Post subject: Removing savestate base from movie
Former player
Joined: 7/6/2004
Posts: 155
I have just recorded a movie and want to submit it. The submission form rejects it saying that it is from a savestate instead of from power on. I tried to make it from power on by hitting F11 (power). If it is not from the first frame, it should be possible to add a header saying that it is from power on and then adding some frames of me doing nothing until it coincides with the original savestate. I would like to know the details of how to do that. Also, is the validation script that checks if a movie starts from a savestate available? That way I could check my movie against it and fix it until the script accepted it before attempting to submit it again.
Player (71)
Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden
Start to record a new movie and just hexedit the lost peices into your final project. Could that solve it?
Former player
Joined: 7/6/2004
Posts: 155
That's the idea. I want the script so I can know what to change specifically. Also, I don't know how to start a movie in a way that it would like, and I don't want to submit a bunch of junk movies just to try to figure out what it likes and what it doesn't like.
Editor, Active player (296)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
When you start recording a movie, look carefully at the dialog that asks for the filename and such.
Active player (410)
Joined: 3/16/2004
Posts: 2623
Location: America, Québec
Your best hope is Nesmock, hex-editor and this page, http://tasvideos.org/FCM.html
Post subject: Hex editor
Former player
Joined: 7/6/2004
Posts: 155
I had started recording the movie with shift+F5, not the menu. I started a new movie using that menu and cut and pasted it over my old movie. Now it was accepted as a valid submission. I filled in the number of frames manually. The movie now has 02 = Recorded from reset and the first 2 actions are 81 = reset 80 = nop I don't know why it has a nop there, but the empty movie that I pasted had it. Or should I have put 82 = power ? It is a good thing that you have that documentation there. (I still think that explicitly saying what a movie should have would be useful. Are the above 2 the only requirements, or does it also check that the save state is empty? Depending on how strict it is, does it allow the movie to start with an 82 instead (of course allowing for extra bits set for skipping frames and such)?) It is good that FCEU uses run length encoding. That was one of my gripes with Nesticle. Thank you.
Post subject: Re: Hex editor
Editor, Active player (296)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
scubed wrote:
Are the above 2 the only requirements, or does it also check that the save state is empty?
FCEU always generates a savestate.
scubed wrote:
Depending on how strict it is, does it allow the movie to start with an 82 instead (of course allowing for extra bits set for skipping frames and such)?)
It expects to see control event 1 or 2 (reboot or power cycle) before the first button event. And it also checks the bit in the header.
It is good that FCEU uses run length encoding. That was one of my gripes with Nesticle.
You are certainly the first person to say that...
Post subject: Re: Hex editor
Active player (410)
Joined: 3/16/2004
Posts: 2623
Location: America, Québec
Bisqwit wrote:
It is good that FCEU uses run length encoding. That was one of my gripes with Nesticle.
You are certainly the first person to say that...
And will probably the only one ;)
Former player
Joined: 6/27/2004
Posts: 550
Location: New York
Why, is Nesticle considered to be the best NES emulator? Or can its movies just run really long? I remember I used to use it all the time, until I found FCEU.
Former player
Joined: 7/6/2004
Posts: 155
It was one of the earlier most compatible emulators. I haven't used many different emulators since using it, but I think it had movie recording before most also. It suffered from desync problems though. Once FCEU came out, I switched to it (especially since my main computer runs Linux). It is a much better emulator (also considering that it is open source, has Blip's patch, and supports even more games than Nesticle).
Joined: 10/3/2004
Posts: 138
Also because it was fast as hell, and free. I remember running it at full speed on my old P133, and I'm sure people ran it on slower Pentiums and even fast 486s. Same reason Genecyst and Callus were popular - they ran fast on the hardware around at the time. FCEU takes a much faster machine because it's more accurate, plus NESticle had a lot of asm. I don't know anyone who claims NESticle to be the best emulator, currently.