Mala Video support

[wooowman93]

I wanted to ask does Mala support flv videos


and will there be png support with transparency

if there isn't please add it
 thank you Loadman

[drventure]

Hey Loadman

Not to dig up an old thread, but I was wondering if the might be any plans to support PNG transparency (as opposed to the simple Masking transparency that's there now) in Mala?

I'd started masking off the Cabinet images collection (cause many of the images end up looking terrible if you turn on the transparency for them) and I realized that, even after masking and cleaning them up, because alpha transparency isn't supported, you're pretty much guaranteed to get pretty jagged images onscreen, no matter what you do.

[loadman]

I can't see that happening.

I lot of work. No money in MaLa and I am now time time poor doing work that does pay 

Having said that I intend to make minor changes and bug fixes to mala as time allows.   

[drventure]

No Worries

I'm putting together some ideas on how I might accommodate it from a plug in.

One thing that +might+ be cool (and easy) to add is a way for Plugins to "halt rendering" of specific elements.

For instance, say I don't want Mala to render the "definable1" image, some API way for the plugin to tell Mala that would make a number of things easily possible for plug in authors.

But I know what you mean about time. Heck, I still haven't "technically" released Engine18!

[tapule]

Hi,

Loadman, Have you ever thought about the possibility of releasing the code as OpenSource?
This may help the progress of the project.

Greetings

[drventure]

He can't do that.

1) it's not originally his source, he took over the project from Swindus, who I don't believe wanted to open source it, though I don't know any more of the back story than that.
2) It uses commercial libraries (particularly the video bits I believe) so to compile, you'd have to buy a license for that lib too.

[nick3092]

I can't see that happening.

I lot of work. No money in MaLa and I am now time time poor doing work that does pay 

Having said that I intend to make minor changes and bug fixes to mala as time allows.   

That reminds me, about a year ago you implemented a new version of the video engine that supported MP4 (which is the primary format EmuMovies switched to around the same time).  But there were glitches.  If I recall, it would play the video once, then when it went to loop it again it would only play the sound and no video.  At the time I had reported it to you and I think you had reached out to whoever wrote the video engine to research, and then you ran out of time.  Any chance that would be one of the bug fixes/minor changes you are looking at? 

I do really like MaLa.  Its simple, light weight, and easy to use.  I've tried Hyperspin and GameEx, and I just don't like them compared to MaLa.  I totally understand real life obligations.  Lord knows my company is going through a major merger this year that will be the death of me.  The only reason I even had time to give my cab some lovin was the fact I had a week of vacation last week.  So I understand the lack of time, and not wanting to work on things that don't pay.  I just hate to see such a good front end get abandoned.   

[drventure]

I thought the new video engine was already in place. I'll have to give an mp4 a shot.

[nick3092]

He did impliment a new engine about a year ago, roughly.  Found my post from around that same time.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=112411.msg1194272#msg1194272

My memory was correct - issues with looping the files.  And a slight delay in switching games that I had forgotten about.  I missed some of the later posts in the thread.  Mainly that Loadman had tried to fix it, but it didn't work so good.  Then in Dec mentioned he had a new job and hadn't had much time for MaLa, but was hoping for a release next year.

Edit:

Doh!  I just noticed in the sticky thread about the 1.7 video player he is still working on it, with a post from last week.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=107768.0

[drventure]

Ah.. Ok. Yeah, i've noticed the Delay when scrolling. That'll be a tricky one to fix I'm guessing, because he'll need to load the video on a separate thread from the UI to really solve this. Just delaying the load will help, but you'll get get an inevitable "hang".

I haven't noticed anything with looping, but I haven't really looking either.