Post subject: Movie offset while playing?
Player (71)
Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden
I was thinking if it would be possible to implant some sort of frame offset when you are about to replay a movie. Sort of "Start to play movie at frame: x". For long runs it would be great. Also if you have to shut down your computer or what ever before you even menage to finish watching, this could be a good idea as well. I know it's possible with save states. But I always forget to make those before I shut down. Also.. This feature would be awesome for rewinding purpose as well, if it can be done in real time. Some times I miss a good part because of various reasons. It can be the phone ringing or a knock at the door. I'm not always too quick on the pause-key. There for I would like to see this feature along with sort of rewind feature as well. This would be great for all emulators with movie support.
Active player (278)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
Um... For an emulator to get to a certain frame, wouldn't it need to calculate the gameplay for all the frames before it? The only way I could imagine this working is if the emulator saves a state on EVERY frame. Do you really want tens of thousands of save states for one movie?
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Player (36)
Joined: 9/11/2004
Posts: 2624
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Um... For an emulator to get to a certain frame, wouldn't it need to calculate the gameplay for all the frames before it? The only way I could imagine this working is if the emulator saves a state on EVERY frame. Do you really want tens of thousands of save states for one movie?
You can work it like the turbo button, only without actually drawing the frames until you get to the frame in question.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day, Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Active player (278)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
I guess so... But there could be a long delay for it if your computer is slow and/or the time is far into the movie.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Player (71)
Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden
For me that would be good enough. Just knowing that I'm able to get to a certein point if I want to. :)
Player (36)
Joined: 9/11/2004
Posts: 2624
Not really, iirc the SNES runs off of a 1.9 something MHz machine. Assuming software emulation is 50x slower if and you have a 1 GHz box, that means 10x the speed. And I have a feeling the actual emulation is much faster than that because the Turbo button skips at 15x and doesn't even strain my box. (1.2 GHz)
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day, Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Former player
Joined: 8/12/2004
Posts: 651
Location: Alberta, Canada
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
And I have a feeling the actual emulation is much faster than that because the Turbo button skips at 15x and doesn't even strain my box. (1.2 GHz)
This could also because it uses frame SKIP to go at this speed...
Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1301)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
You could always set the frame skip to some really high number and hold turbo mode until it hits the desired frame, there's no way that an auto-skip-to-offset feature could do it any faster than that.
Player (71)
Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden
Ok. But for the lazy one though? Could someone implant a function that deactivates the turbo and pauses the emulator at a desired frame? Would be very handy when it comes to very long runs such as FF6 and Chrono Trigger.
Player (36)
Joined: 9/11/2004
Posts: 2624
BoltR wrote:
This could also because it uses frame SKIP to go at this speed...
All frame skip means is it calculates but doesn't draw the frame. If it didn't calculate the frame the game would play completely different.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day, Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Joined: 12/17/2004
Posts: 99
Location: Karlsruhe, Germany
Highness wrote:
Ok. But for the lazy one though? Could someone implant a function that deactivates the turbo and pauses the emulator at a desired frame? Would be very handy when it comes to very long runs such as FF6 and Chrono Trigger.
I have that patch in my unix own tree (see my patchset), so it should not be too difficult to add. Come on nintsuja, give this guy his wish ;-) cu Fabian
Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1301)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
I'll look at your patch. But it seems like what would be best is to save a snapshot every minute or so, then any frame can be jumped to in less than a fast-forwarded minute, and rewind also becomes possible. All this needs some place to go in the GUI though...
Active player (410)
Joined: 3/16/2004
Posts: 2623
Location: America, Québec
Maybe chapters like it will have in Zsnes can be the solution?