Final Fantasy VII Original FMV question...

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No, actually. I load the files up with adobe premiere, and have the preview window operational. When the movies are being played in the window, directshow filters automatically come into function. However, if you have the movie stopped and just skip ahead to the desired frame, you can see the movie in the form it would look like without any enhancements. Also, the thing about the YUV/RGB offscreen directshow options is that they seem to be able to be messed around with in only older versions of windows. Such as windows 98.
 
I apologize for slightly taking this off-topic, but this is related to how well the codec works in DX9.....

First, a quick question to those of you who are able to view FF7PC's movies IN-GAME, and are using DirectX9.0/9.0a/9.0b:

...what version of the Duck Truemotion codec are you using?!  And for that matter, what are the names of the files that make up the codec, and where are they installed on the hard drive? Also, date/timestamps on the individual files would be very helpful as well.

Why am I asking?  I'm getting REALLY unusual behavior from the Truemotion codec.

I believe I've either got a corrupted codec that the normal DirectShow installer won't overwrite (because of the fact that DirectX Installers will refuse to do the actual file copying if they detect a newer version of DX installed, which is what I think is happening here), or one that can't interface with DX9 or FF7 correctly.... hence the need to get information on the individual filenames that are installed that work on "modern" systems, and the timestamps of them.

Here's the symptoms:

I can't get the movies to play IN-GAME in either hardware or software mode....but it plays the audio portion of the movies back just fine.  AND, outside of the game, windows plays the movies just fine.  However, this means that when I start up the game, I hear the Eidos FMV play, but the screen freezes after the audio is finished, and the entire game locks up.  Hardware-wise, the only major thing that was changed was that I replaced my old V3 PCI with a V5 AGP that I bought off ebay; however, this problem also occurs with my V3 PCI.

The problem persists even after a complete uninstall-reinstall of FF7pc, and a reinstall of the Directshow stuff off the FF7 Install disc....

Of course, this is on Win98SE, so I don't have to deal with compatibility mode stuff.....
 
"tm20dec.ax" - This is the truemotion 2.0 decoder file. If you don't have this, then the audio will play, but the video will just be black. Goku7: It seems like you're missing this file...maybe..or at least the symptoms seem similar.

"tm2a.dll" and "tm2x.dll" - These are the two dll's used for developing truemotion videos. Not required for playback.

You can find all of these in "X:\windowsdirectory\System" for win98, and it should be in "X:\windowsdirectory\system32" for winxp/2k.

I am using dx9 right now, and ff7 can play the truemotion fmv's just fine...and I'm using winxp! Have you tried installing any of the truemotion patches I have posted in this thread? Maybe that would help you out. Also, try to get the duck truemotion package from eidos and install it, if you haven't already.
 
"tm20dec.ax" - This is the truemotion 2.0 decoder file. If you don't have this, then the audio will play, but the video will just be black. Goku7: It seems like you're missing this file...maybe..or at least the symptoms seem similar
Click to expand...

I appearantly have a copy of tm20dec.ax in my C:\Windows\System directory, so it should work....yet it doesn't. -_-

File version is 2.0.6.3.  And oddly enough, I don't have a timestamp listed for the File Creation heading.  File size is 132kb.

It is, however, listed as being modified on "Friday, April 23, 1999 10:22:00 PM"

I'll check out the Eidos pack and the other patches later, I barely have enough time right now to just post what I've posted.
 
lol having a 24 to 8bit colour convertion does actually clear up the picture somehow reducing the anti alaising artifacts at such a low resolution.
 
Well the task of converting PSX version videos and play them uncompressed looks pointless to me, i tried that and i didn't like the result too much work involved to see little difference and beside that having to insert the audio of the pc version, well too much time lost. Now the true question i pose is: Are the pc version movies when played on windows media player look so bad as in game? This can be argued but to me if the in game movies had the aspect of the windows media player movies i would be happy, so with this in mind i tried to look for the problem and it's quite simple the Truemotion codec doens't do space color conversion to 16 bit's and plays in a color mode that i don't remember now but if you put the Truemotion codec in dedug mode you could see that. Now i looked for other codecs to solve this "little" problem i reencoded the movies in several other codecs but the results weren't that good, the only one i did like was to reencode the movies with the "huffyuv" codec that has specific options to do space color conversion to the color mode FFVII PC uses, results where bether than the original so i still use this reencoded movies to play the game.
Other solution was to make the game run at 32 bits this not only improves movie quality but in game image quality problem is that this doens't work for everybody.
 
they play better in WMPlayer
the Truemotion codec combined with old Directshow calls and old programing skills in FF7 make the picture look worse in game,
 
Considering everything that has been said here, wouldn't it be easier to simply remake the FMVs from scratch? :wink:
 
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