Is create mame videos broken?

[jthompson]

Now before someone tells me to install the unintuitive ffdshow codecs (which I tried by the way with no luck), let me tell you the situation. I created a bunch of mame videos a long time ago (like mame 0.96 or something) and they worked great and still do. I have since aquired several new games and created the mame vids through the link in the start menu, took most of the afternoon to finish. Now when I browse games through gameex, I just see a black box where the preview should be. My games that I already had videos for still work, just the new ones don't. I never understood ffdshow, and when I used it the first time 6 or so months back I uninstalled it as I had no use for it. I still couldn't get video previews to work until I installed Tom's MNGer (which by the way also only shows black in the preview if you run one of the new vids through it, old vids work fine). So I guess what I want to know is whether the create mame vids is broke or is my version of mame 0.108u2 not recording the vids properly, or what do I do to the ffdshow codecs now that they are installed to let me see the previews. I'm not sure how ffdshow can solve the problem since I can still see my old vids just fine. Does ffdshow need to be installed to create videos? I looked at file sizes of vids that work vs ones that only show black and they are very different. The ones that show only black are less than a meg and the ones that work are generaly a lot larger, 4,5,6 up to 11 megs in some cases. I'm stumped on this one guys.

Any help would be appreciated and my apologies in advance if this has already been answered.

Jay T

[Tom Speirs]

Now before someone tells me to install the unintuitive ffdshow codecs (which I tried by the way with no luck), let me tell you the situation. I created a bunch of mame videos a long time ago (like mame 0.96 or something) and they worked great and still do. I have since aquired several new games and created the mame vids through the link in the start menu, took most of the afternoon to finish. Now when I browse games through gameex, I just see a black box where the preview should be. My games that I already had videos for still work, just the new ones don't. I never understood ffdshow, and when I used it the first time 6 or so months back I uninstalled it as I had no use for it. I still couldn't get video previews to work until I installed Tom's MNGer (which by the way also only shows black in the preview if you run one of the new vids through it, old vids work fine). So I guess what I want to know is whether the create mame vids is broke or is my version of mame 0.108u2 not recording the vids properly, or what do I do to the ffdshow codecs now that they are installed to let me see the previews. I'm not sure how ffdshow can solve the problem since I can still see my old vids just fine. Does ffdshow need to be installed to create videos? I looked at file sizes of vids that work vs ones that only show black and they are very different. The ones that show only black are less than a meg and the ones that work are generaly a lot larger, 4,5,6 up to 11 megs in some cases. I'm stumped on this one guys.

Any help would be appreciated and my apologies in advance if this has already been answered.

Jay T

Just to clear up a point, you don't need any codecs or ffdshow or MNGer to play MNG animations in GameEx, it has its own code to play MNG's. Im not sure why they are showing up black. Can you give some details on what happens when the create videos process is running, does the game show and do you see [Record Start]. Also I see your running an intermediate build of MAME, have you tried 0.108 normal release or 0.109. In addition are you running the latest version of GameEx. There was a fix to MAME videos a few versions back.

[jthompson]

Just to clear up a point, you don't need any codecs or ffdshow or MNGer to play MNG animations in GameEx, it has its own code to play MNG's. Im not sure why they are showing up black. Can you give some details on what happens when the create videos process is running, does the game show and do you see [Record Start]. Also I see your running an intermediate build of MAME, have you tried 0.108 normal release or 0.109. In addition are you running the latest version of GameEx. There was a fix to MAME videos a few versions back.

Thanks for the quick response Tom. I'm running GameEx Version 7.02. I watched some of the video creation process and noted that the record started after 15 or 20 seconds into each game, and each game ran for about a minute before the recording ended and a new game started. I can try to install mame 109 tomorrow if I get some free time after work and see if that helps. Thanks for clearing the codec thing up for me as I don't really use Gameex for any videos other than DVDs and mame previews. I guess if I was using AVIs or divx I might need ffdshow. I will post my results after trying a newer, normal release of mame. BTW I forgot to mention that my copy of mame was compiled by my self with the disclaimer warnings removed. Not sure if this had something to do with it or not but you never know.

Thanks

Jay T

[headkaze]

There is also a program called MNG2AVI which will convert your MNG's to AVI. Or you can always download the set on pleasuredome, although I find the audio for those a little crappy.

[jthompson]

Just to clear up a point, you don't need any codecs or ffdshow or MNGer to play MNG animations in GameEx, it has its own code to play MNG's. Im not sure why they are showing up black. Can you give some details on what happens when the create videos process is running, does the game show and do you see [Record Start]. Also I see your running an intermediate build of MAME, have you tried 0.108 normal release or 0.109. In addition are you running the latest version of GameEx. There was a fix to MAME videos a few versions back.

OK Tom. I downloaded mame .110 and still can't get the mngs to record properly. I tried to do it on my cab as well as my pc with no luck. The log for my pc shows the vids being created but as you can see I just have a black video. On my cab I get an error when I try to create mngs. I must be doing something wrong here. I've attached logs from both the cab and the PC as well as an MNG file for you to see. I would really like to get this working as I don't want to have to download the videos. The create mame videos worked too good for me in the past to have to screw around with torrents and worrying that I havn't uploaded my quota and all that. As always your help is appreciated.

Jay T

cab_log.txt

PC_log.txt

mng.zip

[draginit]

!! I too have been having this issue, and waiting patiently for a possible answer. i have made two posts in the past about this, one went hot and my log is in that thread, but i will be glad to post my continued errors on this if needed!! i really want my video previews back.

[jthompson]

Success!!!

I downloaded mame 0.97b and tried to make vids and all I got was pngs. 0.99b did the same thing. I finally tried 0.103b and it actually made the MNGs with 103b. I'm not sure if something changed between .103 and .108 that prevented me from making the MNGs properly but .103 did the trick. I also noticed this time when each vid stopped recording it showed how many frames it had, previously it just said stop recording or recording stopped. I still am unable make vids on my cab however as I'm still getting the error message. No worries though I'll just make them on my PC.

Thanks for the help Tom.

Jay T

[draginit]

Is this something that will be a possible fix in an update or should i just go back to an older version of mame....why would the mame version make any difference? just curious

-hey jthompson, you mentioned your making the videos in your pc, but is your cab using the newest version mame or old version, i tried working mng's from another cpu and still doesnt work for me.. how did that go for you?

[jthompson]

Is this something that will be a possible fix in an update or should i just go back to an older version of mame....why would the mame version make any difference? just curious

-hey jthompson, you mentioned your making the videos in your pc, but is your cab using the newest version mame or old version, i tried working mng's from another cpu and still doesnt work for me.. how did that go for you?

Yes they work in both PCs, I just cant get them to record in either. My cab gets an error and my PC was recording black/blank videos. I'm now running re-compiled versions of mame 0110. I thought that maybe something changed in MAME to make the videos not record so I tried a different version. Now I just have to copy them over to my cab, which will take some time but not as long as downloading a whole set. It sounds like you might be having a different problem alltogether if known-good mngs are not working in your cab.

Jay T