Help creating AVISNAPs

[CoreyH]

I am having trouble creating AVISNAPs. I couldn't find any documentation or FAQ on creating AVISNAPs (unless I overlooked it).

I have the latest version of GameEX installed and ffdshow installed. Using MAME .124 (also tried MAME Plus! .124).

It is not clear where these files go when they are created. I have GameEX configured to look in ..\mame\avisnap for the files. I let GameEX run through a few games, then I abort the procedure to see the result. No files are created. I checked the avisnap directory and various directories in GameEX.

I am assuming that the video capture is a function of GameEX and not MAME. Is there a special version of MAME required to do this?

I have my paths setup properly to display the AVISNAPs as I have put dkong.avi in the above mentioned directory and it displays (choppy tho).

Any help is appreciated!

CoreyH

[Tom Speirs]

I am having trouble creating AVISNAPs. I couldn't find any documentation or FAQ on creating AVISNAPs (unless I overlooked it).

I have the latest version of GameEX installed and ffdshow installed. Using MAME .124 (also tried MAME Plus! .124).

It is not clear where these files go when they are created. I have GameEX configured to look in ..\mame\avisnap for the files. I let GameEX run through a few games, then I abort the procedure to see the result. No files are created. I checked the avisnap directory and various directories in GameEX.

I am assuming that the video capture is a function of GameEX and not MAME. Is there a special version of MAME required to do this?

I have my paths setup properly to display the AVISNAPs as I have put dkong.avi in the above mentioned directory and it displays (choppy tho).

Any help is appreciated!

CoreyH

The Create snaps option within GameEx is for emulators. These are AVI snaps. They should be put in th snap forlder for the Emulator. This is a function of GameEx. For MAME it creates MNG files not AVI's and it does not need FFDSHOW, just a version of MAME that supports it. It is a function of MAME. This feature is accessed via the GameEx program group in windows. What one are you trying to do?

[CoreyH]

The Create snaps option within GameEx is for emulators. These are AVI snaps. They should be put in th snap forlder for the Emulator. This is a function of GameEx. For MAME it creates MNG files not AVI's and it does not need FFDSHOW, just a version of MAME that supports it. It is a function of MAME. This feature is accessed via the GameEx program group in windows. What one are you trying to do?

I am using the "Create MAME Videos" option in the start menu. I get the warning message that states that it will take up to 2 days to complete. I click OK. Then GameEX starts stepping though the games. Each game plays for 20 seconds or so. I stop GameEX after the 3rd game to make sure that it is working. I don't want to wait 2 days to find out that GameEX/MAME was not setup properly to produce AVI or MNG files.

So when I stop GameEX, I cannot find the resulting file(s) in the path that was specified. It is as though GameEX is not telling MAME to record. (I am able to record by using the shortcut SHIFT+F12.)

Looking at the log file these are the commands that are being run...

21:58:27.1 3/30/2008: Running: cmd.exe /c K: K:\Emulators\mame\mame.exe 005 -rompath K:\Emulators\mame\roms;K:\Emulators\mame\chd -triplebuffer -nowindow -joy -skip_gameinfo

21:59:16.8 3/30/2008: Running: cmd.exe /c K: K:\Emulators\mame\mame.exe gtmr -rompath K:\Emulators\mame\roms;K:\Emulators\mame\chd -triplebuffer -nowindow -joy -skip_gameinfo

22:00:11.4 3/30/2008: Running: cmd.exe /c K: K:\Emulators\mame\mame.exe 10yard -rompath K:\Emulators\mame\roms;K:\Emulators\mame\chd -triplebuffer -nowindow -joy -skip_gameinfo

How does MAME know to record MNG files? Wouldn't the -mngwrite switch need to be specified to relocate the file? ... unless all of this is handled by GameEX (by sending SHIFT+F12 keypress to MAME and a file copy operation).

Could it be that I cannot do this in Vista?

Also, is there a way to skip the startup message in each game? It still wants to me to OK each broken game. I have skip_gameinfo and skip_warnings set in mame.ini.

Thanks

CoreyH

[bkenobi]

MAME no longer has the ability to remove the gameinfo or warnings built-in. Apparently the MAMEdevs decided that they didn't like people skipping it and complaining about a game not working when the note that it wasn't working was in the info they skipped

It is possible to remove these via a custom compiled version of MAME though. If you search for "MAME compiler" on this forum, there is an excellent guide on what you need to do to compile MAME to do this. There is even an easy to use MAME compiler that HK put together that takes ALL of the effort out of compiling! I HIGHLY recommend at least looking at it because I guarantee you will want to do it once you read how easy it is.

[Tom Speirs]

I am using the "Create MAME Videos" option in the start menu. I get the warning message that states that it will take up to 2 days to complete. I click OK. Then GameEX starts stepping though the games. Each game plays for 20 seconds or so. I stop GameEX after the 3rd game to make sure that it is working. I don't want to wait 2 days to find out that GameEX/MAME was not setup properly to produce AVI or MNG files.

Im using quite bit older version of mame, .112 but it works fine for me on Vista with that. The issue is with newer versions of MAME its not possible to send keystrokes to it, as they changed the input system. This breaks the feature. Ill have to add that to the FAQ.