[fizz]

Now that it looks like the Windows builds are slowly getting towards supporting MVE movies as well (they do, don't they?), maybe there's some additional interest in creating movies in MVE format, since they are going to work on all platforms (as opposed to AVI). For Windows users avi2mve has been around for quite a while.

I've been working on plugins for the GStreamer multimedia framework (http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org) for a while now, and I'm finally happy enough to announce the preliminary result: http://www.lanipage.de/gst-mve-0.10.1.tar.bz2

The multiplexer/encoder still needs a bit of tuning, but both playing and encoding basically should work just fine. I'd be especially interested in some feedback by users on big-endian systems. (Note that the code currently in FS2O CVS only supports playback of 16-bit movies, while the encoder can also create 8-bit ones.)

Happy movie-making.

[taylor]

      

Dude!  Holy Crap!  I didn't think anyone was actually going to do this.  Windows will support video for MVEs and audio so long as it's with OpenAL.  If people actually started converting movies to MVE then we might actually be able to ditch that crappy AVI code!

[karajorma]

Why do other platforms have trouble with avi?

The main reason no one has bothered with MVE format is not just that Windows couldn't play it but that Interplay used to be very fierce about guarding the format. Now that Interplay are moribund it might be possible to get away with it but it's worth keeping in mind that Interplay have acted more strongly to MVE making software than to piracy of their games.

In addition although playing MVEs is probably more stable than avi's they do have a much larger filesize on average.

[Colonol Dekker]

How big a difference for example?
Hallfight.Avi=22.2mb
How bigs the mve equivalent?

[karajorma]

Intro = 95 Megs for the avi but 200MB for the MVE.

Mono1 = 21MB vs 60MB

I doubt that the ratios with the FS1 movies is any better

[taylor]

Why do other platforms have trouble with avi?

The various codecs needed for AVI decoding are tons more guarded and protected than MVE is.  The Windows version doesn't have to worry about this since it doesn't include any actual support for AVIs, it just passes it off to DirectShow which create an overlay to show the movie.  All of the AVIs are in DivX format which makes it difficult to get Quicktime support for the same thing in OSX, Linux is much more difficult than that.  The best option would be to use XviD and link it right to the game binary, but XviD is GPL so we can't use it.  ffmpeg is the other option, provided we only used the LGPL portions of the code, but it's a legal mess in it's own right.

Believe it or not, MVE is the safest and easiest route to go.

How big a difference for example?
Hallfight.Avi=22.2mb
How bigs the mve equivalent?

73meg.

I don't hold size as much of an issue though.  There aren't that many in-game movies that you would have so nearly all of the HD space would be taken up by regular game data.  Most cutscenes are going to be in-game cinematics rather than actual movies anyway.

[Colonol Dekker]

Is there any quality loss, I've got both games but they havent even graced my drive since source code project hit the Forums shelves. If the quality difference is indistinquishable then i'm happy with avi for the mo, Although the MVE's always seemed very crisp and fluid.

[Fury]

taylor, what about using X264 (GNU license) as the video codec and Ogg Vorbis (BSD license) as the audio codec?

[karajorma]

All of the AVIs are in DivX format which makes it difficult to get Quicktime support for the same thing in OSX, Linux is much more difficult than that.  The best option would be to use XviD and link it right to the game binary, but XviD is GPL so we can't use it.

All the movies with the exception of Hallfight and the FS1 intro are in Xvid in fact. The divx versions of the others are really old (and poor quality) versions I knocked up despite not actually being that good with VirtualDub. Hallfight and Intro are actually the original convertions Sandwich made when he first posted about MVE2AVI. I never saw any reason to replace them when I converted the others cause it saved me a whole bunch of time and they were at least as good as anything I could have made.

TurboNed's XVid versions of the FS2 movies are far superior to mine. It's a pity he disappeared before converting the FS1 movies too.

I don't hold size as much of an issue though.  There aren't that many in-game movies that you would have so nearly all of the HD space would be taken up by regular game data.  Most cutscenes are going to be in-game cinematics rather than actual movies anyway.

Between the FS1 and FS2 movies we're talking about over a gigabyte of data. As opposed to half that for the avi versions. And it's not HD space that I take issue with. It's download bandwidth. Even when compressed with WinRAR on maximum settings the MVEs are still bigger than the uncompressed avi versions.

I fully understand that the current movie code is a PITA. I only need to look at how often it's been broken and fixed by you to see that but if there is a solution that doesn't involve dropping it I'd be much happier. And that's before we consider the fact that campaigns which use the current avi system would have to re-encode.

[Fury]

Between the FS1 and FS2 movies we're talking about over a gigabyte of data. As opposed to half that for the avi versions. And it's not HD space that I take issue with. It's download bandwidth. Even when compressed with WinRAR on maximum settings the MVEs are still bigger than the uncompressed avi versions.

X264 can encode video better than DivX or XviD can, so it should be possible to encode the FS1/FS2 cutscenes at least as small as Divx/XviD if not smaller.
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/codecs-final-105-1.htm

[karajorma]

As long as no one expects me to do it

[fizz]

Is there any quality loss, I've got both games but they havent even graced my drive since source code project hit the Forums shelves.

Well, as long as the AVIs have been made from the MVEs, MVE is bound to be better quality (though whether the difference is noticable is an entirely different matter). Additionally, MVE does lossless encoding but isn't terribly well suited for high-color images, while the usual AVI suspects like DivX and XviD are lossy codecs but deal better with many colors (ie. compression is much better).

EDIT: FWIW, the movies created with my encoder are usually smaller than the FS2 originals, but not enough to really make a difference, I guess

[fizz]

The main reason no one has bothered with MVE format is not just that Windows couldn't play it but that Interplay used to be very fierce about guarding the format. Now that Interplay are moribund it might be possible to get away with it but it's worth keeping in mind that Interplay have acted more strongly to MVE making software than to piracy of their games.

There's a number of projects that have included MVE support for years, apparently without problems (eg. the entire legion of Descent descendents, ffmpeg). Plus, I don't see MVE as much of a contender for future video formats. The format is basically unsuited for HD multimedia content. As such, I don't see much reason for Interplay to guard the format. Then again, it is admittedly not always a good idea to expect companies to act reasonably...

[Colonol Dekker]

Interplay/volition (RIP !!) must have invested at least some time and money in developing the format. To just cast that to the wind, means they are experiencing an investment loss, As any CEO will tell anyone, "Why should i lose money through my own actions." I sp'ose Interplanks think if they hold out they might get some money at some point from somewhere in the footure 

[taylor]

h.264 is deffinitely preferable to DivX/XviD given it's high level of compression and superior quality.  It works with Quicktime7 which means it wouldn't be difficult to code up for OS X support (we could decode the video frames directly to OpenGL for instance).  Windows would just need a compatible DirectShow filter (though we'd still have to deal with the piece-of-**** DShow code).  Linux would still have to use ffmpeg which gives us the legal issues again on that side, unless we never distribute binaries that are linked to ffmpeg, and never use ffmpeg libs which contain the GPLd code (liba52 and libpostproc).  The main problem with all of that is it's 3 totally different portions of code which have to be written/rewritten and maintained, each with their own quirks.

The only source code that I know for x264 is GPL, which we can't use, so I don't know of a way to just have that one codec built right into the game source (like MVE is).  That means that we would have to rely on an external system to decode movies and that's where we are running into issues with the current code.


As fizz points out, Interplay is unlikely to do anything at this point.  MVE is antiquated and totally unsuited to current games, much less future ones.  Plus the source code and format docs for MVE have been publicly available since at least early-2002/late-2001.  isn't going to do anything about us using MVEs, since it's not their tech, and Interplay is bankrupt, the fate of their IP is unknown.  Suing over this isn't going to pay off for them since there is no way to get a good monetary settlement out of it.  Off the top of my head I can think of at least a dozen open source projects which have MVE support (and have had it for years) and Interplay has done absolutely nothing about it.  File size and color quality is a problem I agree, but it's something that we can deal with 100% in the game code.  We don't have to rely on an external source to decode a/v.  That also gives us 100% control to optimize and bug-fix the movie player.

There is just going to be no win-win here.  MVE suffers from hi-color dumbness and large file size.  Anything-else is going to greatly increase support issues and require much greater coder work to not only write the code, but also to keep it working.  Downloading issues are a problem, but many people already have the game which means they already have MVEs.  MVEs (since they use CFILE to load and use) can easily be used off of a CD or DVD and you can save the HD space.  If decides to get serious about protecting it's copyrights on the game data then everyone currently distributing the game over the internet is going to have trouble on their hands at which point downloading no longer becomes an issue.  With every possibility you can run off a page of negatives about it.

[Fury]

Downloading issues are a problem, but many people already have the game which means they already have MVEs.

That goes for retail game cutscenes, but what about mods and total conversions? Webspace isn't quite free either if bandwidth isn't an issue.

[taylor]

Downloading issues are a problem, but many people already have the game which means they already have MVEs.

That goes for retail game cutscenes, but what about mods and total conversions? Webspace isn't quite free either if bandwidth isn't an issue.

How many mods/TCs are actually using AVI cutscenes?  (I ask that seriously, I don't keep up with everything).  I tend to see just an intro video, if that.  Plus MVEs are a bit more compressable by something like ZIP over DivX AVIs, so you can recover some of that space (though not a lot) when in server storage/transport.

It's seamingly up to me to get all of that working, or keep it working, and I don't really care whether AVIs work or not.  Going with h264 (or any other codec that we can't integrate directly in the game source) doesn't solve that problem.  Most of the bugs in the AVI playing code for Windows have been fixed by me, and I don't even use it.  I don't really have the time (nor the inclination) to keep fixing those issues either.  If AVIs broke under Windows tomorrow and no longer played, I honestly wouldn't care.  AVI playing code for OS X and Linux still needs to be written or finalized, but I don't really want to work out all of the various issues for that either since it's still 100% up to me, and even when I do get it coded it's all on me to keep it working.

I'm not against AVIs because I know that mods use them.  But I'm not for them since I will never come out ahead on that particular feature.  If someone else were to handle the code (or the majority of it) then I wouldn't have a problem.  If movies worked better under Windows then this would be less of an issue, but it is an issue, and one that's not going away.

[Colonol Dekker]

Transcend used an XVID movie as a near end scene, ==spoiller==

The bit where time goes back REAALLLLLY quiuckly.
.AVI extension i'm sure.

[Fury]

How many mods/TCs are actually using AVI cutscenes?

No idea, I don't keep on top of most mod/tc developments. Probably not many considering only a minority of such mods that would use cutscenes have been released.

[karajorma]

I can tell you for certain that I know that BSG, MindGames, WCP, BHX and Transcend use them.

Based on what I've heard TVWP, B5:Heat em Up and Machina Terra also have them.