hansolo77

I was going to post my pics in here, but I then learned that there's a 29.3mb GLOBAL filesize limit. So I can't really upload them. Instead, I've linked them here through Photobucket. Ya'll should have learned by now about the fire that hit my home. I won't go into the long story again, so these are just the pictures of the damage. These are moslty POST RECOVERY of what I could salvage. These are the steps leading up the bedrooms. The view into my bedroom from the hallway at the top of the stairs. No roof, no ceiling. View of the bathroom from the hallway. View of Dad's room from the hallway. Closeup of the bathtub. Closeup of the most important seat in the house. Inside my bedroom, my computer desk on the far wall. The lower right corner is the foot of my waterbed I had. I didn't keep it. Also visible is my Star Wars Trivial pursuit. Didn't keep that either. View of my bed. The inside of my closet. The bookshelf had all my DVD's on them. Didn't keep that. The file cabinet was gutted of all important documents prior to finally leaving it to the "muckers". Didn't keep that either. No roof or ceiling! TO BE CONTINUED....

You'll have to see it. I'll make a separate Social thread and post pictures from the fire.

Well, I was using CCCP (Combined Community Codec Pack) for all my misc odds'n'ends, along with a manual install of AC3Filter for my SPDIF passthrough. Then I did a manual install of the Haali Media Splitter to get MKV's to work. It worked well enough, until I tried to get the videos to work in GameEx. Installed Shark's fixed that, then it broke the other stuff. Surprised just getting the x64 components was all I needed to refix the broken MKV stuff. I shoulda just used Sharks in the first place.

No problem. Works well enough on its own.

You guys are terrible! It doesn't really have any "streaks".. it's more like blochy stains that almost looks like mold! I'll post some pics when I can.

Well, playing mkv's inside Media Center is a bit of challenge. I use the Media Browser app, along with Media Center Master to get all the extra info and artwork. They work great together! I"m just glad I figured it out before I went nuts cursing you guys for giving me bad info.

I had a different problem after the fire... I had a working computer but all my drives were dying. I'm still using the same old cruddy case that's been stained from ash/water drainage. I've replaced EVERYTHING inside it too, I just couldn't bare getting rid of my HTPC case I spent $400 bucks on. I had another computer that wasn't my HTPC. The HTPC was on one wall, inside a media center'esk tv stand. The other computer was on another wall on a desk. The desk didn't make it through the fire. Suprisingly, after moving back in, I've got everything in the exact same place it was before! The one exception is the other computer and the desk. Since I don't have the desk/chair anymore, I haven't really drug it out of the closet for rebuilding. It's a nice case too, but it's still got ashes and insulation fluff all inside it. I haven't looked at it really since the fire, packing it in storage, then putting it in the closet. The only thing I did was take out the RAM and added it to my HTPC since I updated to Win7x64 and could get more RAM. So now, instead of a computer desk, I've got 2 comic book longboxes stacked in it's place, with a circulating fan on it!

Fixed it.. needed to get the x64 components to go with it. Stupid thing.

Yeah, only I think I might have grabbed the regular pack and not the x64 one. I'll have to do an uninstall, redownload the x64, and see what I can do. I remember I used AC3filter though because I have a receiver that allows me to do the SPDIF passthrough for DTS and TrueHD audio. I can play the movies fine outside of Media Center though. It's like it doesn't recognize the video or something.

AH! ok.

Well, I just found out that installing Sharks disabled Window Media Center from being able to play my HD mkv's. This is what I feared would happen. It works fine with everything else. This is going to go a bit off-subject, but does anybody know what I can do to fix it? I've already tried a few registry hacks to enable WMP to detect mkv as a video. The worst part is, it worked before installing this new codec pack.

Well, thats why I started the thread in the first place. I trust you guys more than I trust my own personal intuition. But, alas, the old adage "Search the Forums" reared it's ugly head at me, and I feel dumb for being a nubest.

Nope, fixed my problem. I love this site!

I'm cautious to do that... I don't want to break the codecs from working with my other stuff I do on the HTPC. I have like 4tb of TV shows and movies stored on my server that I use DAILY to watch stuff on. These codecs work fine for me. I don't really want to uninstall anything and risk it breaking their playback. ON THE OTHER HAND.... seems this is just something I might have to do. I searched over in the EmuMovies thread, and he talks about this. Mentioned a thread here: http://www.gameex.info/forums/index.php?showtopic=9897&st=0 Apparently, everybody but Mesk was having the same sort of problem just a couple months ago! I'll see about installing Shark's codecs and see if it helps. Hopefully I can just install over top of my current codecs without causing too much trouble. My main concern is with the .mkv containers, but I don't think these fall into that category.

It's defintely the MP4 videos. I just changed over all the AVI's and they work fine. Tried 1 MP4 console, and none of the videos work in it.

I'm just using FFDSHOW.. all my videos work fine out of GameEx though, so I really don't think it's a codec problem. I'm trying a theory now to see if perhaps it's just the MP4 videos that's not working, since MAME videos work still and they're avi.

Ok, setting everything back to just /snap instead of videos fixed the artwork problem. Now to figure out whats going on with the videos. Any ideas? I don't think its a codec issue, since they play fine outside of GameEx. Any help here would be great guys!

Rebooting didn't help. I noticed in the log, that it says it can't load an mp4 video. On further inspection, this video is related to being the last game I played. Using the custom menu setup, I have "Last Game Played" listed as the first option when I go into the "Games" menu item on my start screen. So apparently, once it tries to play this, nothing else works. I have tested the video outside of GameEx, and it plays fine. I also noticed that it reports the "no-image.png" I have setup for non-existing screenshots is not found. Another peculiar thing is that when GameEx loads up, all the logs and what not appear fine with all the other menus, until I go into the "Games" sub menu. Once there, it hits that "unplayable" last game and then no art at all, anywhere. I should also mention that when I ESCAPE out of GameEx, the screen stays completely black for almost 3 minutes before completely returning to Windows. Wierd Eh? I'm going to try and put everything back to /snap instead of the videos. Here's my most recent log:

This may be a simple fix; ie..reboot. I've been using the excellent Download Service Utility to re-get all my missing artwork for all my consoles. I started out going by year, and getting all the 1982 snaps/titles/carts/box/manuals for each console of that year. After downloading these, I added their new paths into GameEx, verifying, then loading up GameEx, and verify they display properlly. Everything looked good, so I went on to the next year, and getting all those. Repeating the process. I finally finished mid-day yesterday with all the "static" stuff, and they all worked great in GameEx. I then started last night getting all the VIDEOS. I didn't do the same process for the videos though. Rather than download, reconfigure GameEx, and test; I just downloaded them all, then went in 1 by 1 and adjusted the new snap path to the videos. After that, I did a verify (which shows everything good) then loaded up GameEx. Now NOTHING shows up. None of the custom logo's for each console, none of the videos, none of the titles or boxes, etc. Not even the MAME videos that have always worked even before I started using the EmuMovies utility. So what happened? Is GameEx rebuilding a database in the background of the new artwork path? If so, why would the theme logos and MAME videos not show up? Also, when I enter a game, it shows the links to the other artwork, but they don't display. Again, all I did was change 1 line in the emulator's setup.. from "M:\_ARTWORK\Fairchild_Channel_F\Snap" to "M:\_ARTWORK\Fairchild_Channel_F\Video_AVI" (of course, I changed it for ALL the emulators). I'm currently recording a TV show, so I won't be able to reboot for an hour at least. Do you think this is a simple reboot to fix problem? [EDIT] - If anybody has this problem on Windows 7, please make sure you install the Shark's Win 7 Codec Pack available here: http://shark007.net/win7codecs.html

My original ON TOPIC question is all this thread should have been about. I'm sorry my request caused such an uprise in illegal discussions. My original request was whether or not GameEx would support some feature to list CD-based games without having them taking up space on the hard drive. I never meant to include discussions on how to I was obtaining, or methods TOO obtain; just if and how GameEx would work the way I wanted. Frequency is right to get all hot about this thread. I never should have been discussed in the first place.

Yeah, but how to remove an item from the "watch for updates" list?

Yeah that's why I got them the first time, but since they're not complete, and some sets don't have the 3D boxes, I decided to just keep it all uniform and not use the 3D boxes.

eek!

Sounds like fun. I've spent the day so far cleaning up my room, downloading EmuMovies, watching Season 3 of Dragonball Z, and monitoring the GX forums. I'm doing this all at the same time too. Whatever happened to relaxing on the weekend? HEH.

I've picked through and selected just the USA games, or the euro/jap ones if theres not a USA version. All said though, it is a LOT of games. I thought I could burn them all (I have a TON of blank CD's, since games upgraded to DVD). If GameEx doesn't have a way to list the games without the disks in place, I guess Sliver X's method would probably work best. Maybe I'll just store the few favorites on the hard drive, and create a separate listing to directly boot cds.