The record from snapshot doesn't work, when I record from snapshot and then try to play it, it says "The movie has been stopped to load this non-movie snapshot.
Oops. Well, at least I know exactly how to fix this bug, unlike the other ones.
After fiddling with the plugins for about 15 minutes I managed to get it to work. Then I closed the emulator, and then I opened it again. And then the settings I used wouldn't work anymore... And then I fiddled for another 45 minutes until I gave up.
Some more specific information would help... Settings are saved and restored exactly as they were when you closed the emulator, unless you moved some pluginsn around or unless by "I closed the emulator" you mean "it crashed".
By work, I mean got the movie (spezzifer's Mario 64) in sync. Normally it desyncs on me immediately. I messed around with the config until it worked, but then I had no sound, some further fiddling yielded me sound and sync. Then I exitted cleanly.
15 Minutes later I attempted to play the movie again without messing with the plugins, it desynced in the same manner. I have since been unable to get it working.
The settings I had when it worked was Jabo's Direct3D8 1.6, Jabo's DirectSound 1.5, N-Rage 1.6, Hacktarux RSP
Direct3D8: resolution (lowest)
Hacktarux: use Audio Plugin for Aline (Azimer's WIP one)
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
I got a rom loading error when loading Maza's movie, even though I use the same rom stated. Very weird.
It says that Maza recorded with Super Mario 64 (U) (!) while my rom is Super Mario 64. Even though Mupen tells me my version is the same as Maza's. Yet his movie plays fine.
BTW! Where can I get Jabo's DirectSound 1.6?
I cannot get AVI recording to work, it just dumps a huge empty no-frame avi :(
Well, it dumps something, but for some reason everything but virtualdub totally chokes on the avi, and it does not seem to uphold the given resolution (320x240) I tell it to use?
It seems to crash if the N64 wants to change resolution or clipping window :P
OK, thanks, I'll try some tests with variations of these plugins and their settings on that movie and see if I can get it to not stay in sync.
TNSe wrote:
I cannot get AVI recording to work, it just dumps a huge empty no-frame avi :(
Yeah, AVI recording only seems to work for very short AVIs right now, and not always. I'm working on it...
Highness wrote:
I got a rom loading error when loading Maza's movie, even though I use the same rom stated. Very weird.
The wrong ROM name is stored in the movie. If Maza updates his movie with the new version that will be fixed.
Highness wrote:
BTW! Where can I get Jabo's DirectSound 1.6?
Download Project64 1.6 and install it and look in the Plugin folder of what it installed.
OK, thanks, I'll try some tests with variations of these plugins and their settings on that movie and see if I can get it to not stay in sync.
I have since messed with it a bit more, and have gotten it to work again. These settings were:
Same Graphic, Same Sound, the 1.82 version of the Input, and the same RSP.
I went in and disabled the mempak.
Then I closed the emulator and reopened it, then I had to reenable the mempak.
Then I closed the emulator and reopened it, now I can't get it to sync again.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Hmm, the music sounds terrible - what sound plugin did you use? (Or maybe it's from the codec? The non-music sound effects sound good.) Also it looks like it's outputting a little extra bar of stuff on the top and bottom, I think that is fixable. The actual graphics in the movie look fine though.
Hmm, the music sounds terrible - what sound plugin did you use? (Or maybe it's from the codec? The non-music sound effects sound good.) Also it looks like it's outputting a little extra bar of stuff on the top and bottom, I think that is fixable. The actual graphics in the movie look fine though.
The music is fine during normal play, but gets corrupted when put into the avi.
The stuff on top is due to GDI copy, as I am not sure if the glN64 plugin supports direct frame fetching, and not having the toolbar menu will crash, but toolbar disappears when recording avi... weird stuff there too. The bottom part is because I extend the movie from 320x216 (which the emulator for some reason outputs, when asked to do 320x240) to 320x240.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
Hm, after testing the Glide plug-in that came with version 3, I closed the ROM and everything in the emulator went dead. The menus pulled down, but they were ineffective; the flags were there for the ROMs, but there were no names and wouldn't load. I had to click the red X in the corner to get it back in shape. Maybe it's because I headed for the "Options" menu too fast; I don't know.
Edit: And frame advance, assigned to the spacebar, isn't working. It gets out of paused emulation;, beyond that, it's not doing a bloody thing.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
I had to click the red X in the corner to get it back in shape. Maybe it's because I headed for the "Options" menu too fast; I don't know.
Some of the plugins have extremely buggy options dialogs. (And the Mupen64 GUI itself is also still somewhat unstable.) It's safest to only make changes when a game isn't running and restart between changes, although for most plugins that isn't necessary. (EDIT: and I've seen this exact same bug myself on the original Mupen64 1.5, sometimes this plugin seems to prevent the GUI from loading correctly.)
Ferret Warlord wrote:
And frame advance, assigned to the spacebar, isn't working. It gets out of paused emulation;, beyond that, it's not doing a bloody thing.
I tried this, and the only trouble I encountered was that it's a little tricky to assign Space to a hotkey. Besides that it worked fine. What happens when you press and release it while the game is not paused? That should pause the game if it's working right. (If not... it could be a simple bug somewhere but maybe it's an OS-specific issue as I haven't been able to reproduce it myself.)
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
As I said before, it does nothing. It doesn't pause when running, merely unpauses when I stopped it already. I tried using shift for it, but the effects were the same.
However, one interesting side effect I've noticed after unpausing through frame advance is that the status at the bottom remains at "Emulation paused" even though it's running fine. Pressing the pause button will still halt the emulation again, and pressing it once will bring everything back to normal.
Edit: And I'm using XP. Strange though: I managed to get it working by switching between open windows. I couldn't get it back, though.
Edit the Second: And, oddly enough, it's running at the highest speed it can manage; the speed limiter ain't doing a dosh garn thing.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
I think this is a multithreading issue, where it only works if your computer happens to switch threads in the right order. So depending on the speed of your computer, various things like other programs or window ordering could change whether it works. I'm going to try merging the Mupen64 GUI and emulation threads, because having them separate is causing way too many problems like this, and I don't really see any benefits to them running in separate threads.
Only 1 plugin that I have tried successfully produces AVI output, and thats glN64....
But the screenshot functionality works perfectly in all cases it seems... could you perhaps use the code behind the screenshot functionality to produce the image output to the AVI?
But the screenshot functionality works perfectly in all cases it seems... could you perhaps use the code behind the screenshot functionality to produce the image output to the AVI?
Ah, good idea. I hadn't noticed before but for some reason there are two completely different functions that the graphics plugin should provide for capturing the screen data, the one that's used for screenshots apparently being better-supported. Possibly it's much slower, but if it always makes a correct AVI without crashing then that's still a big improvement.
It's also possible that the screenshot function reconstructs the entire scene whereas the animation function just updates existing data.
I don't think I will want to use the screenshot function, IF the animation function still renders into some kind of buffer that can be captured.
Hmm... on closer inspection, it looks like neither of the functions are implemented by the plugin, and the emulator is substituting its own code to capture the screen in both cases. (And taking a screenshot causes crashes for me with plugins that would also cause the AVI capture to crash.)
Because there's no other interface for it to access the back buffer to get the rendered image, the emulator uses the front buffer instead, which means it will even capture things like the mouse cursor or other windows if you move them over the game screen. I don't think this can easily be fixed inside the emulator. Modifying glN64 is a possibility, however... I've been avoiding getting into that, but maybe it will be easier than whatever alternative hackery I would otherwise try to fix up the AVI capturing (although that should probably be done too to support non-glN64 plugins).
I'm trying to get it to play the movie at http://spezzafer.home.att.net/sm64.zip , but it seems to work completely randomly.
So far, I haven't found any logic whatsoever as to what settings I need to have with the plugins so that the movie plays.
About 30 tries ago, the movie actually started when I set the "interpreter" mode on in the RSP plugin. Excited, I turned it off to test whether it was the cause, and the movie desynced again. I turned it again on, and the movie still desynced. So that much for that theory.
This is as far as it gets. The demo will continue to run, and eventually the hand icon disappears.
To me, it seems like there's a 98% random chance that in the very beginning, the emulator will fall several frames behind the movie, causing the movie to attempt to start the game (click Mario's eye or whatever) before the game allows it.
This may seem quite simplistic, but instead of relying on the emu to generate the movie couldn't you just capture the playback?
My technique for making a PC video worked really well, and that was just Svid out on vid card to Svid in on capture card. I know it would be nicer to leave the emu movie capturing process in the background without actually having to let it run in realtime, but sometimes things are more trouble than they're worth. My method creates a nice, high bitrate, good resolution NTSC video, without the worry of video or audio desynchs.
Anyway, keep working on it though. mupen64 seems to be a solid emulator otherwise.
This may seem quite simplistic, but instead of relying on the emu to generate the movie couldn't you just capture the playback?
Capture what playback?
On this site we concentrate on tool-assisted movies. Tool-assistance kind of requires the use of an emulator. More information at:
http://tasvideos.org/WhyAndHow.html
I'm surprised though, if you have posted 21 posts on this board without coming to understand this yet.
This is as far as it gets. The demo will continue to run, and eventually the hand icon disappears.
To me, it seems like there's a 98% random chance that in the very beginning, the emulator will fall several frames behind the movie, causing the movie to attempt to start the game (click Mario's eye or whatever) before the game allows it.
