MAME Movie Maker released

[Silver]

Hmmm anyone have info on what the changes were in the XML data?

[donnyj]

I don't know, but the old listgen crapped out about 50% done with an "unexpected MERGE" error....?

maybe they added a MERGE to an area that previously didn't use them?  (CHD?)

Sorry, I don't know enough to help =[

[Buddabing]

Hmmm anyone have info on what the changes were in the XML data?

They added two new xml attributes to the CHDs: "merge" and "status". Status can be "baddump", "nodump", and "good". I guess the merge field allows two games/clones to use the same CHD.

[Silver]

ah thats alright then, nice and easy. Thanks for that....

I've been churning though videos very successfully recently. I find it makes perfectly acceptable attract videos in the majority of cases - even for games with huge slightly-changing loops, the first loop detected by MMM is often perfectly adequate. I've been using the standard 10-frame match.

The main problem I have is it hanging on games that don't work, even when  using the catver <> unplayable to filter the list, but thats not a problem with MMM (although I should check that they crash in standard mame too).

[donnyj]

How can I redirect the mamemm text messages to a file?

[Buddabing]

How can I redirect the mamemm text messages to a file?  the ones that show up in the mamemm.exe window?

edit the call to mamemm in your batch.bat and add:

> nofile.txt

to the end of the file. You need the greater than sign. The OS will create a file called nofile.txt which will have all the text messages in it.

[donnyj]

Confusion...  when mamemm changes resolution in the middle of a game does, the current "frame" number reset back to 0?  I am watching tekken3a run, and the file count doesn't change but the directory size changes?

[Buddabing]

Confusion...

[Silver]

Yes unfortunately some games change resolution several times in the attract sequence - which tends to result in no video or the appearance of a crash as 20,000 files are copied over on the fly.... (e.g. starglad).

[vibez]

I dont have a enough space on the PC that i'm running this, how can I edit the script to I can save the movies to a network drive. Z:\movies\ for example

[papaschtroumpf]

chaneg the bach.bat batch file shown at the top of this thread to move the files to the networked drive:

@if not exist Z:\movies mkdir Z:\movies
@if exist Z:\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" /x
@del %1.wav
@del /Q moviesnp\*.png
@del %1.vdb
@move /Y %1.avi Z:\movies
time /T
:end


This assume you already have mapped a network location to Z:

[vibez]

thanks!

Now i'm getting this error

D:\Mame_movie_maker\MAME095>batch
error: invalid value for resolution: -nothrottle
error while parsing cmdline

D:\Mame_movie_maker\MAME095>time /T
19:04
error: invalid value for resolution: -wavwrite
error while parsing cmdline

This is my batch

Code: [Select]

@if not exist x:\movies mkdir x:\movies
@if exist x:\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" /x
@del %1.wav
@del /Q moviesnp\*.png
@del %1.vdb
@move /Y %1.avi x:\movies
time /T
:end

Code: [Select]

@call batch 005 224x256 1 0 0
@call batch 11beat 512x512 1 0 0
@call batch 1941 224x384 1 0 0
@call batch 1941j 224x384 1 0 0

[vibez]

ooops, I was running the wrong script. it seems to be working now.

How do make sure it doesnt try to load a non-working game? & roughly how much space do I need for a full set (0.95) including clones?

[papaschtroumpf]

not sure about how much space, it also depends on the codec you use.

Use the listgen utility so sort the games and eliminate the none working ones, the you can ruther edit the resulting fil by deleting the line for the games you don't want.

[Buddabing]

ooops, I was running the wrong script. it seems to be working now.

How do make sure it doesnt try to load a non-working game? & roughly how much space do I need for a full set (0.95) including clones?

Each movie should take roughly one to ten megabytes. My test sample was 49 games and took up about 200 meg. Call it 4 meg a game. Multiplying by 5000 gives about 20 gig total space required. YMMV depending on what games you have.

Create a movie for Zookeeper as a test case. The video should be less than two megabytes. If your Zookeeper video is larger than 200 meg, you don't have the correct video codec installed.

Run ListGen to exclude non-working games. It will also generate the batch process to create the movies. Check out Screaming's ListGen.net extension.

[vibez]

Thanks guys. listgen.net's default settings for MMM is runnable <> no

will that filter out the no runnable games? Do I need catver.ini for it to filter correctly?

EDIT::

Nevermind, figured it out my just editing the filter.sql files

[screaming]

Thanks guys. listgen.net's default settings for MMM is runnable <> no

will that filter out the no runnable games? Do I need catver.ini for it to filter correctly?

  No.  the runnable <> 'no' criteria will filter out bioses, etc.  You could add "status <> 'preliminary'" though.

-sab

[vibez]

so this should only filter out none working games & not whole bioses, correct?

select * from gamedata where
   catver_category <> 'Unplayable'
order by full_desc;

[screaming]

I call your blackballing and I raise you a /forget.




Damn, no /forget.  Where's MBBS when you need it?!

-sab

[vibez]

wow that was over my simple uk head!

[MrSaLTy]

Here are some start/end frame settings that I have used to yield some better results with some movies..... i.e. less intro and rom booting and more gameplay.

zedblade,1700,4200
ffight,5000,8500
apb,1488,3300
bubbles,640,3000
roadrunn,80,1895
sonicwi2,1510,2460
sonicwi3,3540,4640
gpilots,725,2100
bosco,1000,5270

[Silver]

Thanks MrSalty.

I have a few I'll be adding too. I'll try and get them onto the webpage in the next day or 2.

[Scoobie]

Okay so I read most of this thread, and it sure is a lot of great info!

[Buddabing]

Okay so I read most of this thread, and it sure is a lot of great info!

[Scoobie]

Thanks Budda.

[Silver]

I've added some more start/end frames to the "ssf" file. There are around 30 odd now - these are mostly games that do not generate a viewable attract at all under normal condiditons, with a few tweaks...

I was wondering - there are some games eg Alligator Hunt, where the master does not work 'aligator' (protection) but there is a working clone: 'aligatun' (no protection) that works fine. I've only looked at masters (saves so much time and storage). Is it best just to manually edit the batch files in these cases or is there another work around?


@MrSalty

I've not added your contribution yet as originally I think the plan was to only add 100% complete attracts to the ssf text (ie every single frame of a v long attract where the auto-detect only picked up the first loop.) - some of yours are geared to mostly catching gameplay. Not sure what everyone thinks about this?

[MrSaLTy]

I dig... some of those games have really long intros though and that seemed useless to me so I tried to get some relevent gameplay in them.  If thats not what you need... I understand.  That being said.... on some of them normal loop detection will only result in a portion of the intro and not the full attract video anyway.

[Silver]

yes I've just noticed APB does not auto-generate a good intro at all - I'll sort that.

I was debating a second list just for pure gameplay videos. This would take a long time to complete (somone would need to get the frames for every master) but several people do seem keen on just gameplay videos. It would also cut down on the size if that was an issue.

At the moment, I'm just going to cruise through the videos and get something going for games that completely failed to have a good intro...

[papaschtroumpf]

II've not added your contribution yet as originally I think the plan was to only add 100% complete attracts to the ssf text (ie every single frame of a v long attract where the auto-detect only picked up the first loop.) - some of yours are geared to mostly catching gameplay. Not sure what everyone thinks about this?

I would *love* to have gameplay videos instead of attract, but until we figure out a good way to generate gameplay videos, I think we should stick to 100% attract mode, so that it's clear what you're getting.

[M.A.M.E Power]

Hi Guys

I really struggling with the movie maker, I have downloaded all the relevant files and set up the batch files using the listgen utility. I have all the folders in the right place (virtualdub in the same folder as Mame), but when I launch the moviemaker.bat the first attract mode starts (005 by Sega) and I get the following error:

Code: [Select]

Average FPS: 1460.365076 (100 frames)

C:\mame>time /T
22:35
The system cannot find the file specified.
10-frame match detected between frame 403 and 1500
movie will run between frames 268 and 1380
Average FPS: 58.996781 (1440 frames)
The system cannot find the path specified.
The system cannot find the file specified.

C:\mame>time /T
22:36
It then just hangs up and does not do anything at all.

What am I doing wrong peps?

Thanks
Lea

[vibez]

Dude you have already posted on other threads that your roms dont work with the mame version you have. Therefor they wont work with this either

[Buddabing]

I've edited the first post of this thread to eliminate some possibly confusing information and to add a link to BuddaMAME version 0.96.

M.A.M.E. Power: Try removing the @ signs from the start of each line of the batch.bat. The @ makes the output more quiet, and thus may make errors more obscure.

I clearly stated in the first post of this thread:

"Virtualdub must be installed in a directory \virtualdub on the same drive as mame".

I've already told you in a PM that VirtualDub is probably not installed correctly.

[papercut]

Hey Buddabing,

I just wanted to say THANKS for the moviemaker and cpmaker toys!

[Silver]

If you ever need to put back your mp3 encoder, or decide you want to encode your videos with that (the default one is rather limited in what bitrates it can encode to, although this is not really a problem for the audio we want) you can always set Virtualdub to encode using LAme or whatever instead. There should be instructions in the thread about how to specify an external config file which allows you to use any video/audio codec of your choice.....

[richms]

Can the movie maker use ogg or flac as the audio codec rather then MP3?

How about video codecs?

[Silver]

Try looking here in the post:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,29661.msg268278.html#msg268278

I think these custom options are still in Buddamame.

All you need to do is follow the instructions in the link above to create the custom dat files from virtualdub. Any codec that works in Vdub will work - but note these have to be proper directshow codecs. Basically, simply use virtualdub to compress something with the video/audio codecs of your choice - if it works, you can use it.

[Buddabing]

Can the movie maker use ogg or flac as the audio codec rather then MP3?

How about video codecs?

Yes, look at page 8 of this thread.

[papercut]

Hey Buddabing,

Having a lot of fun making videos and another project I had in mind sprang up and could be an 'easy' add-on.

Would it be possible/feasible to create 'save states' at the points where you detect the attract mode loops?

It's been my thought for a while that someone could create a front end option to skip all the ram/rom/init tests, which on some games takes a long time, and bypass it with a save state. I don't know if it would universally work as I don't know all that much about save states or if this would violate any mame related policies...

Just thought I'd throw it out there in case it tickled your imagination any.

Thanks!

[Buddabing]

Hey Buddabing,

Having a lot of fun making videos and another project I had in mind sprang up and could be an 'easy' add-on.

Would it be possible/feasible to create 'save states' at the points where you detect the attract mode loops?

It's been my thought for a while that someone could create a front end option to skip all the ram/rom/init tests, which on some games takes a long time, and bypass it with a save state. I don't know if it would universally work as I don't know all that much about save states or if this would violate any mame related policies...

Just thought I'd throw it out there in case it tickled your imagination any.

Thanks!

That's a very interesting idea you have there. It would be cool to just skip the garbage boot-up altogether and get straight to "insert coin".

I will probably implement this idea.

The only problem is that save states aren't implemented for all games. There could be random unexplained crashes or some games may not work right.

I am busy right now with another project but I will come back to this idea at a later date.

[Popcorrin]

I do know that when you load saved states it's not always that reliable.  It doesn't work with some games and can be kind of buggy with others, no sound and what not.