MAME Intro Vids is returning

[cdbrown]

Well folks, after a number of years in hiatus NIVO and I have been talking recently about updating the intro vids we created all those years ago.  We had produced short intro clips of parent roms for mame version 0.106.  http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=45467
After this mame revision various things happened to the core and xml outputs which subsequently broke the various programs provided by Cakemeister and Silver.  I think these things are now working so am going to tackle the update.

For anyone that actually cares NIVO is currently running each and every parent game in 130u1 to determine if there's attract sound and if there needs to be a dip switch changed or in game setting to enable it.  I'm going through all the 0.106 vids to check for sound, sound quality and general picture quality.  Those that are dodgy will get redone. 

I already have the list of all the games added between the 2 revisions so once NIVO's check is done I can run those.  It's taking a little bit of time to get batch files working right - need to run mame with necessary settings, capture the mng using -mngwrite, capture the sound using -wavwrite, then convert the mng to avi (using mng2avi), combine it with the wav (using vdub) and then end up with a vid which will need manual editing to trim and resize. 

These vids seemed to be quite popular in 05/06 when they were first produced so I'm wondering if anyone is actually using them in their front end.  Note that these aren't the same as what Circo has produced - his is at a higher resolution and is of him playing the game.  These are generally very short clips taken from the attract sequence of a game.  So for those that are using them do you have any comments regarding the vids in general or particular games (too short, doesn't show the game, etc) and we can look at doing something about them.

Cheers
-cdbrown

[headkaze]

Most people are using the EmuMovies collection these days I believe. These are ingame videos with some gameplay and I think people prefer that. It took Circo a long time to play a bit of each game to create them and there are high quality versions available. Also HyperSpin requires the videos to be in flv format and Circo has already created an flv collection for that. Perhaps you could contact Circo and offer to help him do some updates?

[gonzo90017]

I'm glad you're going to be working on them again. I looked for your videos but couldn't find them anywhere!

[Circo]

CDBrowns are much smaller, we used to help distribute them until our official Mame set was released.  The videos talked about in this thread are very good if you have limited hard drive space or an older system.  They are also the exact attract scenes in the games wheras the EmuMovies set has a lot of actual gameplay because I wanted to make sure that there was sound in the previews and I could see what the game was like.  But they are not the authentic attract modes like cdbrown's were.

EmuMovies
HiQ 640x480 - 3961 files - 22GB
SQ 320x240 - 3961 files - 8.54GB

CDBrowns were:
XXX x 260 (native aspect) - 2907 files - 3.44GB

There is room for both I believe, and I fully support his project

[cdbrown]

Circo's set is great if you are using a screen with a decent resolution.  My set is better suited to tv screens or old arcade monitors with lower resolutions.  We had all vids set to a max res of 256x256 but maintained the aspect ratio.  The fit perfectly into a 800x600 res layout for mamewah - which is just what I need for my setup.  Also as Circo mentioned they are much smaller - 2907 vids are 3.44GB where Circo's are larger.  For those with better resolutions or want a higher quality clip then Circo's will suit you well.

Gonzo - the vids up to 106 are still available online, check the link in my first post.  As for the rest well that's just going to take some time.

The initial batch file set up is working such that it get's mame to produce the mng and wav and put them both in a specified folder before moving onto the next game.  I've got mng2avi to turn the mng into a series of pngs, but then the process stops due to vdub looking for a script file which doesn't exist and not entirely sure what is supposed to be creating it.

[NIVO]

id also like to pay respects to circo's set, a well done project. I'd like to echo cdbrowns sentiments. No harm for having options, besides its something we WANT to do and making use of our spare time when possible. We are moving forward, slow and steady. We may even throw up a sample here and there as we move along. Stay tuned!

[Circo]

I hope you don't mind if I just point out that the EmuMovies SQ videos work just fine at the lower resolutions If your preview box is less than 320x240 the front end scales it down

I wanted to avoid any confusion.

Ok back to the topic my apologies

[Cakemeister]

Hello,

If the mng2avi program does not detect an attract loop, then no .vdb file is written and no .avi file is produced.

I suggest letting the batch process run for as many movies are created, then progressively lengthening the -str parameter to MAME.

My batch.bat file:

Code:

@if "%1"=="" goto badparm
@if "%2"=="" goto badparm
@goto goodparms
:badparm
@echo This batch file requires 2 parmaeters:
@echo 1) rom name
@echo 2) resolution
@echo Please reread the directions on how to use this utility!
@pause
@goto end
:goodparms
@if not exist pngs mkdir pngs
@if not exist movies mkdir movies
@if exist movies\%1.avi goto end
@rem for reruns
@if exist snap\%1.mng goto norungame
@if exist nvram\%1.nv goto rungame
@mame %1 -window -resolution %2 -nothrottle -str 1 -nouse_bezels -nouse_backdrops
:rungame
time /T
mame %1 -window -mngwrite %1.mng -resolution %2 -wavwrite %1.wav -str 60 -nouse_backdrops -nouse_bezels
:norungame
@if not exist %1.wav goto nosound
mng2avi -log snap\%1.mng -wav_name %1.wav
goto finish
:nosound
mng2avi -log snap\%1.mng
:finish
@call vdb output.vdb movies\%1.avi
@del snap\%1.mng
@del %1.wav
@del /q output.vdb
@rem @move png.avi movies
@rem @ren movies\png.avi %1.avi
:end

My vdb.bat file:

Code:

@virtualdub\vdub /s"%1" /x
@if exist %2 del /q %2
@move output.avi %2

[TelcoLou]

I've never used them, but thinking about it, I'd LOVE to see authentic attract screens for each game as they're selected.

Count me in as VERY interested!

[cdbrown]

Cheers for that Cakemeister.  I was originally just fooling around with it using a low -str so it would be a quick process.  I also tried to turn off the loop detect option in hope that it would just create the vid what ever length I had set -str to be, but I guess this isn't the case.

The batch is pretty much the same as mine except I've modified the older version so there's still references to max frames and such which doesn't get used.

[NIVO]

Just a quick little update: about 95% through the parent rom list by hand, so it has taken quite alot of time. Good news is we are almost ready for phase 2. 

Game On!

[cdbrown]

Yep I've reviewed all the previous vids to check out if they had sound or not.  We've nearly got a complete list of all parents which show if the game has attract sound and whether or not you need to go into the service menu to enable or increase the volume.  For those with the attract in the dips these are always enabled - but doesn't necessarily mean they work.

Also have the batch process setup to auto run the game, record the mng and wav, split the mng into pngs and then detect the loop and finally run vdub to combine the wav and mng into an avi using lame mp3 and xvid codecs.  However I'm struggling in getting the process to work with my own xvid settings.  Previously Silver produced a nice little installer file which had a pretty front end to input the choices - I can't seem to get my hands on it so aren't able to duplicate the vcodec.dat file.  Using -movievideo 4 allows me to use the vcodec.dat along with the standard commands of mng2avi, so I have been able to apply the smart resize filter using this in vcodec.dat

Code:

VirtualDub.video.filters.Clear();
VirtualDub.video.filters.Add("smart resize (1.1)");
VirtualDub.video.filters.instance[0].Config(256,224,0,2,256,224,0x000000,"1 1 1 2 256 256 100 0 0 1 1 4 4 2 2");

I have not been able to reduce the fps from the standard 29 to 15 which we previously had.  The code for this is

Code:

VirtualDub.video.SetFrameRate(66667,1);

But mng2avi produced this in the vdb file

Code:

VirtualDub.video.SetFrameRate(16949,1);
VirtualDub.video.SetTargetFrameRate(30000,1001);

Cakemeister - is there a way to make mng2avi not spit out it's own FrameRate and use the one that's in the vcodec.dat?

[Cakemeister]

Okay, I made the requested change.

The updated zip file should be here.

[retrometro]

It would be fantastic if this much attention can be paid to other console sets there videos aren't as plentiful.  ...like dreamcast, n64, etc.

[lingpanda]

Looking forward to this! +1

[cdbrown]

Been slowly progressing with this, nearly done the full review of all the games to check for sound and which ones require us to go in and change the ingame settings for sound.  Also allowed us to get a proper list of which games actually work.

Currently fiddling with virtualdub to get the right settings so we can match the old vids but currently struggling getting the audio part right. 

So far have got the smart resize filter sorted so it will resize the vid to a max 256x256 resolution while maintaining aspect ratio.  This is done ensuring the final res is a multiple of 4 and using bicubic filter mode.  The frames per sec have been chopped to be 15fps and the xvid is set to quantizer 3.  This gives a very close bit rate as the original for the video part.  Using the Lame MP3 codec, I've not been able to match the bitrate we had in the original vids, sometimes it makes the video length 4 times the source (due to the fps being 1/4) and sometimes it works.  I have a feeling it may be just those games that don't have sound, but an wav file is still captured, so I may have to edit the batch process to delete the wav file before it opens vdub. 

NIVO has also been working through the u1, u2, u3 updates as they come out so will make things easy to keep up to date.

[cdbrown]

cakemeister - what are the different -movieaudio options?  I think 1 is the default mp3 setting, 4 disables, is there one that allows me to use the settings in vcodec.dat?

[Cakemeister]

cakemeister - what are the different -movieaudio options?  I think 1 is the default mp3 setting, 4 disables, is there one that allows me to use the settings in vcodec.dat?

-movieaudio 2 uses acodec.dat.

[cdbrown]

Thanks Cakemeister that was it.

After much stuffing around with mng2avi the ini settings, virtual dub and the various outputs it created, it looks like I've finally got the correct vcodec.dat and acodec.dat settings to create the vids like before.  The audio bitrate and every thing is the same, but the video bitrate is slightly increased giving a better picture with only a small increase in file size.  So production on the videos will commence shortly.  No estimate on timeframe though as I currently don't have a lot of time to dedicate to the manual editing of each video before release.

[cdbrown]

Well looks like there is a bit of a problem.

It would seem that the resolution for a number of games isn't quite right.  So when mngwrite or aviwrite is used it will produce a video set to the resolution that mame reports in game.  However when using the -verbose tage, the actual resolution being displayed on screen is different.

For exampe ar_bowl (SportTime Bowling) the resolution according to mame is 671x216 which  means the game display is about 3 times as wide as it is tall.  With keepaspect (which is supposed to maintain the aspect ratio of the game) it produces a res of 671x503.  So it looks good on the screen while the game is running, but the video produced is the wide and short.  It would seem there are quite a few like this so it's going to take some time to actually go through and find out which ones are grossly wrong (some are just a few pixels different).

[holdennut]

A big thumbs up from me. 

[cboy]

I cant wait for this! 

[cdbrown]

Am continuing with producing the vids and noting down which ones are clearly coming out with the wrong resolution so that I can go back to the later and try to get vdub to change the aspect before it resizes.  Some of the vids are coming out horribly distorted because mame is reporting the incorrect resolution.

[FrizzleFried]

How does one produce vids with hardware that changes resolutions?   I tried making a video of a GNET game and it comes out at 25% the window size...and REAL SLOW.

[NIVO]

those are some of the current issues we are having as well Frizz. Waiting to see what future revisions of mame do first and make sure its not on our end(unlikely).

[cdbrown]

Problems arise due to the resolution change of some games - mainly the screen test pattern is a different res to the actual game and aviwrite can't handle it.  This has been an issue for quite a while and we just can't capture the video of certain games.  When using the mng automated process I've got set up, the prog checks the mng for a loop, but due to the res change it falls over and just moves to the next clip.

I have read that the only real way to get a vid is to get the game going and then hit SHIFT+F12 to start capturing an mng.  Unfortunately there won't be any audio.  If you were that interested you could put -aviwrite in the command line and then try and sync up the video to the audio afterwards.  Not tried either procedure yet.

[danfman]

How are things going cd?

[cdbrown]

Not done anything on this for the last month or so - work has been getting in the way of trying to work around this resolution problem.  keepaspect displays things nicely on screen, but the internal resolutions mame has seems to display things stretched either vertically or horizontally and that is what is being output when recording an avi from within mame or the mng.  My auto resize that I run in vdub will need to be changed some how so that I input my own h and v settings.  All manual stuff and I'll need to know the mame resolution, the keep aspect res and then the calculate the resize resolution.

[GaryMcT]

What's a good example game that causes problem?  Is Tekken a good example?  What are your command-line options when you are generating the movies?  I might be able to have a quick look at workarounds in the code to make it generate all the frames at the same resolution.

[cdbrown]

From my post above

For exampe ar_bowl (SportTime Bowling) the resolution according to mame is 671x216 which  means the game display is about 3 times as wide as it is tall.  With keepaspect (which is supposed to maintain the aspect ratio of the game) it produces a res of 671x503.  So it looks good on the screen while the game is running, but the video produced is the wide and short.  It would seem there are quite a few like this so it's going to take some time to actually go through and find out which ones are grossly wrong (some are just a few pixels different).

It's all in a batch file but here's the main line for mame to run and export the mng

mamepp %1 -mngwrite %1.mng -wavwrite %1.wav -str 240

[ryantheleach]

dont know if this will work but headkaze said this a while back, he may be able to help.

Another thing I would appreciate a test of is setting the switchres to 1 which will change the res for each game. Now CPW detects a video mode change and then has a delay (called "Display Change Delay" in the Display Options) which is triggered, then after the delay it will re-adjust the windows to the new resolution.

this was in regards to his control panel wizard, but maybe he has some code he cans hare o solve your problem?