Making your own video previews

[BKRonline]

Greetings,

I've searched Google a bit for information on how one would create their own MAME preview videos and really haven't found anything.

(Just to give some perspective on the angle i'm coming from.) I'm an audio professional (I mix live concerts, multi-track recording / editing / mixing), etc., I also know quite a bit about video editing, web design, and graphic arts.  As I've recently gotten in to MAME, I've been bursting to get some cool content in to the community one way or the other once I get my bearings.  Creating a preview video of all of the MAME games I have is pretty easy, but I'm trying to figure out how exactly to translate this to MaLa.

From the little I know, MaLa seems to like Xvid which I have "Xvid-1.1.3-27042008 _Final Release_" and seem to be able to encode and decode video files.  For streaming files over the web, I'd usually use QuickTime.  I just wonder what the general resolution or aspect ratio should be that will fit in layouts as well as file type(s) and other info such as pixel aspect ratio etc.

I understand that there are sites I can purchase a mass amount of videos like this from, but I'm one that if i can do it myself... why not?

[loadman]

I would PM Circo.

He is has been doing it for quite a while

[BKRonline]

I would PM Circo.

He is has been doing it for quite a while

nice, i'll first search some posts by him to see if i can find anything.

meanwhile... i think i've figured out a nice work flow so far, i just have to figure out what will look the best overall on computer lcd's, crt's, and older arcade screens. the resolution seems to be dependent on the game, and the layout tool seems to set up the needed boundaries while keeping proper aspect ratio... more testing trial and error on my part to be certain is needed. they certainly play great on your MaLa video tester.

the way it's going i'm hopeful that by the end of the weekend (or sooner) i'll have a quick and easy workflow and maybe something posed on my server for people to test if anyone's interested...

if this all does go well would there be a need for some sort of tutorial on this?

edit

i've found a quick and easy way to create video preview loops for free, more testing to be sure, so who wants to be a tester?! 

[BKRonline]

quick update...

the only problem i'm having is that the videos look great in Windows Media Player, but in MaLa or Mala Video Tester the videos seem to loose their edges and become more boxy. (i'm not doing anything obvious to distort the video such as over sizing the video box etc.)

this may be how i'm encoding them (but they look fantastic outside of MaLa), or how the video is interpreted in MaLa, maybe a setting in MaLa?  i don't understand why this is happening quite yet but hope to figure it out soon, it's probably a encoding setting on my part i'm assuming.

suggestions?    << these things are so fun!

[BKRonline]

Ok, I'm currently out of ideas and made an image to represent what I'm talking about.  It seems that the xvid .avi file is not scaling gracefully in MaLa, is this normal? Should I use a different codec?

The overall situation is my xvid .avi's look great by themselves in a video player, but not in either the MaLa Video Tester or MaLa itself via the layout.  In MaLa I have all images and videos keeping their aspect ratio, is this a simple matter of making the video area larger? Is there a video setting to adjust this in MaLa to play back as a desktop video player would (as intended)?

Until I understand there's a way around this I'll have to hold off making a 'how to create your own video previews'.

Any ideas?

[loadman]

I wish I knew why some videos don't play the same in MaLa and Windows Media Player 

Have a look here: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=82577.msg878004#msg878004

[BKRonline]

thanks for the reply

indeed i've been following that post.

do you use video previews, if so, how do they look compared to my 3 images?

[loadman]

Hi,

I use Videos for Mame. Circo's vid's seem to be good using xvid codec.

They seem to scale down better than your examples. 

[BKRonline]

hm, i'm using the same codec... maybe i'll try some other methods.

thanks for your input.

[BKRonline]

i think what i'll try next is recording the video and sound in a different manner, maybe on the Mac side being that i have more tools there.  my theory is although my XviD .avi's seem to scale much better up and down in a stand alone player than inside MaLa, maybe MaLa needs more pixels to work with.

i'll try a few recording techniques on the Mac side and report the results.

maybe this will be of use to someone some day

[retrometro]

Yeah actually it'd be nice to know Circo's process of recording videos.

[BKRonline]

i've first been exploring free methods that i could write up and give a tutorial, now i'm utilizing some of my paid applications on the Mac side to do a different kind of recording process... more of a screen / sound capture at two or three times the original resolution then creating a 'standard' overall size based on my ROM set.

this just to see if it helps with down-scaling quality in MaLa...

i'm not sure if he's inclined to give this type of help, it seems he's made a business out of it

making a preview is simple... i'm just trying to understand the downscaling distortion, and if it's on my end or a limitation of 'videolab' in MaLa, or if 'videolab' simply needs a different type of XviD (rendering settings).

i'll figure it out on my own given enough time, mark my word. 

i'll post the findings when complete.

[loadman]

making a preview is simple... i'm just trying to understand the downscaling distortion, and if it's on my end or a limitation of 'videolab' in MaLa, or if 'videolab' simply needs a different type of XviD (rendering settings).

i'll figure it out on my own given enough time, mark my word. 

i'll post the findings when complete.

Good Luck