Screenshots of full 16:9 DMD with overlays?

[DBrown67]

I'm using version 4.33 of PinballX and I've just fitted a new 16:9 screen for full DMD and pup packs. I'm using some mp4 overlays for the 4:1 letter box style dmds just to make the screen look more "full".

But when I try to take a screenshot it doesn't copy the overlay part. It only copies the dmd in the middle and then stretches it top/bottom so it looks bad. When I screenshot pup packs using full screen they are fine.

I have the dmd section in the PinballX settings as the full screen so it takes a full image when playing pup packs (and it works OK).

To get the overlays working I had to create a pup pack for each one, but the pack only consists of that single overlay on the dmd screen. Any ideas about these screen shotting overlays?

[Tom Speirs]

Only I can help with this.

I have not got enough patience to look at popper for the first time and do a complete setup of it right now.

I will try and get to this but it is not going to be quick. Sorry.

[scutters]

Sounds like PinballX is recording the correct full screen dmd area as assigned in PinballX for non dmd games, but where a rom is used it is recording / capturing only the dmd area in the centre of that screen. So i guess pinballx is clever enough to use the actual pinmame dmd dimensions/location rather than just the assigned pinballx settings? 

@DBrown67 Not sure what the the underlay mp4's you're using are like - do they have anything in the dmd letterbox area or just a blank, if they have a manufacturer logo or something maybe as a quick fix / workaround you could just use them as is as dmd videos rather than using them as underlays to create dmd images?

.. But maybe i've misunderstood entirely! Whatever, time to update your PinballX install anyway 

[DBrown67]

I was trying again today and I'd like to add that this only happens when using a 4:1 style DMD within the mp4 video. On tables where I remove the grill from the back glass so that part pf the back glass appears on the DMD within the mp4 video (e.g. Bride of Pinbot, Diner, F-14, Funhouse etc.) then the screenshot is taken. These are still rom based tables but don't have the 4:1 style DMD. I do this "removal" on certain back glasses because I don't want images of speakers grills on the back glass when I already have real speaker grills.

So it's something to so with the mp4 overlay AND the 4:1 separate DMD playing simultaneously.

[scutters]

Ok, it doe sound like PinballX captures only 4:1 DMD when running rather than the full screen dmd area.  Can you attach your pinballx.ini and the log.txt file after capturing a non 4:1 table and a 4:1 dmd table, that will maybe show the difference and help Tom. 

Also, are you using vpinmame for the dmd or external / freezy (and if using freezy is pinmame dmd disabled - i.e. only one DMD visible if ALT+TAB'ing)?

 

(unrelated to the screen capture issue and i know i mentioned it before - but rather than run a puppack for each table to show the underlay video on the dmd screen couldn't you just use the video in pinballx as a table dmd video and then 'not hide' on game launch? just seems a bit over engineered to create a pup pack for each table)

 

[DBrown67]

On 4/10/2021 at 12:56 PM, scutters said:

Ok, it doe sound like PinballX captures only 4:1 DMD when running rather than the full screen dmd area.  Can you attach your pinballx.ini and the log.txt file after capturing a non 4:1 table and a 4:1 dmd table, that will maybe show the difference and help Tom. 

Also, are you using vpinmame for the dmd or external / freezy (and if using freezy is pinmame dmd disabled - i.e. only one DMD visible if ALT+TAB'ing)?

 

(unrelated to the screen capture issue and i know i mentioned it before - but rather than run a puppack for each table to show the underlay video on the dmd screen couldn't you just use the video in pinballx as a table dmd video and then 'not hide' on game launch? just seems a bit over engineered to create a pup pack for each table)

 

Sorry, just seen your reply today. OK I've attached the files you need. The top two are for non-DMD table Jokerz! The second pair are for DMD table Gilligan's Island. There's also a screen shot of DMD image being stretched. The Jokerz! image was too large to paste here.

I can confirm I am using Freezy and not vpinmame to display the 4:1 dmds. Vpinmame is unchecked when I press F1 for all such tables, so there is only the Freezy dmd being displayed.

Regarding the making of each PupPack... if I was using Popper then there is apparently a very quick and easy method to set one pack up and the rest follow as default. But I just followed a guide of how to do this without Popper. And all the tables are done now :p 

log.txt PinballX.ini log.txt PinballX.ini

[scutters]

Darn, logs don't show screen image capture like for video capture.  Nevermind.

Just to be be clear the Game Over image you posted isn't itself stretched, but it is stretched when used in the front end (as only the DMD was captured in the centre of the screen, rather than capturing full screen).

The image captured should actually have been something like this instead (with the white area being your underlay)?

Edit - And you still need to update PinballX!

[DBrown67]

On 4/10/2021 at 12:56 PM, scutters said:

Ok, it doe sound like PinballX captures only 4:1 DMD when running rather than the full screen dmd area.  Can you attach your pinballx.ini and the log.txt file after capturing a non 4:1 table and a 4:1 dmd table, that will maybe show the difference and help Tom. 

Also, are you using vpinmame for the dmd or external / freezy (and if using freezy is pinmame dmd disabled - i.e. only one DMD visible if ALT+TAB'ing)?

 

(unrelated to the screen capture issue and i know i mentioned it before - but rather than run a puppack for each table to show the underlay video on the dmd screen couldn't you just use the video in pinballx as a table dmd video and then 'not hide' on game launch? just seems a bit over engineered to create a pup pack for each table)

 

Yes scutters... that image is not stretched. But it is pulled top/bottom when used in the frontend. The image should be taken as in the template you drew with the white area being the mp4 underlay. The words "GAME OVER" are offset towards the top as in the pic, so I can confirm it;s correct.

The screenshots are taken and displayed correctly by PinballX for the non-DMD tables such as Jokerz (log and ini supplied).

Regarding updating PinballX... is it as simple as overwriting the new files into my install? I'm concerned that some image files or positional settings etc. are going to get altered. It's taken me ages to get where I am now (and yes I do make periodic backups of my drives).

[scutters]

10 hours ago, DBrown67 said:

Regarding updating PinballX... is it as simple as overwriting the new files into my install? I'm concerned that some image files or positional settings etc. are going to get altered. It's taken me ages to get where I am now (and yes I do make periodic backups of my drives).

Just run the installer and install straight over the top, it won't affect your pinballx settings or media. It's as simple as that!, i install straight over the top  with new updates to PinballX and have never had an issue.

Try the screen capture again after updating, there may have been a fix/change that'd affect it.  

 

Edit - Sorry...  I've now realised having never used screen capture for images (i've only ever used videos) i'm not really sure how it works in PinballX so some of my previous advice may be total tosh. Still update PinballX though.  And if you still have no luck (and you still want to use images in the front end rather than video) then give pbx recorder a go (latest version 1.9 https://forums.gameex.com/forums/topic/17684-pbx-recorder-captures-playfield-backglass-and-dmd-videos-and-images/?do=findComment&comment=195930) that will allow you to record videos or images for individual tables or loop through all your tables and capture DMD only if you want, I think it'll work for you grabbing the full screen DMD area. Sorry again for for my previous probable time wasting!.

 

 

[DBrown67]

8 hours ago, scutters said:

Just run the installer and install straight over the top, it won't affect your pinballx settings or media. It's as simple as that!, i install straight over the top  with new updates to PinballX and have never had an issue.

Try the screen capture again after updating, there may have been a fix/change that'd affect it.  

 

Just updated to the latest version 5.02.  Was as easy and painless as you said it would be     However the screenshots for the DMD area are behaving exactly the same way.  I would try taking short videos for each table, but last time I tried it the files were HUUUUGE and I didn't want to use that much disc space.  I'm happy with screenshots as I have short audio files for every table on there that someone else created. A lot have little callouts in them such as "Most of my partners end up dead" for Dirty Harry . They're pretty cool.

[scutters]

I'd give videos a go again if i were you, you might be pleasantly surprised..

Both native PinballX and Pbx Recorder allow you to set a time limit for the video, so long as you remember to set that the files produced can be pretty small. I set the length at 5secs for my videos and 4k table videos are normally around 2Mb.   And as far as i know if you create videos using either of those methods they always will be muted, so there should be no problem with table audio files.  

[DBrown67]

On 4/15/2021 at 5:03 PM, scutters said:

I'd give videos a go again if i were you, you might be pleasantly surprised..

Oh dear.... that was a complete waste of time. Spent the last 4 hours trying to get PBX recorder to work. Didn't even get 1 video of anything. Then tried to use the recording feature in game manager. Got one video of a playfield... upside down. PBX recorder wouldn't shut down the pup videos on the dmd monitor. I use seaparate  .res files for my back glasses as I like to keep the aspect ratio correct. I hate seeing them stretched. That meant my screenres.txt is basically redundant so I could set it perfectly for my three monitors. Yet it recorded nothing.

And what's screenrescheck supposed to do? When I use it my tables folder opens up and only the screenres.txt file is selectable. But when I click on it just Funhouse shows every time... and incorrectly at that. Is it supposed to do that?

So back to using screenshots... I found I can use the screenshots I've taken as loading images. But a huge great gif spoils the look. Can I remove that gif altogether... or at least make it subtle and small? It's taking up three quarters of the screen and there's just no need. No point in using the screenshot when it's that big.

[DBrown67]

I had another go this morning at recording videos. I had installed the recommended codecs but I just left them as is. There were a plethora of options I don't understand, but I did notice that hardware acceleration was set to "none". I switched that to Nvidia but the PBX recorder is still making videos way too slow. So I tried the recorder in PinballX game manager... and that recorded videos that were way too fast! LOL!!!

So in conclusion, there are some settings somewhere I'm not just not getting right. My system can record videos no problem, I just need them at the right speed. I Googled and tried removing hardgrab.exe (someone said that fixed their issue) but that just resulted in a video way too slow again.

[scutters]

Wow..  you've had some issues!

Here's a few thoughts, but suggest splitting things off into separate threads for anything you haven't resolved.

• Pbx recorder not recording videos - Are the videos blank, or not created at all?. Maybe download/try a different version of ffmpeg in the pinballx folder. If that doesn't work, pbx recorder creates a log file too - attach that in a thread.
• PinballX playfield videos upside down - recorded upside down is normal. PinballX will flip it when used in the front end.
• screenrescheck.exe - just allows you to confirm your vp\tables\screenres.txt setttins (as they are what pbx recorder will use)
• Loading gif - Can be changed, it's the loading.gif file in PinballX\media\images\.  You can create a new gif on ezgif.com if you have a couple of images (to avoid pinballx stretching them add a blank/transparent border around the images), or you could change the canvas size of the existing loading gif file so it appears smaller in use - lunapic.com will all you to increase the canvas size to add a transparent border.
• PinballX table videos too fast (i assume you mean playback speed) - probably best to just create a new post for that so Tom can have a look. Attach your log and ini files.

Not sure if you've sorted out the DMD image capture you originally posted about along the way or not...

[DBrown67]

1 hour ago, scutters said:

Wow..  you've had some issues!

Here's a few thoughts, but suggest splitting things off into separate threads for anything you haven't resolved.

• Pbx recorder not recording videos - Are the videos blank, or not created at all?. Maybe download/try a different version of ffmpeg in the pinballx folder. If that doesn't work, pbx recorder creates a log file too - attach that in a thread.
• PinballX playfield videos upside down - recorded upside down is normal. PinballX will flip it when used in the front end.
• screenrescheck.exe - just allows you to confirm your vp\tables\screenres.txt setttins (as they are what pbx recorder will use)
• Loading gif - Can be changed, it's the loading.gif file in PinballX\media\images\.  You can create a new gif on ezgif.com if you have a couple of images (to avoid pinballx stretching them add a blank/transparent border around the images), or you could change the canvas size of the existing loading gif file so it appears smaller in use - lunapic.com will all you to increase the canvas size to add a transparent border.
• PinballX table videos too fast (i assume you mean playback speed) - probably best to just create a new post for that so Tom can have a look. Attach your log and ini files.

Not sure if you've sorted out the DMD image capture you originally posted about along the way or not...

I'm going to make a new thread for this video recording lark. PinballX is simply REFUSING to play ball when it comes to recording.

DMD image capture is not solved. I've decided to just have a black 1024 x 600 image displayed as a "no DMD" file for now while in the front end. Remaking that PinballX logo in that software you mentioned just looks far too complicated for me.

[scutters]

23 hours ago, DBrown67 said:

Remaking that PinballX logo in that software you mentioned just looks far too complicated for me.

I've done a fair bit of ffmpeg scripting.. if you let me know what size your dmd screen is, the actual dmd size on it and the position (x/y offsets) i should be knock it up for you pretty quickly.

 

Edit - i guessed a bit. Think these match the 'fulldmd centred' look, two versions in the zip file of the No DMD.mp4 file one with black border and one with a frame around the dmd (i used one that will come out with the next freezy release, also in the zip id the png image used as background - the image can be changed and script re-run to build a different version). Just need to rename to 'No DMD.mp4' and drop it in your PinballX\media\videos\ folder.

For ref ffmpeg commands (assuming the No DMD.mp4 and frame.png are in the same folder as ffmpeg) so can be adjusted..

Add border;

ffmpeg -i "no dmd.mp4" -vcodec libx264 -crf 23 -pix_fmt yuv420p -profile:v baseline -level 3 -movflags faststart -filter_complex [0]pad=w=106+iw:h=380+ih:x=53:y=190:color=black "No DMD blackborder.mp4"

Overlay on the frame image;

ffmpeg -loop 0 -i frame.png -i "no dmd.mp4" -vcodec libx264 -crf 23 -pix_fmt yuv420p -profile:v baseline -level 3 -movflags faststart -filter_complex "overlay=53:190" "No DMD framed.mp4"

 

No DMD videos.zip

[DBrown67]

Thanks for that video file!     In the mean time, regarding the taking of screenshots (keeping to thread topic)... It works perfectly well for tables that use Flex DMD. I only have a handful of those though: Jaws, JP's GB Slimer etc.

Of course Flex DMD keeps its global settings somewhere differently to all rom based tables.  ROM based are kept in a different registry folder. I don't know if PinballX is using the settings in registry to record the DMD registry window (small 4:1 ratio size) then stretching it to the full DMD window size I gave for the that monitor (1024 x 600).

Following on from all your help (much appreciated) I've decided I'm happy with screenshots only in the frontend and I now have a small animated gif that plays over the image when table loading (following your help on making one). Now, when table loads it's like the screenshot popped into life. The effect is quite nice. If I could get DMD screenshots fixed I'd be happy.

[scutters]

1 hour ago, DBrown67 said:

Of course Flex DMD keeps its global settings somewhere differently to all rom based tables.  ROM based are kept in a different registry folder. I don't know if PinballX is using the settings in registry to record the DMD registry window (small 4:1 ratio size) then stretching it to the full DMD window size I gave for the that monitor (1024 x 600).

I suspect you may be onto something. As a test if you have the SetDMD utility handy you could try changing a rom registry entry to the full dmd screen dimensions (so pinballx may then record the fullscreen nd not stretch the screengrab when used).  As you're not using vpinmame this should be safe, but please note that this could also affect how freezy is displayed - there's a setting in the dmddevice.ini file to use registry values or not, if you have that set to true then you'd need to set it false and then set a manual position / size (which is then saved in the ini file) for freezy. 

(You can of course manually edit the registry, but don't do that unless you're comfortable doing it and taking backups first etc..  do so at your own risk!)

[DBrown67]

I changed a reg.entry for a table so it took full screen size. PinballX took the image exactly as displayed. Of course this is no different to the image before, but now PinballX is not stretching it any further, it's already "stretched" in the registry. and now covering my PupPack overlay. So I think this confirms that PinballX is taking screenshots of rom based DMDs based on registry settings, then stretching to 1024 x 600 as that's the size I set the DMD window to be for that monitor in PinballX srttings.

[Tom Speirs]

Hey,

As I said, its likely only I can help with this but sorry, I have not had a chance to have a look yet.

Thanks.

Tom.

[scutters]

@Tom Speirs Sorry Tom, saw that post but thought (still think) we can find a workaround before a proper fix. Just had a few tangents along the way -  but sometimes tangents are the best way to learn!! 

@DBrown67 Think you missed the bit in my post about dmddevice.ini. If you changed the reg values for vpinmame and freezy used that new size then you have useregistry set to true in the ini file. There should be section like this to control freezy size/pos and not use registry values, if you set these to your dmd 'letterbox' in the middle of the screen the capture may then work;

; use VPM's registry values when positioning the virtual dmd
useregistry = false

; x-axis of the window position
left = 5240

; y-axis of the window position
top = 105

; width of the dmd in monitor pixels
width = 1200

; height of the dmd in monitor pixels
height = 300

 

[Tom Speirs]

Modifying/removing the pinemhi ini may fix it. PinballX will not be able to detect PinMAME. It should then record the  entire desktop.

[DBrown67]

Just tried both those ideas guys. But both still resulted in the DMD being stretched up/down as before ignoring the pup pack surround. Regarding the latter idea by Tom, I only temporarily removed that file. I didn't try to edit it as I wouldn't know what to change in there, sorry. But thanks again for trying guys

[scutters]

13 hours ago, DBrown67 said:

Just tried both those ideas guys. But both still resulted in the DMD being stretched up/down as before ignoring the pup pack surround. Regarding the latter idea by Tom, I only temporarily removed that file. I didn't try to edit it as I wouldn't know what to change in there, sorry. But thanks again for trying guys

Well... that's just confusing!. This was with taking new screen grabs wasn't it?

 

[DBrown67]

On 4/27/2021 at 10:19 AM, scutters said:

Well... that's just confusing!. This was with taking new screen grabs wasn't it?

 

Yes of course. I have to delete the old ones first  or I don't get new ones.