Pinball FX2 DMD videos

[Carny_Priest]

Hi, I uploaded DMD videos for Star Wars - Episode VII The Force Awakens and Star Wars - Might of the First Order. FTP under Media\PinballFX2\DMD Videos

Also, I generated new DMD videos for Marvel - Ant-Man and the Balls of Glory pack. FTP under Other Uploads\Carny\PinballFX2\DMD Videos. These do not have the screen door effect (interference patterns).

Everything else up through Portal I used the NukeLauncher FX media pack. It's good stuff, but it doesn't look like the author has updated in a while.

Before anyone asks, I don't have Alien videos. I have not bought the pack yet.

 

Enjoy.

 

[jsncarter]

Thanks a ton Carny.   Pretty much all my other videos on my cab are from your great capture program.  So I guess its fitting that you fill in the two videos I was missing.

Thanks again for all your time and hard work.  

 

Jason

[doogie2301]

Does anyone have "Real DMD Color Videos" for the FX2 tables, or know how to convert from DMD Videos?

[Draco1962]

Looking forward to seeing the Alien videos.  No, I am not asking, just stating my eager anticipation of your eventual contribution!

[Carny_Priest]

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.

[Draco1962]

Agree with you regarding the sales which is how I built my library initially. Lately I have been grabbing them as they come available. 

[solrac21]

Carny, i would be interested in trying it as i have the aliens table.  I have been trying to capture the real dmd color video for it with camstudio and resizing with ffmpeg but the quality has been horrendous.  I have a 2 screen setup with PIN2DMD but I can view the virtual DMD on the backglass monitor for recording.

[Carny_Priest]

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.

Spoiler

#NoEnv  
#SingleInstance force
#WinActivateForce
SetTitleMatchMode, 3
DetectHiddenWindows, On

; User inputs
PinballX_Path=c:\PinballX
antimicro_Path=c:\antimicro
FFMPEG_Path=c:\ffmpeg\bin

RegRead, SteamDirPath, HKCU, Software\Valve\Steam, SteamPath
Table=%1%     ;Variable from PinballX

Run, %antimicro_Path%\antimicro --no-tray --hidden --profile "%antimicro_Path%\profiles\VP.joystick.amgp"
Run, "%PinballX_Path%\Scripts\dc2.exe" -configure="%PinballX_Path%\Scripts\dc2config\4KSettings.xml",, Hide

; Fastest Capture
Run, %FFMPEG_Path%\ffmpeg -y -t 120 -rtbufsize 1500M -f gdigrab -framerate 30 -offset_x 5761 -offset_y 0 -video_size 1599x428 -i desktop -vcodec libx264 -preset ultrafast -qp 0 -threads 8 "%A_ScriptDir%\dmd.mkv"

Run, "%SteamDirPath%\Steam.exe" -applaunch 226980 "%Table%"
WinWait, Pinball FX2 DotMatrix

Process, WaitClose, ffmpeg.exe, 130
Process, Close, %ErrorLevel%
SoundBeep
SoundBeep
;WinActivate, ahk_class PxWindowClass
Send {e Down}, Send {e Up}
Gosub killApp
WinKill, ahk_class PxWindowClass
;Process, WaitClose, Pinball FX2.exe
Run, taskkill /im antimicro.exe /f,, Hide

;Run, "%PinballX_Path%\Scripts\dc2.exe" -configure="%PinballX_Path%\Scripts\dc2config\StandardSettings.xml",, Hide

; Post Capture Trim and Transcode
;Run, %FFMPEG_Path%\ffmpeg -y -i "%A_ScriptDir%\dmd.mkv" -ss 20.5 -to 90.5 -vf [in]scale=1600:-1[middle1];[middle1]crop=w=1600:h=400:x=0:y=0[middle2];[middle2]vflip[out] -c:v libx264 -crf 26 "%PinballX_Path%\Media\PinballFX2\DMD Videos\%table%.f4v"

;Process, WaitClose, ffmpeg.exe
 
; Clean up
;FileDelete, %A_ScriptDir%\dmd.mkv

ExitApp

#IfWinActive ahk_class PxWindowClass

; Exit Table
    e::
        Gosub killApp
    Return

#IfWinActive

    
killApp:
    Send {Esc}
;    Sleep, 500
;    Loop, 4
;        {
;            Send {Down}
;            Sleep, 20
;        }
;    Send {Enter}
    Sleep, 20
    Send !{f4}
Return
 

 

[solrac21]

Ok, I made a quick test today.  My DMD resolution is 1040x272 in order to work with dmdext and my PIN2DMD.  I have uploaded the vid to the FTP @ /-PinballX-/Other Uploads/Solrac21/Pinball fx2/DMD videos.  Let me know if these will work.

[Paul Stevens]

On 5/27/2016 at 10:25 AM, Carny_Priest said:

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.

 

Can you share the spreadsheet mentioned above?  I am curious about the padding FX2 uses and the best way to capture pixel perfect videos.

 

I'm still tinkering with things and am also noticing that FX2 dmd animations are not that carefully created, as someone pointed out in another thread.

 

Thanks.

[Carny_Priest]

On 3/2/2017 at 1:43 PM, Paul Stevens said:

Can you share the spreadsheet mentioned above?  I am curious about the padding FX2 uses and the best way to capture pixel perfect videos.

 

I'm still tinkering with things and am also noticing that FX2 dmd animations are not that carefully created, as someone pointed out in another thread.

 

Thanks.

I believe this still applies. We came up with it for Zen's floating DMD solution prior to them introducing formal cab support. Give it a try.

 

Credit also to time299

Pinball FX2 DMD Resolutions.xls

[edwin1971]

thx

 

[TheViolator]

Hi,

I'm very new in the VPinball scene and this is my first post in this forum ;-) I hope I'm right with my question within this thread... And sorry for my English - I'm from Germany :-)

Is this known, that the Pinball Fx2 *.mp4 DMD Video Files, available on the FTP server, don't work within PinballX? If I change the table within PinballX and it comes to a table where only *.mp4 DMD Video exists, the video from the former table is seen but stucks. Maybe I'm doing something wrong - but all the other *.f4v Files within the same folder are working very well.

Did anyone tried to convert the existing *.mp4 Files into *.f4v files? For example for the Alien and Doom files?

I tried that with some online converting tools but the result didn't work also.

Or do all of the PFX2 DMD videos exists in the meanwhile and were uploaded by somehow? I tried to find that by forum and Google search and browsing the FTP server but wasn't successfull to find the last few DMD videos which only exists as *.mp4 files...

Thank you in advance & BR from Germany

[Draco1962]

1 hour ago, TheViolator said:

Hi,

I'm very new in the VPinball scene and this is my first post in this forum ;-) I hope I'm right with my question within this thread... And sorry for my English - I'm from Germany :-)

Is this known, that the Pinball Fx2 *.mp4 DMD Video Files, available on the FTP server, don't work within PinballX? If I change the table within PinballX and it comes to a table where only *.mp4 DMD Video exists, the video from the former table is seen but stucks. Maybe I'm doing something wrong - but all the other *.f4v Files within the same folder are working very well.

Did anyone tried to convert the existing *.mp4 Files into *.f4v files? For example for the Alien and Doom files?

I tried that with some online converting tools but the result didn't work also.

Or do all of the PFX2 DMD videos exists in the meanwhile and were uploaded by somehow? I tried to find that by forum and Google search and browsing the FTP server but wasn't successfull to find the last few DMD videos which only exists as *.mp4 files...

Thank you in advance & BR from Germany

You should probably post this in the PinballX > General forum for troubleshooting. Also, you should be running the latest LAV codecs. So far as I am aware, nobody has recently reported problems with mp4 DMD video files.