Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: maisr001 on December 22, 2009, 06:06:19 am

Title: Replacing retail cutescenes with custom ones help
Post by: maisr001 on December 22, 2009, 06:06:19 am
Need help with custom cutscenes!!!! I've created a new Introduction cutscene to replace the retail one for a mod I'm making, it played in the start of freespace 2 but the video is heavily pixelated and no sound comes out of the video!!  :blah: Does anyone know why this happens or what the correect video settings should be as you are making them? The intro cutscene has been tried under .avi, .mve and .ogg and the result is the same regardless.....It's annoying because I've spent hours making some of these cutscenes and there aren't working correctly in the game....
Title: Re: Replacing retail cutescenes with custom ones help
Post by: Jeff Vader on December 22, 2009, 06:49:35 am
1. This is modding; you don't have problems playing FreeSpace or getting the game to run -> moved to the FreeSpace Modding board.

2. Avi doesn't work for sure. Ogg should work as long as the audio is Ogg Vorbis encoded and the audio is Ogg Theora encoded. Mve probably isn't worth the hassle.

3. I have this feeling that I've heard about some resolution limits. I'm not sure but in case modding people stumble upon this thread, you could tell us what resolution your cutscenes have.
Title: Re: Replacing retail cutescenes with custom ones help
Post by: The E on December 22, 2009, 09:34:05 am
Not sure about res limits, but I think it would be a good idea to use 1024*768 as a resolution.

As for file formats, ogg Theora/ogg Vorbis is the way to go; avi support has been removed completely and I don't think there's an encoder for mve out there.
Title: Re: Replacing retail cutescenes with custom ones help
Post by: maisr001 on December 23, 2009, 05:05:57 pm
Thank you for the help, and I apologise for placing this in the wrong section!  :lol: Oh, and the movie resolution is 640x480, maybe an increase to 1024x768 , if it can be done, might be better?
Title: Re: Replacing retail cutescenes with custom ones help
Post by: Jeff Vader on December 25, 2009, 02:23:01 am
I just checked and the retail cutscenes seem to be 640x320. As an interesting side note. It shouldn't matter too much.
Also, I do hope you know how to encode the video clips properly. Not that I'm implying anything, but I've seen enough cases where people have thought that conversion from avi to ogg can be done by changing the file extension from .avi to .ogg.

You could upload the cutscene somewhere so that people could check it out and try it themselves to see if they can get it to work. If that is okay with you, of course.
Title: Re: Replacing retail cutescenes with custom ones help
Post by: maisr001 on December 26, 2009, 07:07:36 am
Yes I know how to encode movies properly, I use online converters for basic convertion and use a bundle of other software to fine tune them, but I know what you mean with people not encoding the movies properly.

I'll think about the uploading bit, I've got a few other options I've thought of so I hope they work. Thanks for your help Jeff Vader.
Title: Re: Replacing retail cutescenes with custom ones help
Post by: maisr001 on December 27, 2009, 05:17:43 am
Hahahaha, got the visual to work but there's no sound!  :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: I've tried Vorbis, Flac, mp3 and WAV, never thought that making cutscenes would be so difficult!!!
Title: Re: Replacing retail cutescenes with custom ones help
Post by: The E on December 27, 2009, 05:19:52 am
Okay, here's a hint: Go and download the ogg cutscene pack, if you haven't done so already. Take a look at what formats they use. Then use that.
Title: Re: Replacing retail cutescenes with custom ones help
Post by: Jeff Vader on December 27, 2009, 05:32:31 am
For reference: this file (http://koti.mbnet.fi/reiler/FunkyFreeSpaceStuff/intro2.ogg) worked fine when I used it as this year's april fool's joke.
Title: Re: Replacing retail cutescenes with custom ones help
Post by: chief1983 on December 28, 2009, 02:14:19 pm
Also, not sure what online converters you're using but you might want to look at SUPER Encoder (http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html).  I believe it can encode Ogg Theora/Vorbis, and it can decode just about anything.
Title: Re: Replacing retail cutescenes with custom ones help
Post by: maisr001 on January 11, 2010, 05:05:19 pm
Thanks for your help people!!!!! ;) ;) ;) ;) :D I've finally got the cutscenes to display and play sound thanks to the SUPER suggestion. Thanks so much and when my mod is ready for testing, I'll post up.
Title: Re: Replacing retail cutescenes with custom ones help
Post by: chief1983 on January 11, 2010, 05:19:05 pm
Glad it helped, SUPER has helped me out in a pinch a couple times.  I've been using it for the FotG videos on Youtube.
Title: Re: Replacing retail cutescenes with custom ones help
Post by: Lucika on January 12, 2010, 03:20:17 pm
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we still unable to make normal cutscenes because the .ogg belongs to Interplay or sg?  :wtf:
Title: Re: Replacing retail cutescenes with custom ones help
Post by: Jeff Vader on January 12, 2010, 03:22:43 pm
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we still unable to make normal cutscenes because the .ogg belongs to Interplay or sg?  :wtf:
:wtf: The what belongs to the who now?
Title: Re: Replacing retail cutescenes with custom ones help
Post by: The E on January 12, 2010, 03:47:53 pm
The mve format, which is a proprietary **** format that belonged to Interplay and that noone else uses is indeed not available to us. Which is more due to a lack of encoders. FSO can play those videos back just fine, while the code was removed from the source, it was later replaced with a reverse-engineered version.

So, in theory, you could create mves. You would have to create an encoder first, though.
But why would you do that, when you can use ogg, which is completely open source?
Title: Re: Replacing retail cutescenes with custom ones help
Post by: Lucika on January 12, 2010, 04:10:43 pm
The mve format, which is a proprietary **** format that belonged to Interplay and that noone else uses is indeed not available to us. Which is more due to a lack of encoders. FSO can play those videos back just fine, while the code was removed from the source, it was later replaced with a reverse-engineered version.

So, in theory, you could create mves. You would have to create an encoder first, though.
But why would you do that, when you can use ogg, which is completely open source?

So we can basically add animated cutscenes like the ones in the original games?  :eek2:
If so, yay.
Title: Re: Replacing retail cutescenes with custom ones help
Post by: The E on January 12, 2010, 04:15:10 pm
Dude, what did you think was the point of adding ogg video support?

What did you think ASW used (just to take the most recent example)? Or TBP? Or WCS? Or SoL? Or Diaspora?
Title: Re: Replacing retail cutescenes with custom ones help
Post by: Lucika on January 12, 2010, 04:18:20 pm
Dude, what did you think was the point of adding ogg video support?

What did you think ASW used (just to take the most recent example)? Or TBP? Or WCS? Or SoL? Or Diaspora?

Hey, calm down :D I thought (I only played ASW) that there was some way to add ingame stuff and nothing else. But now I see the difference.