

It's making a bunch of videos for me now 

My only problem is that I don't know how to alter the listgen program and it's trying to make videos for roms I don't have (using .71)

Anyway, good work you guys.

Change the audit_roms flag in your listgen.ini to 1.

I'm glad you are finding this utility useful.

Regards,
Buddabing

[Buddabing]

My only problem is that I don't know how to alter the listgen program and it's trying to make videos for roms I don't have (using .71)

Open the listgen.ini file, and set audit roms to 1 not 0. This will create a batch that will only do videos of roms you have.


On a more general note, you will get a virtualdub error "file not found" if mame was unable to run the game.  (ie no romset, or some roms not found etc....). If you have a problem like that, run "mame romname" to see if you can play the game normally. This will help by weeding out problems that are not to do with the moviemaking process.

Buddabing, you may be able to trap the mame error returned, to skip virtualdub if there was not successful movie pass. The simplist way may be for another If exist... line on the vdb file??? Or  you may think this is overkill.

That's what I was trying to do with the dummy vdb file. If there is a del /Y %1.vdb at the beginning of batch.bat, I could put in if not exist %1.vdb goto end.

The goal is to get something that will run overnight without having to press enter all the time.

[Silver]

That would work. Do you need a del /Y %1.vdb at the start if you already have one at then? So long as people are using the batch, there will not be a %1.vdb.

so If exist %1.vdb goto end, right after the mame line should jump any errors....

An alternative solution, is that that we are currently executing a script file in virtualdub, which pops up dialog boxes for errors. The alternative would be to use the "jobs" file in virtualdub - so we create a jobs file (Virtualdub.jobs) which is essentially almost exactly the same as the script, and tell virtualdub to run it: virtualdub / r /x  In this mode virtualdub will write all errors to a log instead. I'll try and see if this has any other impact.

[sWampy]

Should we start looking at modifing the batch file to check the size of the video and get rid of super big ones that most likely didn't work, and super tiny ones that didn't work and have it auto retry them with different paramaters, or is that beyond the scope you wanted for this?