SOLVED: Movies not playing

[rhedak]

Dear community,

I have a problem with my FF7. I bought the version from the Squaresoft store and tried running it and it was working (including movies).

Then I ran bootleg and modded it, including replacing movies. However now when I try to run the game no movies are working. Not even the Eidoslogo. After a few seconds it takes me to the start screen and I can click after "New Game", but afterwards it just stays on blackscreen.

Update: THe problem may be with video playback itself. I tried replacing Eidoslogo.avi with a random other video, then it was playing the sound (but the sound only). Do you have any ideas on how to fix that?

Update 2: After messing around a bit an reinstalling Ali's custom driver I got the Eidoslogo.avi to work again, but now it gives me the following error message: "Opengl renderer appears to be the microsoft software renderer. Your graphics drivers are probably not installed correctly. Expect extreme lag"
And as it says: it's really slow
Also the game opens first in full screen 640 x 480 and then inside that screen opens a window mode FF7. It's strange. I tried configuring it to window mode but yeah

Any ideas?

 

[Template]

Hiya Rhedak,
Can you post your App.log file for us? Need to see what the driver says about your hardware. Also, what version of windows please.

Most likely your hardware is a little on the old side, or new and needs to be properly configured. If it is just an issue with your processor doing the movie decoding, you can always try the SAFE option in bootloader for the movie player. I had an old pentium4 couple years ago that would run alllll the mods but not the FMV reconstruction from bootleg. Under Configure and in the plugins tab, there is a drop down box for the movie plugin with the safe option.

If your hardware is new, perhaps there are other things to look at, what is you main video processor?

 

[rhedak]

I am using a 2009 laptop on which I installed windows 8 x64

It's an Acer Aspire 5738
Intel Core 2Duo 2.2 GHZ
4 GB Ram
Direct X 11
ATI HD 4500

I tried activating safe settings but it changed nothing

App.log:

INFO: FF7/FF8 OpenGL driver version 0.7.11b
INFO: Auto-detected version: FF7 1.02 US English
INFO: Microsoft Corporation GDI Generic 1.1.0
INFO: GDI software renderer detected
INFO: No OpenGL 2.0 support detected, shaders won't be available
INFO: VBO not supported
INFO: PBO not supported
INFO: Subtractive blending not supported
INFO: No swap_control extension, cannot control framerate
INFO: NPOT textures not supported
INFO: Max texture size: 1024x1024
INFO: Number of texture units: 1
INFO: Original resolution 640x480, window size 1280x780, output resolution 1040x780, internal resolution 640x480
INFO: No NPOT texture support
ERROR: init_indirect failed, scaling and postprocessing will be disabled
INFO: internal resolution clamped to 1040x780
INFO: FFMpeg movie player plugin loaded
INFO: FFMpeg version SVN-r25886, Copyright (c) 2000-2010 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
INFO: No shaders, codecs with YUV output will be slow.
LOCK UNLOCK TEST
MATRIX INITIALIZE
INITIALIZE DD/D3D END
ERROR: could not open file E:\Games\Final Fantasy VII\ff7input.cfg
initializing sound...
creating dsound primary buffer
reading audio file
loading static sounds
sound initialized
INITIALIZING MIDI...
selecting device 0:Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth, mid=1, pid=27,
midi data type: GENERAL MIDI
using midi data file: E:\Games\Final Fantasy VII\Data\midi\midi.lgp
midiOutGetVolume returned: ffffffff
MIDI INITIALIZED
set music volume: 127
MIDI set volume: 127
100% of 127 = 127
set music volume: 127
MIDI set master volume: 100
MIDI set volume: 127
100% of 127 = 127
Entering MAIN
Exiting MAIN
START OF CREDITS!!!
INFO: E:\Games\Final Fantasy VII\movies\eidoslogo.avi; indeo5/pcm_s16le 640x480, 30.000000 FPS, duration: 12.933333, frames: 388
INFO: slow output format from video codec indeo5; 6
WM_CLOSE
END OF CREDITS!!!
Field Quit
MIDI stop - OK
resetting MIDI driver volume - OK
UNINITIALIZE DD
END UNINITIALIZE DD

 

[Template]

One thing I'm unsure about is your video drivers. If this is a brand new install of windows 8 you may not have finished updating everything and you may need to get an ATI driver from their website. That is probably the issue. If your 4500 is supported by atis recent updated drivers, try the 13.5 drivers because we know they work: http://www2.ati.com/drivers/beta/amd_catalyst_13.5_beta2.exe If not, use their legacy driver.

Failing the new driver:
Start by unchecking the shaders and post processing in configuration. They should run fine after that. Shaders are not very important for the game look... but they can cause it to crash np. If you have further issues try changing the resolution around. The PC version is really designed to run at 1280X960. Most likely 1040X780 which your app shows it attempted to play at is your native resolution, though, and that should be fine.

 

[rhedak]

Thanks, I actually managed to get them working now. The game is working, too. I can actually start it now!

However text windows appear to have been pushed together so letters overlap and stuff.
Also if I enable window mode the game still forces 640 x 480 resolution and then opens a window, which makes it really meaningless to enable window mode. Any fixes for this?

I will provide screenshots in a moment

My native resolution is 1366 x 768 btw

http://www.imageshost.de/img/png/78e0c0b2121ca8039f35048ef44cf7f5.png

Remark: The overlapping text also appears ingame, I just tried.

PS: Yeah I did a driver update and it helped

 

[Template]

Hmmm, my guess is that your Mods folder needs to be condensed. Did you install Menu Overhaul after bootleg? Look in FFVII/Mods and see if theres 2 folders or not, should only be 1, if theres 2 take the DK one and copy everything to the bootleg folder, then run bootloader and on the main tab there is a field for modpath. it should say bootleg not DK. If that's not the reason it's something close to it.

I know zilch about windowed mode but check the recent FAQ board posts, there was something about those issues recently. If you've got everything squared away, great. If you have any further issues: I'd definitely try setting it to play at either 1280X960 or your native resolution.

IF you are using texture chaching (which I recommend even though it causes textures to load a little slowly the very first time only, and you should have VBO and PBO off) anytime you make any changes to the MODS folder you will need to CLEAR the cache folder inside the MODS directory.

 

[rhedak]

Thanks for your help, I merged the mods folder and it's working now.

I'm still having issues with window mode, but that's not what this thread was about in the first place. So thanks for helping, I'm deeming this thread SOLVED  :-D