more mamewah layout: movie capabilities requests:

[papaschtroumpf]

MinWah, I have a couple of requests reagrding using movies in layouts.

1) when using the attract movies in preview mode (where they start replacing the artwork after a few seconds), in the case of vertical games the rest of the artwork area is filled with grey, and I would rather it be black. Is there a way to change that? I couldn't figure it out .

2) when using movies as a screensaver they ignore the screensaver form and play full screen. The MAME attract movies as well as the in-gamemovies I made for my PC games don't have a good enough resolution to be played full screen, and I would rather be able to constrain them to a smaller box, like I would do with artwork. I also would like to be able to display the title of the movie below it, just like I can defined the box and an area for the game name when the screensaver is set to slideshow.

Of the 2, the second one is the most annoying to me,

[Minwah]

1) What do you have keep_movie_preview_aspect set to?  I don't see any grey...

2) Yep, this was done on purpose...basically I didn't have the attract mode movies in mind for this (rather stuff like Arcade '84 etc).  I guess I can add the option for either...

[papaschtroumpf]

I'm not at my cab but I think it's set to "keep game aspect ratio" or something like that. I'll try the other settings.
As for the screensaver, I'll be patient...

[Minwah]

I'm not at my cab but I think it's set to "keep game aspect ratio" or something like that. I'll try the other settings.

That's the right one...the movie area should be resized to exactly the same size as your screenshots.  So perhaps it is revealing something grey (behind) which is part of your layout?

[Popcorrin]

I had the same problem. All you have to do is go into the layout designer and open your mame layout.  Select the your snapshot image box and change the background color to black instead of grey.

[papaschtroumpf]

that's what I tried to do but couldn't figure out before I posted originally. Must have been too tires or not awake enough    I'll try again.

[johnnysmitch]

yeah, the background option is what you want to change - had the same [non]issue myself - change the background of the image box to black and you'll be livin'

[papaschtroumpf]

nope sorry, I can't. The Transparent, Color, etc... menu items are greyed out for Artwork#1. I can change them for artwork#2 if I want but not #1. The only object property I can change is the alignment.  

Edit: by the artwork#1 container is currently defined as transparent, but making it black would work to... if I could!

[Minwah]

nope sorry, I can't. The Transparent, Color, etc... menu items are greyed out for Artwork#1. I can change them for artwork#2 if I want but not #1. The only object property I can change is the alignment.  

Edit: by the artwork#1 container is currently defined as transparent, but making it black would work to... if I could!

Could you post the layout & I'll take a look?

[Popcorrin]

I think you are in the wrong menu section.  You need to go under Background menu section not Object Properties and select color.

[papaschtroumpf]

I think you are in the wrong menu section.  You need to go under Background menu section not Object Properties and select color.

I have to change the color of the entire background which is "behind" the background picture?
I do have it set to grey but I didin't hink it mattered since I thought the background picture (mame-main.jpg) covered it.
I'll give it a try.

Edit: gave it a quick try before going to work and it worked. Doesn't really makes sense to me but thanks for the help guys!

[Minwah]

I have to change the color of the entire background which is "behind" the background picture?
I do have it set to grey but I didin't hink it mattered since I thought the background picture (mame-main.jpg) covered it.
I'll give it a try.

Edit: gave it a quick try before going to work and it worked. Doesn't really makes sense to me but thanks for the help guys!

That explains it  I think what is happening is this: when the layout is loaded I just set the background of the PictureBox where I display the movies to the same colour as the background of the main form.  I was thinking that the PictureBox would always be the same size as the movie, but I must be resizing the movie leaving the PictureBox it's original size...

[Scoobie]

I get that changing the background color removes the grey...
Now, how can I resize each movie, so there is no blank space at all on either side of the video?

[papaschtroumpf]

Another related request: can we have a small intervall in between each movie in the screen saver? some of the transitions can be brutal otherwise  
Maybe a small configurable delay? I think 2 seconds would be about right for my use.

[Minwah]

Now, how can I resize each movie, so there is no blank space at all on either side of the video?

Set keep_movie_preview_aspect no in mamewah.ini - this'll stretch the movies to fill the arwork box.

[Minwah]

Another related request: can we have a small intervall in between each movie in the screen saver? some of the transitions can be brutal otherwise  
Maybe a small configurable delay? I think 2 seconds would be about right for my use.

There should be a delay of ~1 second atm - I'll have a look at...

Edit: It waits a max. of 1 second atm...that explains why it is sometimes 'brutal'  I've hard-coded a gap of 2 seconds exactly - that should do.

[Minwah]

2) Yep, this was done on purpose...basically I didn't have the attract mode movies in mind for this (rather stuff like Arcade '84 etc).  I guess I can add the option for either...

Option added

[papaschtroumpf]

You're the man!

[Popcorrin]

MinWah, I have a couple of requests reagrding using movies in layouts.


2) when using movies as a screensaver they ignore the screensaver form and play full screen. The MAME attract movies as well as the in-gamemovies I made for my PC games don't have a good enough resolution to be played full screen,

Papaschtroumpf, how did you go about making in game movies of your pc games?

[papaschtroumpf]

I used Fraps ( http://www.fraps.com/ $30) . It allows you to capture what's on your screen as an *uncompressed* movie, so you need lots of hardrive space (a full 10 rounds of Armagetron filled up 12G!)
I then used virtualDub ( http://www.virtualdub.org/ free) with the DixV Pro codec (http://www.divx.com/ $20 but there is a free version too).
I have a fairly poweful machine (XP2400+, 764M RAM, GeForce4  4800) so I was able to capture a trates of 20 to 30 frames per seconds.

The only movie that I'm not happy with is Amagetron: for some reason the floor looks terrible after DivX compression.

Hope this helps. It's a really simple process, although somewhat time consuming: since I wanted ingame movies, you want to get a movie with a couple of cool moves and not dying stupidly, so you have to give it a few trys, then the DivX encoding stage takes quite a long time, especially since I did 2-pass encoding (about 40 minutes for the Armagetron movie).

[Popcorrin]

Thanks for the response.  I used to make some DivX movies but it has been awhile and I do remember how it used to be quite time consuming.  I might give it a go this w/e if I get some spare time.