Daphne MPEG's (again)

[atog]

I just received my tombstone shipment and there were some daphne mpegs in there.  Now I know I just asked yesterday about my dragons lair mpegs, how they were split into tons of vob files even after I used winrar, and someone thought that was ok.  These mpegs that came in with the new mame roms are actually mpeg files that you just click on and they open in windows media and play the movies.

So I need some further clarification from someone who has the dragons lair mpeg working on daphne.  Can you please check it and see if its a bunch of small vob files or one complete mpeg movie file?  Thanks again!

[Howard_Casto]

Perhaps you need to go to the daphne board and talk to them.  But I can tell you ahead of time that daphne does not play mpeg files.... it plays vog and ogg files.  DL and SA have the vog files split up into pieces but the rest of the games usually only have one vog file.  

[atog]

The Daphne board is down and has been for some time.  I like the cameraderie and spirit of this board anyway.  Never have I come across a better collection of people.

[Brax]

They have a conversion utility over there to change your mpegs into a Daphne usable format.

http://www.laserarchive.com/dvd2daph/

And the Daphne board is NOT down.
http://www.daphne-emu.com/

The Daphne board answers every single question you could ever have about DL. Its better to look there, than here.

Just don't be stupid and say you have illegal Mpegs you're trying to convert. They have ZERO tolerance for piracy over there. UNLIKE HERE

[atog]

You are right, it is no longer down.  I has been down since Wednesday, looks like they brought it back up at 1pm last night.  

[Jakobud]

Anyways that DVD2Daphne will not convert MPEGS to vob MPEG2's.  That's a program to rip the m2v's off a DVD-ROM and convert them to the necessary format for Daphne (and it looks like now you can even use the DVD-Video discs with that addon).

[Lilwolf]

Did you try asking the tombstone guys?

it sounds like they sent you them in the DVD format... and they probably know how to convert them... but it will probably be with dvd2mpg utility

[atog]

I just needed to be patient, that was all  I got them all working perfectly, except for the $%&@ dragon's lair that i spent 3 days downloading.  The format you want is 2 files for each game, 1 is an m2v file and one is a.ogg file.  For Dragon's Lair my .rar33 was corrupt and it screwed everything else up.  Nothing I can do about it, I have tried to find a replacement 33 but can't get it anywhere, I will look into hooking my laserdisc player into my computer and trying to convert my disc to mpeg somehow.

[wee beastie]

my ogg and vob files are split into a whole bunch of different chunks.  I think there's 38 of them in total.  It works that way.  Your framefile just needs to be set up correctly to tell daphne what to read (ie the first frame of dl2vob.m2v is actually the 30,000th frame of the real dragon's lair laserdisk).

Does this make sense?

If you downloaded dragon's lair from emule/edonkey/kazaa, it should have everything configured for you already.  It will be split in multiple parts, but the framefile is correct.  At least, that's the way it was for me.

[Jakobud]

Yes, same here.  I bought the DVD-ROMs from digitial leisure and used DVD2Daphne and it made at least 30 m2v.vob's and 30 ogg.vob's.

You guys should just buy the DVD's.  It's totally worth it.  And I am willing to bet that the quality of the MPEGs will be better than the ones you download.

I've downloaded some other MPEG's for other laserdisc games and my Space Ace and DL MPEGS are better quality because I created them myself from the DVD.

[wee beastie]

I would buy the dvd, but then I'd have to buy a dvd drive in order to read and encode it.  This is not worth it, IMO

[Brax]

Is there anyone here that doesn't want something for nothing? This is turning into a total piracy board.

You can get a dvd drive for 50 bucks. We actually have a supplier of a classic game in dragons lair! SUPPORT THEM!

Sometimes this hobby sickens me with the greed some people display.

[Silverwind]

Is there anyone here that doesn't want something for nothing? This is turning into a total piracy board.

You can get a dvd drive for 50 bucks. We actually have a supplier of a classic game in dragons lair! SUPPORT THEM!

Sometimes this hobby sickens me with the greed some people display.

I don't have a problem supporting a good product/company if the price is fair..

[atog]

I bought the original lair and lair II discs off ebay for around $40 each a few years ago.  This was before Daphne existed, I just wanted to play them in my laser disc player and watch the cartoons.  Since I already own the copryrighted source material, I would prefer not to pay twice.  Hope that makes sense to you Brax, I don't want anything for free, or to cheat Don Bluth out of his retirement money.

[rampy]

Is there anyone here that doesn't want something for nothing? This is turning into a total piracy board.

You can get a dvd drive for 50 bucks. We actually have a supplier of a classic game in dragons lair! SUPPORT THEM!

Sometimes this hobby sickens me with the greed some people display.

I wouldn't want this place to denegrade to a romz beggin type place... Brax if you see a thread that seems to violate the spirit of this board hit the "report to moderator button"  ... I think the mods have a 0 tolerance for rom requests etc... but don;'t check/prune as often as they should... (not a criticism of them.. just saying you're seeing more rom begging because the brored is getting more popular and harder to manage...)

That's juyst my opinion though... and I think atog is legitiamately asking for help (although maybe technically he should go through the trouble of hooking up an ancient laserdisk player and encoding his own mpegs.... but its reasonable to aquire that so called backup from elsewhere....)

of course IANAL .. and am just spouting the usual rhetoric that probably doesn't hold water... (but probably should)

*shrug*
rampy

[atog]

Hey!  Who's laser disc player are you calling 'ancient' ?!?  I love my ld player, I still have over 100 movies on ld!

 

[Frostillicus]

You can get a dvd drive for 50 bucks. We actually have a supplier of a classic game in dragons lair! SUPPORT THEM!

Sometimes this hobby sickens me with the greed some people display.

I was wondering when the above was going to be said - well put Brax.

Anyways - why spend any money at all, atog?   You OWN the 2 original discs.  There are instructions up on the daphne site on how to convert the footage so you can use it.  I would do that.  

But then again, I also bought the repro disc, and the 3 disc set - and I'm a big supporter of vendors in our niche market(like digital leisure!).  

[Howard_Casto]

Guys digital leasure is a total rip-off....  

Now mind you I'm not saying that the games aren't worht paying for, but dl comes out with a "new imporved version"  every few months and instead of an upgrade program generally you have to pay another 20-50 bucks for the same game over again because it's been "remastered"

So I've got two questions for everyone.  

Question #1  

How hard would it be to buy the rights to the roms of the games so they could have authentic gameplay?  

Question #2  

How many bad masterings of the original disc does it take before they can capture a good version?

Now if they had made a single version (not counting the cd-rom one from years back)  and did it right then I wouldn't complain, but what they are doing at this point is taking advantage of hardcore dragon's lair and space ace fans.  It's just not right to sell the same product over and over and bill it as a "new version."  

[1UP]

Actually, although the game software that comes with the DL/SA DVD-ROMs is totally worthless (woudn't work on Win XP OR Win 2000 Pro) the video source is well worth the $$$, if you have Daphne and know how to use it!  Plus I feel a little better, knowing that I at least paid for SOME of the software in my cab...  I sure didn't mind paying, it was a lot more painless than downloading the 2+gigs of video!    Their software side for the games has always been pretty crappy--I too bought the CD-ROM versions of Lair and Ace years back, and never really got them working properly.  It was DOS based, and crashed after a few scenes unless I ran it on my Dad's old 486!  

BTW, when I ripped the DVDs and ran the DVD2DAPH app, it converted all of the .vob files into .ogg and .m2v files, and added a bunch of .dat files.  I think it also automatically created the framefile text files (either that or they are available on the Daphne site, can't remember, did this like a year ago...)  Guys, the full documentation of how to get this up and running is on the Daphne site!  You might want to go there first before posting this kind of stuff... http://www.xmission.com/~redflame/daphne/

[Howard_Casto]

[rant]
And that's exactly what I'm talking about.  Why would you buy a game that you can't play?  Now Don Bluth made some exceptional animation for the games, but he will see little to no money from you buying the dvd version.  So digital leisure gets rich off of everyone for taking a product someone else made and putting it on a dvd.  Is that worth 40 bucks?  For me it's not.

You know my arguments about buying the act labs guns?  Well the same arguments apply for this case, but in reverse.  If a company isn't willing to give you what you want and isn't willing to improve their product then don't support them.  

I don't want to see these games die, but I would rather see them fade away into the nothing than have a company like dl making money off of something they have no business being involved in.

Mind you I am all about legitimizing my rom collection, but since buying the dvd has nothing to do with the arcade roms (don bluth gets next to nothing and the programmers get squat) then buying the dvd would be counter-productive in my mind.  It is more of an exploitation of the classic than anything else. At least imo.  
[/rant]

But something that I do agree on is the fact that this thread has little to no business on this site.  

Guys I know you "like this board better"  but quite frankly the daphne developers have a board setup specifically for these questions.  Why in the blue hell would you post it here when the real experts are ready to help over there?  

They are nice guys, I've talked to a few of them.  They won't bite I promise.  

Oh and btw this also applies to other emulator speific questions.  This is the last place you should post when nobody else can give you an answer.    

This isn't me telling you what and how to post.  This is me pleading to your sense of common sense.

[1UP]

OT, but personally, I have no problem with Bluth not getting much out of the DVDs.  A large share of animators I've worked with are still owed thousand$ from Don Bluth projects.  (I actually worked for him at Fox for 3 years, and THAT animation studio even ended up in the crapper!)  Now he's got a nice house while a lot of younger animators/former Bluth employees are struggling just to survive in a dying industry.

[Frostillicus]

[rant]
And that's exactly what I'm talking about.  Why would you buy a game that you can't play?  Now Don Bluth made some exceptional animation for the games, but he will see little to no money from you buying the dvd version.  So digital leisure gets rich off of everyone for taking a product someone else made and putting it on a dvd.  Is that worth 40 bucks?  For me it's not.

You know my arguments about buying the act labs guns?  Well the same arguments apply for this case, but in reverse.  If a company isn't willing to give you what you want and isn't willing to improve their product then don't support them.  

I don't want to see these games die, but I would rather see them fade away into the nothing than have a company like dl making money off of something they have no business being involved in.

Mind you I am all about legitimizing my rom collection, but since buying the dvd has nothing to do with the arcade roms (don bluth gets next to nothing and the programmers get squat) then buying the dvd would be counter-productive in my mind.  It is more of an exploitation of the classic than anything else. At least imo.  
[/rant]

Who said they bought the DVD's from digital leisure in the hopes Don Bluth will get some more $$$? I could care less if he saw any more from DL.   Obviously he made the decision to license it or sell the rights or whatever - he can live with his decision even if some people don't think it's 'fair'.

I had 2 intentions with my purchase: 1) Mainly, I bought them for the  footage(in this case space ace, and DL2 in case that ever ever gets emulated).  I spent a little $$$ and I am happy about the quality, even though I don't actually play off the discs. I never intended to play off the discs.  and 2) I want to support companies that offer these type of products that bring back the arcade memories.  Maybe digital leisure's success(they haven't folded yet - that is a type of success) will inspire others to start their own retro companies offering arcade products.

[Howard_Casto]

I want to support companies that offer these type of products that bring back the arcade memories.  Maybe digital leisure's success(they haven't folded yet - that is a type of success) will inspire others to start their own retro companies offering arcade products.

Digital leisure has done absolutely nothing... that's my point.  Their "success" is keeping the rights to dragon's lair in their hands and away from a better company who could actually do something with it.  By supporting them you are supporting a company that takes footage they bought, haphazardly puts code behind it to make it a "game" (and i use that in the loosest sense of the word)  and sells it for an outrageous price.  

DL inc. inspires no one.  If anything they are a prime example of the wrong way of getting into the retrogamer market.  They are almost as bad as hanho, except at least hanho doesn't try to sell the capcom roms they bought the rights to.  

Like I said before, let them buy the roms too and make a real emulated version.  If not then what's the point?  Mind you laser disc games are heavy on the form and light on the funciton, but would you be willing to buy merely the graphics to quake 3? And have to find the code elsewhere and painstakingly integrate the two.  I doubt you would nor would anyone.  

Stop thinking of laser games differently from regular games.  They are regular games they just have odd hardware and limited graphics engines.  

I absolutely hate company's that take advantage of the emulation community.  Buying the dvd doesn't make your setup any more legal and anyone can agree that the gameplay engine they have put in isn't worth squat.  

[rampy]

[rant]

You know my arguments about buying the act labs guns?  Well the same arguments apply for this case, but in reverse.  If a company isn't willing to give you what you want and isn't willing to improve their product then don't support them.  

*cough* hypocrite *cough*

rampy

[Frostillicus]

Digital leisure has done absolutely nothing... that's my point.  Their "success" is keeping the rights to dragon's lair in their hands and away from a better company who could actually do something with it.  By supporting them you are supporting a company that takes footage they bought, haphazardly puts code behind it to make it a "game" (and i use that in the loosest sense of the word)  and sells it for an outrageous price.  

DL inc. inspires no one.  If anything they are a prime example of the wrong way of getting into the retrogamer market.  They are almost as bad as hanho, except at least hanho doesn't try to sell the capcom roms they bought the rights to.  

Like I said before, let them buy the roms too and make a real emulated version.  If not then what's the point?  Mind you laser disc games are heavy on the form and light on the funciton, but would you be willing to buy merely the graphics to quake 3? And have to find the code elsewhere and painstakingly integrate the two.  I doubt you would nor would anyone.  

Stop thinking of laser games differently from regular games.  They are regular games they just have odd hardware and limited graphics engines.  

I absolutely hate company's that take advantage of the emulation community.  Buying the dvd doesn't make your setup any more legal and anyone can agree that the gameplay engine they have put in isn't worth squat.  

Now I just don't understand where you are coming from - are you against the company who produces the product(digital leisure), the product itself, the fact that laser games dont' have good gameplay to begin with, quake3?.  Really confusing.

Read my last post again and you'll see I mentioned I bought the DVD's JUST for the footage for daphne.  I agree - the gameplay on those dvd-rom's suck big time.   They don't work with my xp machine.

But, I think you're missing my point:  it is better to at least have these companies offer something to us gamers than nothing at all.  Even if it is substandard.  You don't have to buy it.

For example - I think it's great companies have seen the success of the IPAC and hagstrom stuff and decided to start offering their own encoders, even though I like Andy's products the best.  It's the same with act-labs and other companies.  And if someone over at digital leisure was smart enought to purchase exclusive rights to the don bluth games then more power to him.  

Oh, and instead of just 'hating' companies that 'take advantage' of the emulation community, just don't give them money - that's what I do.  Eventually they'll go bust if their products completely suck.