Carny_Priest

Ok, completed all of the factory cards for my collection. I celebrated by adding the Zaccaria cards to commemorate the upcoming release of Zaccaria Pinball for Steam. I'm a beta participant but I don't have much time at this point to figure out how to get it working with PinballX. Somebody else will probably beat me to it. I tested and folded in the cards I processed last year that do work. It's all up on Other Uploads/Carny/Z20160604.

New Stern logo to be used with tables from August, 2010 and later (Avatar). I extracted a vector-based logo from a Star Trek Pro manual and color matched to the logo on the Stern website. https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/any-graphic-designers-who-can-vector-a-stern-logo Old D. Gottlieb & Co logo to be used on tables prior to December, 1980 (before Asteroid Annie and the Aliens and Timeline). SVG- based logo on Wikipedia. Made background transparent and ensured the color from the original graphic was preserved and made opaque. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gottlieb_old_logo.svg Of course, if you are using multiple logos from the same manufacturer you will need to give them unique names which will then impact the default manufacturer filters. On my setup I disable Default Filters so that my menu will not have too many items. Sources will be on the FTP under Other Uploads/Carny

Figured out that Illustrator was exporting the background as transparent and not the white canvas/artboard. PinballX and my flash viewer use black backgrounds. So black text on a black background is not going to work. I did not keep any of my work from the earlier efforts unless I actually had to draw or do some substantial tracing. I went back through and re-cropped/re-drew all the problem Flash files from the original sources, and I added a few more cards. Everything is up on the FTP including all my interim work. Other Uploads/Carny/Z20160604. If it isn't there then it was not a problem card and you may find it in one of the earlier folders. That is, if I had the table installed. I don't have even close to all of them. Quality is pretty amped up so some may take a few seconds to load. Goldeneye is a good example but I think it is tolerable. Stern Spider-Man is a whole other degree. Takes way too long to load, so I am currently redrawing it. I'm also currently working on Stern Monopoly, and I have a handful of other Stern cards to follow: Harley-Davidson, POTC, and Shrek

You are using a VirtuaPin controller, right? I found that I had to map my Exit game button to something else to avoid conflicts with PinballX. I use antimicro, an opensource xpadder sort of solution, and setup a hotkey when I launch VP. Kind of kludgy but it works well.

Maybe this has what you are looking for: http://pinsound-community.org/forum/index.php?app=downloads&showcat=14

In Visual Pinball editor, menu bar Preferences -> Keys... Global Options, Axis Assignments I don't know what PinballX installs. A thorough installation for cabinets would have v9.92, Physmod_5, and v10.0. Settings for each version are stored in separate registries so you would have to tune all three. Because of changes to the physics engine over time, the values would be different. I'm used to it at this point, but, yeah, coming at it new the learning curve is really steep. I think gtxjoe posted some tutorials on YouTube. Might be good to take a look.

Nope. You set your buttons in VP Preferences -> Keys. Analog nudging and plunger should be supported in VP automatically but you may have to do some tuning. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Yep. I'm currently regenerating these cards once again. Hoping it's the last time. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Running 2.17, latest LAV for well over 24 hours straight. No stalls or freeze-ups.

Ok, I figured it out for myself. I'm new to graphics programs, and I did not know that Adobe considers the white background transparent. And PinballX applies a black background when displaying cards, so black text on a black background will not be viewable. Having an option to change the background color to white would fix it for the work I've done so far, but it would be no good in any other context. I'd still prefer black background anyway. Maybe I'll get around to fixing these cards at some point. Please mark thread as resolved.

v2.17 and latest released LAV, Windows Defender on. Attract mode ran all night.

I generated a bunch of media last year for the project vectorizing cards from PDF-based sources, cropping to the correct factory size, etc. Sadly, I found after generating all this media that that much was not viewable in PinballX. Most factory cards are black text on white background. And these display as all black in PinballX. I was fooled because when I was testing, they looked good when opening in a browser or using whatever specific Flash ActiveX component that AutoHotkey taps into. Granted, if I try to re-open or place any of these files in Adobe Illustrator it tells me that the file is in an unknown format and cannot be opened. The image looks corrupted if I try to extract images using swftools. It's bad since I'm using Illustrator to export into swf format in the first place. And it will not read in what it is writing out. Similar deal with Office Libre. Frustrating. It does not look like there are free tools to output what I want. So that this would not be a complete waste of time and storage space. I wrote a script that grabs the position and offsets of the PinballX backglass from Windows and PinballX.ini, displays the card image in a flash viewer on the backglass, and finally captures a screenshot to png. Looks good and will be properly scaled. I uploaded the output for all the cards I was having a problem with in the Carny folder on the FTP, folder Z20160528. However, my backglass is 16:9. Because PinballX scales png images, those captures will not look quite right if the user is running something different like 16:10 or 5:4. If your backglass is not 16:9 and you just gotta have some fresh cards, run the script on the bad Flash swf cards. CapCardNEWa displays on a white background and CapCardNEWablack on a black background. At least, now with some sort of solution in place. I'll continue generating some cards for newer tables I have added to my cab in the last few months.

So far, so good running with the latest LAV release. I've been running for close to 16 hours.

i5 3570k, SSD, 8GB RAM I'm about to update LAVfilters and try again here.

Alright. This requires ffmpeg to do the capture. I have an unusual setup. I have a Pinball 2000-style cabinet and I use ffmpeg to stream the DMD image to my localhost network loopback and then use ffplay to display the stream with a vflip filter so that it will be projected correctly on my playfield glass. Because I did not want to change how I have this setup I just captured from the same location where I usually run the DMD image. You will need to change the capture position, height and width to match your setup. There are few resolution choices that are more or less pixel perfect. The wrong choice can result in interference patterns, the screen door effect. I've got a spreadsheet that has settings for good looking results that account for the padding that PFX2 and ffplay requires. The initial capture that writes to DMD.mkv is almost a straight dump of frames to the file. It is basically unusable/unviewable in VLC, Avidemux, etc. FFmpeg can still process the stream. The second run of ffmpeg processes the final output file. It requires some scaling and cropping to get a result that is 4:1 aspect ratio for real DMD. You will want to remove the vflip filter. The manual bit is finding where to cut so that the output video starts at the very beginning of the attract loop. The -ss parameter can vary depending on the table. The issue with the script is getting control over FX2 to shut it down. I wound up just having to wait the two or three minutes it takes for ffmpeg to do the capture and then I shut down FX2 through its menu. Good luck.

I have not yet updated LAVfilters. I turned off Windows Defender. The playfield video stalled at some point during the night.

Hi, I'm revisiting this old project for a miniDMD window and flash slideshow viewer on the apron: I generated a bunch of media last year for the project vectorizing cards from PDF-based sources, cropping to the correct factory size, etc. Sadly, I found after generating all this media that that most were not viewable in PinballX. Most factory cards are black text on white background. And these display as all black in PinballX. They look good when opening in a browser or using whatever specific Flash ActiveX component that AutoHotkey taps into. I'm guessing that's the Flash Player plug-in that you may install into IE or perhaps comes with Windows 10. I noticed that PinballX installs Flash.ocx and I was wondering if a different version may work to display these cards. Granted, if I try to re-open or place any of these files in Adobe Illustrator it tells me that the file is in an unknown format and cannot be opened. The image looks corrupted if I try to extract images using swftools. It's bad since I'm using Illustrator to export into swf format in the first place. And it will not read in what it is writing out. Similar deal with Office Libre. Frustrating. All the media is up on the FTP in the folder references in the link above. It's not a total waste of time if it turns out that there is no good solution. I can write a script to display in a flash viewer upscaled to 4K and capture it to png and they will look fantastic. However, my backglass is 16:9. Because PinballX scales png images, those captures will not look quite right if the user is running something different like 16:10 or 5:4. The script can be modified and the collection re-captured but it would be easier if the swf files could be viewed directly. Thanks.

You want that sub-menu coming up every time you launch a game?

Maybe there will be a Steam Summer Sale soon. Or certainly July 18 (30th anniversary of Aliens). I tend to pick up newer tables when there is a sale. If it has to happen sooner, I can pass along my capture script for DMD videos but it is not automated. I never could figure out how to shutdown FX2 programmatically although it has not been a problem with my launcher script. Maybe it is something about FX2 being full screen instead of windowed. The output usually requires some hand editing so that the video starts right at the beginning of an attract sequence loop. I wouldn't want to use this for all 60 odd tables, but it was good enough for the few that I was missing. If anyone wants to take a crack at it, let me know.

Aero can be turned on and off programmatically, if you are inclined to write a script to do it.

No, on the FTP there is basically just media files and some custom scripts for use in the PinballX front-end. For any tables, directb2s backglasses, pinball software/emulators/tools/editors, you will have to go to other sites. Here's a couple:. www.vpforums.org www.vpuniverse.com

VP9 and VPX use separate registry keys, so you will have to go into Preferences/Video Options and set the appropriate resolution in BOTH programs. There are a number of options to getting these different versions working together in PinballX. A couple that are fully integrated: Use the main Visual Pinball system and set up your xml database with the alternateexe tab - makes it pretty easy to manage your media but I'm not sure Game Manager supports the alternateexe tag yet. Set up additional Visual Pinball systems in the Other Systems page in the Settings Wizard. Be sure you assign Visual Pinball as the System Type. You can keep your tables in separate folders or the same folder. Media associated with the table will have to go into the correct system media folders. Unless you use a tool that allows you to define symbolic links among your different Visual Pinball media folders. Some people go with this option to keep their collection organized but I think it requires more housekeeping.

Here you go: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45430846/PinballXVideoStalling.zip This is from my cab's install folder. I'm using v2.16. Attract mode set to show game for 90 sec. Using the LAV filters linked on the home page. This is not new. It's been an issue for months. It was happening even before I updated to Win 10. I generate a lot of my own videos. They use full color format which is not compatible with the built-in Windows codec. I've always just used what ever was recommended on the home page, Shark and then LAV filters. Videos can stall on other videos that I did not generate myself, so I don't think it is anything necessarily with the media. I'm happy that you are taking a look. For me, it's not a huge issue like it must be for Jodannar. I just restart PinballX and move on with my day.

Had it in attract mode for 7 or 8 hours without play field video stalling. I woke up this morning and the play field has stalled at some point during the night. I can still scroll. So, I can't say unplugging the third monitor is an improvement. For me, the play field video may stall after several hours or it may stall after a few minutes. No pattern that I can discern. Not like the situation where the video always stalls on the third table. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not really a PinballX issue, I think. Did you update any other software aside from tables?