[jaedub51]

When I first used FS2, the cutscenes all worked for me, but now, none of them do, and if I try to play them in the tech room, that doesn't work either. I used Turey's downloader: what am I doing wrong?

[Jeff Vader]

1. Make sure that you still have the cutscenes somewhere in the FreeSpace folder structure.

2. Check that you haven't accidentally selected Direct3D in the Launcher. At least in my case Direct3D effectively prevented the cutscenes from working. Use OpenGL.

[jr2]

Hmm.  They won't work in Retail, or they won't work in SCP?  I think Cutscenes in Retail are broken unless they are on a disc, with the SCP cutscenes... I could be wrong, and I'm certain there's workarounds, too, let me know more specifics....

[Jeff Vader]

Considering he mentioned Turey's Installer and that  he has successfully viewed the cutscenes earlier, should we make the assumption that he's playing SCP? In that case I'd bet on Direct3D. When I started playing SCP, I chose Direct3D, for some unknown reason, and it did cause a lot of problems, like the usual missing textures, butt-ugly warp effects, general slowdowns and most of all, malfunctioning cutscenes.

[karajorma]

Considering he mentioned Turey's Installer and that  he has successfully viewed the cutscenes earlier, should we make the assumption that he's playing SCP?

That's a really bad assumption considering the number of people who use Turey's installer and then click on Freespace2.exe instead of launcher.exe.

It might be an idea to start renaming the launcher to Freespace2_Open.exe to avoid confusion. BtRL completely skipped the problem by renaming our launcher as BeyondTheRedLine.exe and distributing the OpenAL installer as RunMeFirst(Open AL 2006-12-12).exe

Never make assumptions about what someone new is doing. I've seen much stranger mistakes than that.

[Jeff Vader]

[That's a really bad assumption considering the number of people who use Turey's installer and then click on Freespace2.exe instead of launcher.exe.

Oh, bum grapes. True, I didn't even think of that option.

Is there any readme that the installer would download? It might be an option to include specific orders to use Launcher.exe and fs2_open_yaddayaddayadda.exe, in order to avoid these problems in the future. Or I dunno, just came to my mind. The renaming thing sounds like it would work, too.

[Turey]

There's already the post-install notes, but no one ever reads them.

[jaedub51]

Thank you for the assistance! By switching back to openGL, the cutscenes once again work.

Turey: I DID read the notes. w/o them, I would have never got the thing to work at all

[DarkDestroyer]

Hiya, couldn't be bothered making a new thread because it would be just plain pointless but, I've kinda had the same problem with this only it veers off in a slightly different direction. I downloaded the avi cutscenes for FS1 and 2 and they luk lovely, however, when i selected opengl and played the game the opening cutscene worked but i view it in like a widescreen thing with bits of the sourcecode prject title still there. the same happens when i try and watch the cutscene by going into the cutscene section of the game...

eh?

[Jeff Vader]

Try the ogg cutscenes, available here.

[jr2]

Use Turey's Installer and only select the Cutscenes... much easier, usually.  (check two boxes hit next and presto!)

[Iolaus]

I must be going nuts because I've searched all over and can't seem to find a single person who has the same problem.  I can't watch the movies either.  I have the FS2OGGcutscenepack.vp file sitting in my FS2 directory.  Everything else runs fine, but every time I try to play the cutscenes via the tech room it gives me the "unable to play video" message. 

Somebody here suggested that I run with OpenGL, but for whatever reason the game doesn't detect OpenGL when I try to find it on the Launcher.  I don't know why it even matters as everything else has worked perfectly under Direct3d.

[jr2]

That's the reason... D3D is known not to play cutscenes.  Try updating drivers to latest from your manufacturer, (eg, www.nvidia.com or www.ati.com ), and installing those, then running in OpenGL.

[Iolaus]

My driver is up to date, believe me.  Took me a week to finally find a way to get around the restrictions Nvidia place on their new drivers so that they can install on my laptop.  (You can get the ones the manufacturers give you (in my case, Asus), but those are horribly out of date and essentially worthless.  Brilliant plan that: advertise the graphics card of your laptop and then make it impossible to use it properly)

In any case I'm pretty sure that's not the problem because I've played other games where OpenGL was available.

[jr2]

You have the latest drivers?  Or the latest beta drivers?  The latest beta ones (released for Crysis) have issues with FS.

[Iolaus]

Nope, just a regular driver.

Anyways I've already downloaded and watch most of the cutscenes in avi so I'm just going to call it quits.  Kinda anti-climatic watching them on their own though/

[jr2]

Last 2 things: 

1) Get FFDShow and install it.  (SSE preferable, if not, then MMX, if not, then the regular one.. but you should at least have MMX and most probably SSE as well!)  Try the videos again.

2) If that doesn't work, then follow the instructions here.  Post link to the hard-light.pastebin.com entry here, as the instructions say.

[ARSPR]

Nope, just a regular driver.

Anyways I've already downloaded and watch most of the cutscenes in avi so I'm just going to call it quits.  Kinda anti-climatic watching them on their own though/

Two fast comments:

• D3D is dead and it's going to remain dead FOR EVER
• Avi support has been dropped due to several reasons. Latest builds only support original MVE format and Theora ogg format. Forget about that format. FS2_open.exe should be able to play ogg movies fine.

[jr2]

Err.. when I said try the videos again, I meant try the .ogg ones.

[Iolaus]

Um, that's what I have.  Apparently doesn't work with d3d, as you said.  OpenGL is no good (found it after opening launcher again today; don't know why it wasn't there before) since Vista apparently doesn't like it (something about W32) 

Moving on:  I was messing around with some of the options in the launcher and found that if I changed the color to 32-bit, whenever I hit certain menus in the game (ie. the mission simulator list load screen, the "do you really want to quit this mission" ESC menu), the screen just locks up for no seemingly no reason.  Everything is still working, as evidenced by the fact that if I press escape I can go back to the game, fire my weapons, and hear everything else that's going on, but the screen is simply stuck until I quit the game (thankfully this is pretty easy to do with FS with keyboard alone.)

Yeah, this is another d3d problem, I'm sure, but thought I'd ask while I'm here.  Not a big deal though.