MAME Movie Maker released

[Silver]

The new movieskipframes worked for me.  I used 464 for neogeo games if anyone else tries it.

Thanks Buddabing

Nice one. Is there an easy way to select these from listgen? ie filter so that all neo-geo games have this addition? OR does it need to be in a seperate filter?

[2600]

I just use listgen to make a separate moviebatch file.

Anyone know of other systems that may benefit from this addition.  I seem to remember ones with the warning about country specific(capcom ones maybe), but not off the top of my head.

[Buddabing]

Oh boy. I didn't think about that. I don't know a way to fix it. I'll have to turn off the audio if -movieloops 4 is selected.

My vote would be to leave the audio turned on (even if it is out of sync) and maybe make a note about that at the beginning of this thread. It's better than no audio. For me it mostly just means that when you are surfing through a list of games and looking at the video previews, you'll see gameplay video and hear the game's intro music. It's not that big a deal. OR, you could have -movieloops 4 mean "start in the middle with audio out of sync" and -movieloops 5 mean "start in the middle with no audio". Ha! There goes another 100 lines of code :-)

Kook

I've decided to revert back to what I had yesterday for -movieloops 4. This will fix the audio at the expense of more time capturing.

I'll keep the code I added around just in case.

I've uploaded a new binary.

[donnyj]

You know I have to be a pain in the butt too....

[Buddabing]

Okay,

I've updated source and binary to version 0.92 and 0.94 of BuddaMAME.

Version 0.94 may be a bit tricky. My source is 0.94u4 which may not be in sync with your source. If you want to compile BuddaMAME v0.94, I suggest taking fresh 0.94 source and patching it, then extracting my source over it. I've included patches to patch fresh 0.94 source to 0.94u4.

I also retrofit the latest changes to MMM (added -movieskipframes and fixed the video being too long) to version 0.92 so Papa will be happy.

Regards,
Buddabing

[Silver]

Are there many fixes for broken sound from 0.92 to 0.94? Or is it mainly new games?


Oh, and I'm making tweaked frame information for all the neo-geo games at the moment. I was using 2600's excellent suggestion of 464 frames skipped, but I noticed that there are a few neogeo games that either have an 'extra' section (The "100 Mega shock" bit) or actually have no standard neo-geo startup at all.

[papaschtroumpf]

I also retrofit the latest changes to MMM (added -movieskipframes and fixed the video being too long) to version 0.92 so Papa will be happy.

Regards,
Buddabing

I am happy and Thank You!

[Silver]

Buddabing:

Do you reckon you could alter the input for the movieskipframes option? Or at least add an alternative method so we could use movieloops 2 option. eg:

breakers 2 500 0

this would be the same as breakers -movieskipframes 500.

If its easier then 0 could be 'x' or something. This is because I have found some games eg breakers have a standard neogeo startup you want to skip, but seem to randomly generate the attract (or at least its based on the nvram file - how many times someone has run it?).

By implimenting it into movieloops 2, you would allow the ssf.txt file to include tweaked start points even when the end point is ambiguous and will need to be detected.... (so in ssf.txt you would have breakers,500,0 or breakers,500,x)

[Buddabing]

Buddabing:

Do you reckon you could alter the input for the movieskipframes option? Or at least add an alternative method so we could use movieloops 2 option. eg:

breakers 2 500 0

this would be the same as breakers -movieskipframes 500.

If its easier then 0 could be 'x' or something. This is because I have found some games eg breakers have a standard neogeo startup you want to skip, but seem to randomly generate the attract (or at least its based on the nvram file - how many times someone has run it?).

By implementing it into movieloops 2, you would allow the ssf.txt file to include tweaked start points even when the end point is ambiguous and will need to be detected.... (so in ssf.txt you would have breakers,500,0 or breakers,500,x)

I think movieloops 2 should be reserved for loops for which we know the start and end frames.

I don't think movieloops 2 currently supports the movieskipframes option, but it would be easy to add.

Can't you just generate one movie for breakers and be done with it?

[Silver]

I think movieloops 2 should be reserved for loops for which we know the start and end frames.

I don't think movieloops 2 currently supports the movieskipframes option, but it would be easy to add.

I dont think moviesloops 2 needs movieskipframes as the loop detection is off, so if you want to skip something you just tweak the start frame...

Can't you just generate one movie for breakers and be done with it?

Hey thats fine for me!

The only functionality I'm after would be a way of initiating -movieskipframes from the ssf.txt or another external file. If you add info to the ssf.txt line does it get passed?
ie:

breakers 1 0 0 -movieskipframes -600

Note I'm only using breakers as an example - there are several games that do this it seems....

EDIT: I've realised that just implimenting -movieskipframes will not help. There are games with a random attract where the detected loop will not always originate from the same frame (it depends on which attract is shown in what order). movieskipframes will not work at all on these games as it only skip frames from the start of the detected loop - whereas I would actually like to force an absolute start frame.

So really I think I am after a new option (groan!) where it detects a loop as standard (movieloops 1) but when creating the vdb file the start point is overwritten.

To be honest - its probably not worth the effort for the small number of games, and the fact that the loop is fine. Ignore me....

[Silver]

I've added a few more roms to the database, mainly some games that did not have a loop detected. I also tweaked chaseHQ to start on the title, as the detected loop starts at gameplay - some may prefer this without it tweaked...

chasehq
cmissnx
esb
galaga88
galaxian
gaplus
moonal2
mooncrst

I also have a pile of tweaked neogeo games I can add soon. However,  a lot of neogeo games seem to either randomise the attract - or it depends on the state of the nvram possibly. This is why I was asking about setting an absolute start frame - do you think its possible to change listgen so that when it parses ssf.txt it could set up loop detection as normal but overwrite the start frame once the loop is detected?

[donnyj]

Strange, Strange, Strange....

I was having problems with listgen....

[Buddabing]

Strange, Strange, Strange....

I was having problems with listgen....  so I downloaded the newest listgen, mamemm (precompiled)...  same thing...

for example, using:

select * from gamedata;

and

mamename mamemm.exe
rompath D:\mame\roms
mamepath D:\mame
frontend moviebatch
verbose 0
silent 0
audit_roms 0
use_clones 1
unique 0
us_version_priority 0
world_version_priority 0
strip_description 0
japan_version_priority 0
reuse_mame_data 0
force_uppercase_romnames 0
force_lowercase_romnames 0
output makemovies.bat

makemovies.bat is missing games, for example:  005, 11beat, 1945kiii, 3kokushi, 47pie2, 47pie2o, 4dwarrio, 4enraya, 64streej, 64street, 720...

what??

also, I get "parse error, unexpected MERGE" from listgen

What version of MAME? They may have changed the xml in 0.94u5, if you are using that.

Do you have any .dat files in your MAME folder? If so, move them out and see you get the "unexpected MERGE".

[donnyj]

What version of MAME? They may have changed the xml in 0.94u5, if you are using that.

Do you have any .dat files in your MAME folder? If so, move them out and see you get the "unexpected MERGE".

was using the mame.exe straight out of mame94.zip on your website (renamed to mamemm.exe of course)

just tried moving all .dat files out of directory, same thing =[

[donnyj]

listgen barfs halfway through listxml.txt   

found a quick/dirty/faulty/defective replacement for winXP

@echo off
echo . > makemovies.bat
for %%f in (D:\mame\roms\*.zip) do echo @call batch %%~nf >> makemovies.bat

[Buddabing]

listgen barfs halfway through listxml.txt   

found a quick/dirty/faulty/defective replacement for winXP

@echo off
echo . > makemovies.bat
for %%f in (D:\mame\roms\*.zip) do echo @call batch %%~nf >> makemovies.bat

Please run ListGen with -verbose, pipe the output to a file, zip the file, and email it to me at buddabing at houston dot rr dot com.

[papaschtroumpf]

I'm still trying to figure out how I can make the movies with a higher resolution so that they look OK full screen. The lower resolution games look awfull because of the compression.
How can I modify the .vsb file to get a resolution twice as large? I can't seem to find a virtualdub "script" reference.

[Kook]

I have another idea for the wish list. Right now, Movie Maker allows you to use loop detection, or specify the set of frames you want to capture. I don't know if this is feasible or not (or maybe it's already built-in and I haven't figured it out), but as a third alternative, it would be nice to have a START RECORDING and END RECORDING hot key. In other words, MAME starts running the game, and when you see the point where you want to start capturing frames you hit the Start Recording key, and when you see the point where you want to stop, you hit the Stop Recording key.

Kook

[jdsabin1]

I am in so far over my head trying all this it's not even funny. Anyway, I am trying to now figure out how to make a 'makemovies.bat' file. Buddabing in his initial post said:

--------------------------------------
The second batch file you need is called makemovies.bat, which calls batch.bat for each of your ROMs.

Here's a sample:
@call batch 005 224x256
@call batch 1941 224x384
@call batch 4enraya 256x224
@call batch 4in1 224x256

You can generate your own makemovies.bat by using my ListGen utility, a link to it is above.
-----------

So I ran the listgen utility but I still don't see a 'makemovies.bat' file. Can anyone help me out?

Thanks,

-Jeff

[Buddabing]

I am in so far over my head trying all this it's not even funny. Anyway, I am trying to now figure out how to make a 'makemovies.bat' file. Buddabing in his initial post said:

--------------------------------------
The second batch file you need is called makemovies.bat, which calls batch.bat for each of your ROMs.

Here's a sample:
@call batch 005 224x256
@call batch 1941 224x384
@call batch 4enraya 256x224
@call batch 4in1 224x256

You can generate your own makemovies.bat by using my ListGen utility, a link to it is above.
-----------

So I ran the listgen utility but I still don't see a 'makemovies.bat' file. Can anyone help me out?

Thanks,

-Jeff

Make sure "frontend moviebatch" is in your listgen.ini file.

If you still have a problem, please post your listgen.ini file.

[jdsabin1]

Thank you for the quick reply! I changed the setting (I believe it was romlist instead of moviebatch) in the ini. I have listgen and mame in separate sub-dirs (if that makes any difference). I downloaded and installed everything you listed in the first post. 

At any rate, I reran listgen and this is the message it gave me:

I:\listgen>listgen
listxml.txt already exists
gamelist.txt already exists
listfull.txt already exists
Scanning XML game info
Failed to open catver.ini, list may be inaccurate
Failed to find nplayers.ini, list may be inaccurate
Failed to find gameplay.ini, list may be inaccurate
Processing gamelist.txt
Processing listfull.txt
Processing ssf.txt
Writing intermediate file listgen.tmp
Reading intermediate file into filter database
Filtering database into result.tmp
Renaming result.tmp to xxx.txt

Here is the contents of my listgen.ini:

rompath ..\mame\roms
mamepath ..\mame
frontend moviebatch
verbose 0
silent 0
audit_roms 0
use_clones 1
unique 0
us_version_priority 0
world_version_priority 0
strip_description 1
japan_version_priority -1
reuse_mame_data 1
output xxx.txt
force_uppercase_romnames 0
skip_final_step 1
---------------------

Thanks again!

[Buddabing]

Thank you for the quick reply! I changed the setting (I believe it was romlist instead of moviebatch) in the ini. I have listgen and mame in separate sub-dirs (if that makes any difference). I downloaded and installed everything you listed in the first post. 

At any rate, I reran listgen and this is the message it gave me:

I:\listgen>listgen
listxml.txt already exists
gamelist.txt already exists
listfull.txt already exists
Scanning XML game info
Failed to open catver.ini, list may be inaccurate
Failed to find nplayers.ini, list may be inaccurate
Failed to find gameplay.ini, list may be inaccurate
Processing gamelist.txt
Processing listfull.txt
Processing ssf.txt
Writing intermediate file listgen.tmp
Reading intermediate file into filter database
Filtering database into result.tmp
Renaming result.tmp to xxx.txt

Here is the contents of my listgen.ini:

rompath ..\mame\roms
mamepath ..\mame
frontend moviebatch
verbose 0
silent 0
audit_roms 0
use_clones 1
unique 0
us_version_priority 0
world_version_priority 0
strip_description 1
japan_version_priority -1
reuse_mame_data 1
output xxx.txt
force_uppercase_romnames 0
skip_final_step 1
---------------------

Thanks again!

I guess I should change the defaults.......

Change skip_final_step to 0 and output to makemovies.bat and strip_description to 0.

That should do it.

[jdsabin1]

I made the changes you suggested. When I ran the listgen.exe again I got a hard crash (Windows XP SP2). It did this:

I:\listgen>listgen
listxml.txt already exists
gamelist.txt already exists
listfull.txt already exists
Scanning XML game info
Processing catver.ini
Failed to find nplayers.ini, list may be inaccurate
Failed to find gameplay.ini, list may be inaccurate
Processing gamelist.txt
Processing listfull.txt
Processing ssf.txt
Writing intermediate file listgen.tmp
Reading intermediate file into filter database
Filtering database into result.tmp
Writing game list to makemovies.bat
-------------
And then the crash. Looking at the error dialogue box it tells me:

AppName: listgen.exe
AppVer: 0.0.0.0
ModName: msvcrt.dll
ModVer: 7.0.2600.2180
Offset: 000360cb

If that helps at all.

[Buddabing]

I made the changes you suggested. When I ran the listgen.exe again I got a hard crash (Windows XP SP2). It did this:

I:\listgen>listgen
listxml.txt already exists
gamelist.txt already exists
listfull.txt already exists
Scanning XML game info
Processing catver.ini
Failed to find nplayers.ini, list may be inaccurate
Failed to find gameplay.ini, list may be inaccurate
Processing gamelist.txt
Processing listfull.txt
Processing ssf.txt
Writing intermediate file listgen.tmp
Reading intermediate file into filter database
Filtering database into result.tmp
Writing game list to makemovies.bat
-------------
And then the crash. Looking at the error dialogue box it tells me:

AppName: listgen.exe
AppVer: 0.0.0.0
ModName: msvcrt.dll
ModVer: 7.0.2600.2180
Offset: 000360cb

If that helps at all.

Edit your filter.sql and comment out (put two dashes at the beginning of the line) the line that says ".separator '' ".

Sorry for the inconvenience. I'll change the defaults.

[jdsabin1]

Not an inconvenience at all. Happy I can help. This is such a great idea!

That worked but my next hurdle is this:

I edited the makemovies.bat file to only include Amidar just to test with. I noticed when I double clicked the file and the DOS window popped up, I got the message: 'could not find I:\mame\moviesnp\ami*.png' which I assume is fine (at least it didn't appear to hold things up).

Amidar came up in a small window on my desktop and ran just fine, then it ultimately closed.

Anyway, VirtualDub kicks off and it appears to process and when it is nearly done, I get a small, UNhelpful error dialogue box (about the size of a postage stamp) that says: VirtualDub Error followed by three ?'s in the text portion of the box. I am using VirtualDub 1.6.4 (build 23174/release). That was what was on the page that your link provided so that was what I downloaded. At the same time the XVID status windows also pops up.

When I click okay to get past the VDub error I have to manually close the VDub application and the XVID box, and then everything appears to complete although I spotted an amidar.wav and vdb file I believe that then gets deleted. There was an Amidar avi file in the movies subdir that is 13.2 MB in size.

One weird thing when I try to play it in Windows Media Player (old and new versions): the video is 'squished'. The aspect just isn't accurate at all.

Thanks again for all your help. I am close now!

[Buddabing]

Not an inconvenience at all. Happy I can help. This is such a great idea!

That worked but my next hurdle is this:

I edited the makemovies.bat file to only include Amidar just to test with. I noticed when I double clicked the file and the DOS window popped up, I got the message: 'could not find I:\mame\moviesnp\ami*.png' which I assume is fine (at least it didn't appear to hold things up).

Amidar came up in a small window on my desktop and ran just fine, then it ultimately closed.

Anyway, VirtualDub kicks off and it appears to process and when it is nearly done, I get a small, UNhelpful error dialogue box (about the size of a postage stamp) that says: VirtualDub Error followed by three ?'s in the text portion of the box. I am using VirtualDub 1.6.4 (build 23174/release). That was what was on the page that your link provided so that was what I downloaded. At the same time the XVID status windows also pops up.

When I click okay to get past the VDub error I have to manually close the VDub application and the XVID box, and then everything appears to complete although I spotted an amidar.wav and vdb file I believe that then gets deleted. There was an Amidar avi file in the movies subdir that is 13.2 MB in size.

One weird thing when I try to play it in Windows Media Player (old and new versions): the video is 'squished'. The aspect just isn't accurate at all.

Thanks again for all your help. I am close now!

Try changing -movievideo 3 to 2. Maybe your Xvid is messed up. Maybe Silver can help on this one.

[jdsabin1]

I tried changing -movievideo in my mame.ini and it didn't help as far as that strange error vdub is spitting out. I also reinstalled XVid and now my AVI is 2.47 MB so I think that part is fixed.

VDub is still broke basically. It comes up with that cryptic error box with three question marks at the end of the process and I have to okay to close it.

The amidar.avi does work, it's now in it's proper aspect (must have been xvid or your setting recommendation?), but I still see amidar.wav and vdb get deleted from the MAME dir (is it supposed to work like that). The Amidar.avi has no sound as a sidenote which is why I am asking.

Any and all input most welcome .

[2600]

Post your batch file.  Does it still have the /wait command on the virtualdub line?

[jdsabin1]

Here is my batch file. It's basically identical to Buddabing's suggestion in his first post (and yes, it looks like the /wait switch is still there):

------------------------
@if not exist movies mkdir movies
@if exist movies\%1.avi goto end
@if exist nvram\%1.nv goto rungame
@mame %1 -window -noartwork -resolution %2 -nothrottle -ftr 100
:rungame
time /T
@mame %1 -window -noartwork -makemovie -resolution %2 -wavwrite %1.wav -movieloops %3 -moviestartframe %4 -movieendframe %5
@if not exist %1.vdb goto end
@\virtualdub\virtualdub /s"%1.vdb" /wait /x
@del %1.wav
@del /Q moviesnp\*.png
@del %1.vdb
@move /Y %1.avi movies
time /T
:end
----------------------------

[2600]

Take the /wait out and you won't get the virtualdub error.  Silver mentioned it somewhere around page 10 or 11 of this thread I believe.  He said 1.6.4 didn't support that command or something like that.

[jdsabin1]

Thank you for the fast response! Will that take care of the avi not having sound in it as well? I did see an amidar.avi and amidar.vdb file show up in the MAME directory through the creation process, and then they get deleted.  I wasn't sure if this had anything to do with the sound not being in the avi or not.

This is an awesome thing by the way. Really helpful! 

[2600]

I just started amidar, not making a movie and it doesn't have sound during it's attract.  That's why there is no sound.  Try zookeep and see how that goes.

[jdsabin1]

I got it. Sorry for some of these 'doofus' questions on my part. I didn't even think to check that.

I believe all is well at this point. I would be willing to help tidy up all this in a 'non-technical' way with a new post if that would help at all, or perhaps host some of these files if we need certain versions to make this all work. Just let me know how (or if) I can help at all.

Thanks!

[Buddabing]

Take the /wait out and you won't get the virtualdub error.  Silver mentioned it somewhere around page 10 or 11 of this thread I believe.  He said 1.6.4 didn't support that command or something like that.

I've removed the /wait from the example batch.bat file on the first page. Thanks for the reminder.

EDIT: I've also added a link to BuddaMAME v0.95.

[Silver]

FYI Virtualdub 1.6.5 is out. Nothing significant for Moviemaker I think, although the error has been removed for incorrect command lines.

However, there is a complete up-to-date rewrite of the scripting documentation which will help explain the vdb file to anyone whos curious.....

[Buddabing]

FYI Virtualdub 1.6.5 is out. Nothing significant for Moviemaker I think, although the error has been removed for incorrect command lines.

However, there is a complete up-to-date rewrite of the scripting documentation which will help explain the vdb file to anyone whos curious.....

Thanks for the info. Maybe there's something in there for Papa's resize issue.

[papaschtroumpf]

I'll look at it thanks!

[Silver]

Hmmm, I've updated to 0.95, but listgen reports

listxml.txt already exists
gamelist.txt already exists
listfull.txt already exists
Scanning XML game info
parse error, unexpected MERGE
Failed to find catver.ini, list may be inaccurate
... ...

not sure what the parse error is - is there a incorrect data in the mame xml?

If I pipe listgen -verbose to a file, it reports the parse error only to the command line. No mention of merge in the piped file.

It seems to then not find over half the roms (lots of rom name game not found in rom tree. ie my makemovies.bat with a full "select * from gamelist" goes from around 100kb to 37kb....

any ideas?

[donnyj]

there was a change in the mame XML output, Buddabing updated listgen to reflect the changes, try the newest version of listgen....

[Silver]

Bingo, thanks I missed that change....