Author Topic: Slow Mala EmuMovies Videos - Yes I've Searched (Read 9493 times)

markronz · « **on:** October 30, 2008, 09:16:43 pm »

Hello, I'm experiencing some problems with the game videos being slow in Mala. I have searched the forums here fairly extensively but I am still having issues. The sound speed is correct, but the picture lags behind.

First, here is what PC I am working with:
Windows XP
Windows Media Player 11
1.8Ghz P4 processor
1GB ram
256MB ATI Radeon 9200 video card
Most current Mala
Most current MameUI
EmuMovies collection (the new ones from the FTP server, encoded for xVid)
Virtually nothing else installed on the machine

I've searched through other postings, so I've tried some things so far. First I thought it was my video card not being powerful enough, so I upgraded (used to just have the 32MB onboard graphics card). Then I upgraded RAM from 256MB to 1GB. Neither of these things helped. Then I downloaded the xVid codec package and that did not help. Then I uninstalled xVid and installed the k-lite codec pacakge and that did not help either. When I play the videos in Windows Media Player they play fine and everything is in sync. I downloaded the Mala Standalone Video Player from this page: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=82577.0 and the videos even play in there correctly! I thought that was supposed to be the exact same thing as was in Mala! Also, I was originally using the HiQ collection of EmuMovies and these are REALLY out of sync. I switched to the Standard Quality ones and it gets a little better, however still not totally correct.

With all that said, I'm at my wits end. Really not sure what else I can try here. I thought my pc specs were fairly decent, so I'm not sure where to go with this other than to switch frontends.

Does anyone have any other suggestions for me to try?
Thanks a lot for any help you can lend.

loadman · « **Reply #1 on:** October 31, 2008, 01:29:57 am »

Quote

I downloaded the Mala Standalone Video Player from this page: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=82577.0 and the videos even play in there correctly! I thought that was supposed to be the exact same thing as was in Mala!

Interesting

Can you send me a sample video ? Or provide a link to download one?

markronz · « **Reply #2 on:** October 31, 2008, 08:26:54 am »

Sure, here is one of the HiQ videos. Please let me know if you need anything else, or if you need any more information.

Thanks

loadman · « **Reply #3 on:** October 31, 2008, 05:40:39 pm »

Quote from: markronz on October 31, 2008, 08:26:54 am

Sure, here is one of the HiQ videos. Please let me know if you need anything else, or if you need any more information.

Thanks

I can't play this video in the MaLaVideoTester or even in Windows Media player... Weird

Does anyone else have issues?

I will ponder............

nuka1195 · « **Reply #4 on:** October 31, 2008, 05:50:10 pm »

i think the file is corrupted. the zip is 6KB and the avi is 7MB according to 7zip.

loadman · « **Reply #5 on:** October 31, 2008, 08:33:04 pm »

Can you post it on a website or email it to me at loadman@malafe.net

cmoses · « **Reply #6 on:** October 31, 2008, 08:33:59 pm »

Can't help with any suggestions, but can confirm that they work. I am putting my machine together, HI Qualtiy videos ran fine on the following setup.

P4 2.8 Ghz
512 MB RAM
8MB on board video
latest MALA
latest MAMEUI
Windows XP, latest patches
Windows Media Player 11
Only XVID codec installed
EMU Movies from FTP HI Quality

How many services do you have running? Are you running anti-virus software? Are you connected to a network, do you have windows updates turned on? What resolution are you running MALA at? How big is the video area that you are playing the movies at?

Just some other things to check and consider.

markronz · « **Reply #7 on:** November 01, 2008, 01:36:59 am »

Hey, sorry about that everyone. I'm sure it would be much easier to help me if the video I uploaded had worked! I've posted it to my website here:
http://www.markronsman.com/1943.zip
Please let me know if you are still unable to download it correctly.

Cmoses, by services are you referring to the 'Services' section that is in the control panel under 'Administrative Tools'? If you are, I just went in there and there were 43 services that said they were 'Started'. Is that a lot? If so, does anyone happen to known the minimum necessary services you need to have running? Also, if I go into task manager there are about 20 processes running.

I do have an anti-virus installed currently (Avast) but if I stop the services for it, it does not seem to affect the video performance.

I do have the PC currently hooked up to an internet connection, but I do not have automatic updates turned on.

My resolution is 1024 x 768.

The size of the video area is fairly small I guess. Maybe takes up 1/6 of the screen.

If anyone thinks that the things I've mentioned above seem out of whack please let me know and I can try to change them. I'm open to anything.

cmoses · « **Reply #8 on:** November 01, 2008, 04:30:40 pm »

Markronz,

None of what you mentioned seems out of line. The system that I was using has about the same amount of services and processes. There are some threads on what services you can turn off to stream line windows. I have not done this yet and you should not have to either. These are really about getting the best performance out of MAME. Freeing up as many resources so that your emulators can have the most processing power. How is MALA running besides the video issue. Does the response when moving up and down the games list and switching emulators seem ok?

FrizzleFried · « **Reply #9 on:** November 02, 2008, 11:50:55 am »

Quote from: markronz on October 30, 2008, 09:16:43 pm

Hello, I'm experiencing some problems with the game videos being slow in Mala. I have searched the forums here fairly extensively but I am still having issues. The sound speed is correct, but the picture lags behind.

First, here is what PC I am working with:
Windows XP
Windows Media Player 11
1.8Ghz P4 processor
1GB ram
256MB ATI Radeon 9200 video card
Most current Mala
Most current MameUI
EmuMovies collection (the new ones from the FTP server, encoded for xVid)
Virtually nothing else installed on the machine

I've searched through other postings, so I've tried some things so far. First I thought it was my video card not being powerful enough, so I upgraded (used to just have the 32MB onboard graphics card). Then I upgraded RAM from 256MB to 1GB. Neither of these things helped. Then I downloaded the xVid codec package and that did not help. Then I uninstalled xVid and installed the k-lite codec pacakge and that did not help either. When I play the videos in Windows Media Player they play fine and everything is in sync. I downloaded the Mala Standalone Video Player from this page: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=82577.0 and the videos even play in there correctly! I thought that was supposed to be the exact same thing as was in Mala! Also, I was originally using the HiQ collection of EmuMovies and these are REALLY out of sync. I switched to the Standard Quality ones and it gets a little better, however still not totally correct.

With all that said, I'm at my wits end. Really not sure what else I can try here. I thought my pc specs were fairly decent, so I'm not sure where to go with this other than to switch frontends.

Does anyone have any other suggestions for me to try?
Thanks a lot for any help you can lend.

Welcome to my hell... this is EXACTLY the same issue I've been attempting to deal with for the last 2 months...

FrizzleFried · « **Reply #10 on:** November 02, 2008, 11:56:42 am »

To add what I know of this issue:

IT FIXES ITSELF...once in a while. Usually it will happen somewhere between going in to the setting to mess with things, dropping out of MALA to Windows and back, etc...but all of a sudden, the videos work great... but upon next boot they are back to to be lagged.

QBERT is a great video to test with as you can distinctly see the difference between the "hops" and the sounds. I estimate the video plays about 80% the speed of the sound.

I too can drop out of MALA and play the videos perfectly fine in Windows Media Player.

Upon Loadmans suggestion I re-downloaded all the XVID versions of the emumovies from their FTP site only to find the exact same problem after the fact...so don't bother re-downloading all those videos, it's NOT a problem in the videos... and based on what you said about the internal player running the vids fine separately, it sounds like there is SOMETHING in MALA itself not related to the videos that is causing this issue.

My rig is an AMD XP1800+ with a GB of RAM, plenty enough power to run these vids.

This is the last remaining ANNOYING bug in the front end and it's really really annoying.

markronz · « **Reply #11 on:** November 02, 2008, 04:27:22 pm »

This is really discouraging. I really do not want to have to switch to another front end and figure out how to use it. I really like Mala, and I would prefer to keep it.

Anyone else have any suggestions at all? Please?

loadman · « **Reply #12 on:** November 02, 2008, 05:36:53 pm »

Quote from: markronz on November 02, 2008, 04:27:22 pm

This is really discouraging. I really do not want to have to switch to another front end and figure out how to use it. I really like Mala, and I would prefer to keep it.

Anyone else have any suggestions at all? Please?

Suggestion? Yes,

As I can't recreate it I have asked FrizzleFried a few times to see if he has the same issue on another PC as a test.

I guess he has not had the time but if you could try it on another PC that would be super cool.

At least I can work out if this problem only occurs with certain hardware types, then I can action from there,

markronz · « **Reply #13 on:** November 02, 2008, 08:47:22 pm »

Sure, I will try it on my other machine as soon as I'm able to do so. Might be a day or two, but I'll let you know!

loadman · « **Reply #14 on:** November 02, 2008, 10:29:33 pm »

Quote from: markronz on November 02, 2008, 08:47:22 pm

Sure, I will try it on my other machine as soon as I'm able to do so. Might be a day or two, but I'll let you know!

Cool

mrclean · « **Reply #15 on:** November 04, 2008, 10:21:22 pm »

I had the same issue for a while.. just curious would it solve things if MaLa can accept "FLV" videos which hyperspin uses, those seem to work on my system and i was having the same lag / errors with the xvids.. just food for thought as circo released all the flv's pretty much

markronz · « **Reply #16 on:** November 05, 2008, 08:32:17 am »

Ok, I finally just had time to test it out on another machine. Other my real computer, there were no issues with the videos, and that was with a lot of other stuff running at the time. It seems a little unfair to compare the two computers since this one's specs are so much better than the other. Nonetheless, here are the specs from this machine:

Windows Vista Ultimate
Latest MAMEUI
Latest Mala
4GB Ram
AMD Athlon Dual-core processors X2 5600 both running at 2.87Ghz
Nvidia GEForce 8800 GTZ 768MB Video Card

But loadman, to answer your question, yes they work on another machine...

Also someone else asked if the rest of mala (scrolling, etc) seems to be working fine. That I can't give an honest answer to. It seems ok to me, and the speed of everything else is acceptable. The scrolling speed on this PC versus my primary MAME pc are way different, but I suspect thats due to the specs on this pc.

Also worth noting is that unlike FrizzleFried my problem never fixes itself temporarily. Mine just never works and the videos always lag behind, every time. I'd say they play at about 60% of the speed as the sound plays. Let me know if you need more information about either machine. I'm going crazy here trying to get this to work still, so any suggestions you could offer would be great

web.geek · « **Reply #17 on:** November 05, 2008, 02:31:13 pm »

Just a shot in the dark, since I haven't tried MALA, but I've had problem with other XVIDS before. Did you try updating the XVID codec.

Edit: Ooops. I should always read the OP more closely

loadman · « **Reply #18 on:** November 05, 2008, 06:28:03 pm »

Quote from: markronz on November 05, 2008, 08:32:17 am

Ok, I finally just had time to test it out on another machine. Other my real computer, there were no issues with the videos, and that was with a lot of other stuff running at the time. It seems a little unfair to compare the two computers since this one's specs are so much better than the other. Nonetheless, here are the specs from this machine:

Windows Vista Ultimate
Latest MAMEUI
Latest Mala
4GB Ram
AMD Athlon Dual-core processors X2 5600 both running at 2.87Ghz
Nvidia GEForce 8800 GTZ 768MB Video Card

But loadman, to answer your question, yes they work on another machine...

Also someone else asked if the rest of mala (scrolling, etc) seems to be working fine. That I can't give an honest answer to. It seems ok to me, and the speed of everything else is acceptable. The scrolling speed on this PC versus my primary MAME pc are way different, but I suspect thats due to the specs on this pc.

Also worth noting is that unlike FrizzleFried my problem never fixes itself temporarily. Mine just never works and the videos always lag behind, every time. I'd say they play at about 60% of the speed as the sound plays. Let me know if you need more information about either machine. I'm going crazy here trying to get this to work still, so any suggestions you could offer would be great

Thanks for that.

It is good to know it is definitely not video file related.

system01 · « **Reply #19 on:** November 06, 2008, 01:53:37 pm »

It never quite dawned on me, but I might have a similar problem.

Before I start:
I HAVE AN OLD 4400ti MANY BULGED CAPS.

The video on the FE works fine, both aspect and non-aspect, and all games play fine. But my screensaver does this. I have it pointed to the videos folder. It lags extremely bad. Those bullets in the 1943 vid above might take ~2s to travel. I always wrote this off as a crappy card. After reading the many griefs of Frizzle, I never thought they might be the same problem.

I just tried that 1943 vid here at work in MaLa, Mala screensaver, WMP, and MPC and it plays perfect in all.

markronz · « **Reply #20 on:** November 06, 2008, 06:39:13 pm »

To reply to someones earlier post, yes I've tried to get the new Xvid drivers as I stated in my original post.

On my MAME machine I've now tried three different video cards. I tried an ATI 32MB card, the integrated 64MB Intel video card, and the before mentioned ATI 9200 256MB card. All 3 perform the same and the videos still play slowly.

I think we've ruled out the videos as the source of the problem here. Also when I tested this out, I just copied the mame and mala folders from one PC to another. And on one PC it worked, on the other it didn't.

So that eliminates a few things as the cause of this problem. I'm still not sure how to proceed here. I'd love to get this figured out if someone else has any other ideas.

system01 · « **Reply #21 on:** November 07, 2008, 11:33:28 am »

Something I forgot to add is that I'm using the same CCCP codecs on both these machines.

@markronz
Are you using a regular version of XP?

markronz · « **Reply #22 on:** November 07, 2008, 08:54:05 pm »

Yes, my machine is using Windows XP Professional SP3

loadman · « **Reply #23 on:** November 07, 2008, 09:30:37 pm »

Quote from: markronz on November 06, 2008, 06:39:13 pm

So that eliminates a few things as the cause of this problem. I'm still not sure how to proceed here. I'd love to get this figured out if someone else has any other ideas.

Yes it would be nice to know what hardware and/or codec is causing you grief

markronz · « **Reply #24 on:** November 07, 2008, 09:57:52 pm »

What do you mean loadman? Is there some information that you still need from me? I have my hardware I'm using and my codec I am using listed above...

loadman · « **Reply #25 on:** November 07, 2008, 11:11:04 pm »

Quote from: markronz on November 07, 2008, 09:57:52 pm

What do you mean loadman? Is there some information that you still need from me? I have my hardware I'm using and my codec I am using listed above...

Thanks

But the real cause is still a mystery as I can't replicate it and it's not happening to most others.

I mean I wish I knew a easy solution for you.

I am going to try the lastest version of VideoLab for the next version of mala to see if that changes anything.

markronz · « **Reply #26 on:** November 07, 2008, 11:18:01 pm »

Ok sounds good. I'm sure you will keep us informed when the new release will be out. I will try to keep an eye out.

Thanks

SGT · « **Reply #27 on:** November 09, 2008, 12:47:26 pm »

Markronz,

Can you swap the video graphics adapter from the computer that works to see if the problem is related to specific video hardware or video drivers?

FrizzleFried,

What kind of video graphics adapter are you running?

mrclean · « **Reply #28 on:** November 09, 2008, 03:00:59 pm »

Just have MaLa work with the new "FLV" set that circo released !

markronz · « **Reply #29 on:** November 09, 2008, 05:26:47 pm »

Sorry mrclean, I missed your previous comment about FLV files in the mix back there. Does mala work with FLV files? If it does, I will try that out as soon as I have a few minutes...

markronz · « **Reply #30 on:** November 09, 2008, 08:51:22 pm »

I just tried using a few of the FLV files, but Mala doesn't play them at all. Anything thats an AVI still plays (slowly) but the FLV files don't even play. So is there something I'm missing? Or a setting some where?

I tried playing the FLV files in Windows Media Player and they work in there...

Thanks

FrizzleFried · « **Reply #31 on:** November 10, 2008, 02:15:11 pm »

Quote from: SGT on November 09, 2008, 12:47:26 pm

FrizzleFried,

What kind of video graphics adapter are you running?

ATI Radeon 9700 Pro

AMD XP1800+
2GB RAM

Running stock speeds.

SGT · « **Reply #32 on:** November 10, 2008, 05:33:40 pm »

Quote from: FrizzleFried on November 10, 2008, 02:15:11 pm

ATI Radeon 9700 Pro

Markronz also has an ATI Radeon albeit a 9200. I wonder if there is some incompatibiltiy between Mala and the ATI drivers that you and Markronz are using. If we could talk markronz into swapping out his video card from that PC that is not having the problem, it might tell us a lot.

Frizzlefried, have you tried the latest version of the Radeon driver for your 9700Pro? I think the latest version 8.10 was released less than a month ago.

markronz · « **Reply #33 on:** November 10, 2008, 06:05:15 pm »

Sorry haven't had time to swamp video cards yet. That might take me a while to do...

In the mean time, anyone know if FLVs are suppose to work in Mala? My guess is no...

markronz · « **Reply #34 on:** November 10, 2008, 06:07:46 pm »

Quote from: SGT on November 10, 2008, 05:33:40 pm

Quote from: FrizzleFried on November 10, 2008, 02:15:11 pm
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
Markronz also has an ATI Radeon albeit a 9200. I wonder if there is some incompatibiltiy between Mala and the ATI drivers that you and Markronz are using. If we could talk markronz into swapping out his video card from that PC that is not having the problem, it might tell us a lot.

Also, just wanted to mention that I already tried this with the onboard Intel graphics card in that PC and had the same issues. So I have already tried a different brand of video card and it did not help. I could try it with the verified working one from this other machine if you want, but as I said, might take me a bit...

SGT · « **Reply #35 on:** November 10, 2008, 06:23:32 pm »

Quote from: markronz on November 10, 2008, 06:07:46 pm

Also, just wanted to mention that I already tried this with the onboard Intel graphics card in that PC and had the same issues. So I have already tried a different brand of video card and it did not help. I could try it with the verified working one from this other machine if you want, but as I said, might take me a bit...

Well there went that theory. I wouldn't bother changing it out. Sorry I only now saw your post from Nov 6 where you tried different cards.

There has to be some common denominator.

I know you copied the actual Mala folder straight from one PC to another, but that doesn't rule out something in your Mala.ini that conflicts only with something specific on the computer that you are having trouble with. Have you tried a brand new folder with a fresh install of Mala, just to verify you have problems with the original default Mala settings?

I'm just grasping for straws since its apparently only happening on a few systems.

Dervacumen · « **Reply #36 on:** November 15, 2008, 10:26:07 am »

Rats. I was all excited to get a new bartop built this weekend and ran into this same issue while setting up Mala.
Videos work great outside Mala though.
I'll tinker around and report back if I find a solution.
Running TinyXP
ATI A7N8X
Radeon 9250
WMP 11
Xvid 1.1.3


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