[High Max]

;-)

[knn]

The program I used (mve2avi) played them with the colors messed up (mostly green) until I switched the desktop color depth from 32 bit to 16 bit.
I'm quite certain there is no codec, because the mve format is Interplay's property and making anything that can read it is illegal AFAIK (so mve2avi is also illegal). At least that's what I read when I found mve2avi
The avis can be downloaded though: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/FAQ/movies.html, and you'll need them for SCP anyway, so it's a good idea to download them.

[taylor]

http://icculus.org/~taylor/fso/testing/that_player.zip
(been sitting there for almost 2 years, I think it still works)

[Taristin]

I don't know how myself, but I can copy the contents of the post, at any rate:

I'm not sure if this is common knowledge or not, but I'm willing to bet there are least a few people here who don't know about it. I just stumbled across a means of playing Interplay's .mve format movie files in Winamp (5, at least; I'm not sure about 2 or 3). I was poking around on the site of Game Audio Player, which can play a wide variety of PC game sound formats, including D3's .osf format. It can also play sound files from different compressed file formats. Anyway, the site also has available for download a package of freeware DirectShow filters that allow you to play certain types of files, including .mve files, in any audio player that supports DirectShow. Winamp 5 comes with such a plugin installed. Anyway, if anyone's interested, follow these steps:

1. Download the filter package here and extract the contents to any folder of your choice.

2. Run the register.bat file to register the filters.

3. Open Winamp, go to Options->Preferences, select Input under the Plug-ins menu, and double-click on the DirectShow Decoder plugin.

4. Add ";MVE" to the end of the string of file extensions.

5. If you want Winamp to be the default .mve player, go up to File Types and select MVE.

I know that there are players/converters for .mve files available, but for simply viewing the files as they are, I figure that this method works pretty well.

Edit:  From your other post in here, I see that you can't access the Internet from home, so those links probably won't do you any good.

Sectorgame > HLP >..>;;

[Taristin]

I downloaded the "thatplayer" file and extracted the files after it told me to after I double clicked the exe file in the "that player" folder. Then I clicked it again and a notepad file was created saying "usage: mveplay filename" in the file after opening it. Then I double clicked the exe again and nothing happens. What am I supposed to do now to play a mve movie in it?

clearly it's a command line player.

c:\diretory\thatplayer moviefile.mve

[taylor]

clearly it's a command line player.

Oops, forgot about that part.  It was setup to be used from within FSO (and for Linux) which is why it isn't more user friendly.

Also note that there are different MVE versions.  Most filters/players will only support some of the MVE formats and not all of them so just having something can play an MVE doesn't mean that it can handle the ones used by FS1 or the ones used by FS2.  "that_player" should handle most every MVE format though, so you can just use it as a fallback if another player doesn't handle that particular MVE format/version/type.

[Col. Fishguts]

Where did you get that MVE player code ? Will it find its way into Win32 builds ?

[CaptJosh]

I can answer that for him. NO! It won't be making it into the Windows builds.

"Why?" You ask? It's simple. We don't have permission from Interplay to use their proprietary code in an open source project. We also can't legally reverse engineer the codec and then make our own. Interplay is not about to give up their intellictual property copyright by releasing the MVE codec source into an open source project. It's one of the few things they have left that might be of use to them monetarily if they can resuscitate their company. If we were to do this, those working on the SCP would be open to lawsuit by Interplay, or at least what's left of it.

[Col. Fishguts]

Yes yes, I know all that. But AFAIK Linux and Mac OSX builds support MVE playback (or is that just a rumour?). My question is how's that possible ? Dirty haxx0ring ?

[taylor]

Where did you get that MVE player code?

The MVE format was reverse engineered even before released the source code for FS2.  MVE format movies were used for other games before FS2 and a decoder was made for one of those other projects.  It was modified to read 16-bit MVEs and used for the icculus.org version.  That icculus.org version was later modified to run faster and intergrate just with the FS2 source rather than work as a standalone player.  "that_player" is basically the original code with both 8-bit and 16-bit support but with a few minor changes so that it could be used as an external player for FS2_Open (and then not be integrated into the source).  Actually using it as an external player never panned out though, OGL was ok but D3D hated it.

Will it find its way into Win32 builds ?

See CaptJosh's post.  Though it should also be known that the decoder has been publicly available and used in multiple opensource projects for nearly 4 years now.  SCP isn't in less danger because of that but Interplay is kinda screwed if they really wanted to protect the format.  Their lawyers could still be unleashed at any point but this is the Internet age and once Pandora's box gets opened, it doesn't close again.

Is a MVE player already included in the Linux and OS X versions of FS2_Open 3.6.7?
You'll just have to use one of them and find out. (note that those versions don't have AVI support)

Does a MVE player already exist for the Win32 version of FS2_Open?
Yes.

Will it make it into public Win32 builds?
Can't say, not my decision.  And don't bother asking around or the answer will likely be an official "No."  If it hits CVS then yippee, if not then that's too bad.

[CaptJosh]

Something interesting I found in making high quality conversions of the cutscenes for my own use is that using the Xvid codec seems to have gotten rid of the large pixelation that plagued even the MVE versions of the cutscenes. To say the least, I was surprised that this worked out so, but quite pleased, as well.

[pecenipicek]

if i'm not mistaken, MVE was a lossless encoder or? considering the fact that you usually winded up with 1-4 gigs of uncompressed avi's(or pics if you took my way of doing stuff...)

[taylor]

if i'm not mistaken, MVE was a lossless encoder or?

I haven't really gotten into the details of the MVE decoder (such things are a bit above my skill level) but it would appear to be a little something like MPEG2 in function (sort of).  It doesn't necessarily compress the frames, but a frame will likely only contain an amount of data that was different from the previous frame.  It reuses as much data as possible and just replaces what it needs to complete a new frame image.