New Recording Challenge

[johnwillsey]

To leverage the latest and coolest PInevent, pup packs and Future pinball tables that can use a full screen LCD, I've don so.  It looks glorious.  however the front end stretches the DMD videos to the new height and stretches things too much vertically.

So I figured I'd re-record all DMDS at the 16:9 720p resolution, then they'd all look good.  So, I let it run for about 24 hours doing so and found that, some of my stern DMDs are recorded at the full dimension set in my PinballX config.  Some are recorded at what appear to be the same width but with the top/bottom cropped off because it is all Black??  I'm wondering if there is an ffmpeg setting being used that tries to crop black sides/tops.  I checked my regex and the x,y,height,width are identical for ACDC and Avatar, but the recorded height dimensions are totally different.  (ACDC 170hc is 16:9 but Avatar is the actual rom DMD size rendered by dmdext.. as if the top/bottom black areas of the screen are cropped off)

I did the recordings with the awesome new PBX DB manager.

When I asked Mike, his reply was:

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The createvideo part is created by PinballX itself. Our tool just ask to pinballx to record it with the settings from your pinballx.ini

You can try to test it in gamemanager as well. This should use the exact same APzi

If it is still not recording correctly,  best way is to open a thread in general Section, so Tom can look at it

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Any ideas or has anyone else ran into this yet?

Thanks!

[Draco1962]

When reporting an issue, please attach copies of your pinballx.ini and log.txt files.

Tom and other members often start with these files to review settings and logged activity/errors.

[Tom Speirs]

Okay, if your letting PinballX set the position (auto position dmd/pinmame) then I do know that sometimes PinMAME will not act on those dimensions until the next run of the table. Does that help?

[johnwillsey]

4 hours ago, Tom Speirs said:

Okay, if your letting PinballX set the position (auto position dmd/pinmame) then I do know that sometimes PinMAME will not act on those dimensions until the next run of the table. Does that help?

Thanks Guys.  I've explicitly set the position/resolution to provide the viewable area of the monitor through the bezel, so nothing is dynamic.  I'll try to upload the ini/log files after work after clearing them and re-running a new record session.  Basically if I set my dmd to say x=2, y=70, width=1360, height 670. I'm hoping my DMD.mp4 is 1360x670...  not 1360x384 (ish) .. ACDC is recorded with full dmd screen height, Avatar the actual DMD rendering height.  Very odd both being stern roms of identical dimension settings in the registry.

[johnwillsey]

Ok, here are the details...  Looking at the log files from each run, the vertical height in the ffmpeg command is different, yet the regex are the same...  So that explains the difference in the video, but I'm puzzled as to why they got different height parameters in the first place.  ACDC matches the pinballx.ini config and Avatar uses the vpinmame regex config...

[DMD]
Enabled=True
monitor=2
x=2
y=69
width=1362
height=610
AutoPositionPinMAME=False
UsePinMAME=False

 

ACDC: (pinball X position/size is used)

FFMPEG.exe -f gdigrab -framerate 30 -offset_x 5762 -offset_y 69 -video_size 1362x610 -t 00:00:30 -i desktop -c:v hevc_nvenc -an -rc vbr_hq -cq:v 35 -b:v 0 -pix_fmt yuv420p -movflags +faststart "E:\Emulator\Pinball_emu\PinballX\MEDIA\Visual Pinball X\DMD Videos\ACDC Premium (Stern 2012).mp4"

 

Avatar: (vpinmame regex position/size is used)

FFMPEG.exe -f gdigrab -framerate 30 -offset_x 5764 -offset_y 210 -video_size 1360x340 -t 00:00:30 -i desktop -c:v hevc_nvenc -an -rc vbr_hq -cq:v 35 -b:v 0 -pix_fmt yuv420p -movflags +faststart "E:\Emulator\Pinball_emu\PinballX\MEDIA\Visual Pinball X\DMD Videos\Avatar (Stern 2010).mp4"

log - avatar.txt log - acdc.txt acd_170hc.reg avr_200.reg PinballX.ini

[Tom Speirs]

It depends whether it can find the PinMAME ROM or not based on PinemHI although I would have thought ACDC is supported. You are also using DMDExt and I believe that enforces an aspect ratio.

[scutters]

11 hours ago, Tom Speirs said:

It depends whether it can find the PinMAME ROM or not based on PinemHI although I would have thought ACDC is supported. You are also using DMDExt and I believe that enforces an aspect ratio.

For info pinemhi v1.3.1 doesn't support many (any?) of the color rom mods like AC/DC. @Dna Disturber was working on a new version that would include them. 

Edit - as the AC/DC recording is correct should pinballx just use pinballx dmd config size/pos for it's recording area for all, or am i missing something)?

[johnwillsey]

I was thinking it should use the DMD config size/pos.  That way you'd always have a 1:1 playback of what was recorded.  I apparently have LOTS of DMD setups that must not be in pinemhi...  Likely not many have found this since most folks are not using 16:9 LCDs for DMDs  (yet...)

 

[johnwillsey]

@Tom Speirsis there a way for the recording to record the specified dmd display area in the config app with x/y offset? e.g. in my case x=2 y=69 W=1362 H=610  (this is so it displays properly withing the bounds of my bezel...)