MameWah Preview Video Background - Transparent?

[Necro]

Anyone know if there's a way to make the mamewah video preview not show the ugly grey/black border around videos that it generates to fill the entire image area?  Unless I set the image area that the video is playing in to exactly the right aspect ratio, some ugly borders are popping up.

This isn't really an issue with consoles...but with mame it looks horrible.

[Minwah]

Are you saying Mamewah generates this grey area? It so, it shouldn't...make sure the colour of your background/artwork image box is not grey (use the Layout Designer).

If it's somehow in the video itself then I doubt much can be done.

[Necro]

Hrm...ok, this is whats happening.  I set a box up to hold a snap.  It seems like instead of just playing the video and sizing down to the dimensions of the video, it's doing borders around the videos to 'fill' the rest of the box. 

Its not the video itself...if anything, it's that the video player window is being expanded somehow...

It's baffling me.

[Bloodwyn]

Hmm.. On alot of the front ends, there is an option to keep aspect ratio of snaps and video.

I can't remember offhand if keeping aspect ratio in Mamewah causes a border, but I have definately seen this happen in other frontends.

Try displaying the video both keeping aspect ratio on and off.

I have seen green borders when the video codec was corrupt or old. If your videos are xvid, or divx = try using ffdshow.

Bloodwyn

[Necro]

I'm actually using ffdshow and thought that might be the issue.

I'ved tried the keep_movie_preview_aspect or whatever the setting is in mamewah to both on and off and it doesn't seem to do anything.  In MaLa, the issue exists (as you said) if I say keep the aspect ratio....the issue is without it it will still look crappy...and mala won't let you turn it on for videos and off for pics.

[Bloodwyn]

It could be ffdshow.

I had problems with stuttering of the videos in Mala with it.

My videos are Divx.

I uninstalled ALL the video codecs I had. Then installed the latest xvid (It can decode divx video).

This fixed my problem. If you get black and white video after doing this. You need to run "configure decoder"
and select one of other color settings. Not sure which one it was.

As far as keep aspect ratio - I have that turned off.

All my snapshots and marquee images have been run thru a photoshop droplet and are the same size.
That makes it so I can use image lists in Mala and have drop shadows in the background behind the images.

There may be some videos that are scaled a bit oddly and can cause a green border on one side of the image.
That could probably be fixed by re-capturing the video at a different resolution.

The area where my videos are shown is always black for me. Here is a screenshot of my Mala background.



These videos are the same ones I used in Mamewah. They worked fine there as well.

Bloodwyn

[Necro]

I was hoping it wasn't a codec issue...but it appears that it might be from what everyone is saying.  I'm going to have to work on it a bit more I guess and possibly convert some resolutions (fun!).  I was hoping it wasn't this since the PC is also my HTPC and I abhor messing with codecs on there because of the issues that always seem to arise.


BTW, Bloodwyn, I really like that design.  Very good idea...I think I may have to do something similar (I have a HD TV hooked up to my HTPC/EmuPC).

[Necro]

Well, I tried altering the codes to no avail.  The background color seems to depend on the codec...but all of them are putting the border there, whether or not the keep aspect ratio item is set.

[Bloodwyn]

Ya got me now.. I thought you would have the problem licked by changing codecs.

What format are you attract videos in?

Bloodwyn

[Necro]

It's the EmuMovies 0.106 set (from cdbrown).  I believe all are in divx format.