[Goober5000]

Make sure you add that to the 3.6.9 branch too.

[taylor]

And for those who have the right Directshow filters installed (...both of you  ), I just committed a very small change that lets the game recognize .ogg files as movies.  So now Theora files are viewable.  Granted it still is using Directshow to actually SHOW the Theora files, but eh.   At least this way we can start messing with encoding settings outside the game and actually see results in the game for starters...

That's not going to show the true results though.  The video and audio will have to run through the game subsystems for a true player.  Video will be decoded and accelerated through OGL/D3D, and the audio will run through OpenAL.  That's possibly a pretty big difference in visual quality (it will have resize filters applied through OGL for instance) and audio capability compared to what DirectShow will give you.  So about all you've really done is add another way for it to mess up, like AVI does.

And it's still using DirectShow to play the media, which means it isn't nearly as strict as to the format of the container as the real player will be.  It's going to be pretty easy to make Theora files which aren't true ogg streams (such as .ogm files, which aren't actually ogg) and not even realize it since DirectShow will display it regardless.  And then when the real player code gets introduced all of those files would be invalid.  For everyone who intends to play with this until the real player is ready, it's best to be careful.

[Backslash]

So about all you've really done is add another way for it to mess up, like AVI does.

Yep.  I knew you'd like this 'solution'

And it's still using DirectShow to play the media, which means it isn't nearly as strict as to the format of the container as the real player will be.

Yeah.  Plus those few of us messing around with this aren't exactly familiar with what the format of the container SHOULD be yet, being so new.  About all I've done so far is play around with the ffmpeg2theora settings.

I realize the visible results of this change has a very limited lifespan, which is why I wasn't sure about putting it in 3.6.9 branch or not.  Just figured it'd be nice to view the files I and others make during our experiments.  Don't worry, we won't 'rely' on this.  (Though I assume the change I made to cfile is the same sort of change that will be needed when the player is implemented, right?  Or is cfile another of those things getting the taylor chrome electroplating treatment? )

I wish I had the coding skill to help properly bring the player support in...

[taylor]

 

I do actually think it's a good idea as an interim solution, but as I said, everyone has to be pretty careful about the files they create until the real player is available.  That is my only real concern.  This is going to be Theora files according to the official spec, not some bastard variation like the ogm container.  And the CFILE changes are 100% correct, so no big deal there (though I am working on the big CFILE upgrade for CVPs ).

I have the example Theora players sitting on my desktop, so I do plan to go ahead and try to work on it this week.  I don't know that I'll have time to get anything done, but this is something that I would really like to squeeze in for 3.6.9, since it would officially squash the issues we have with how movies currently work.

[karajorma]

It would also allow us to do a (semi-)official release of the movies with 3.6.9 rather than some half-assed change over between 3.6.9 and 3.7.

I can already see the support nightmare that having 3.6.9 support avi and CVS support Theora would cause even if standard players aren't supposed to be using CVS any more.

Of course if I can pursuade someone to let me upload the mve versions of the movies that would work with everything

[Tolwyn]

Hmm, any guidelines for the encoding? (i.e. bitrate, etc) My fingers are itching to try it out

[Col. Fishguts]

The only mods that use AVI movies that are actually released are Lightning Marshall and Transcend, AFAIK.  Everything else is still in development.  For LM and Transcend, we'd have to get in touch with the original developers, but for the rest, it's quite likely they still have the raw movies around.  If we were to say, in a sticky thread or something, "Here are the options for encoding movies, and here are the codecs to use", then the changeover should be doable without much difficulty IMHO.

*cough cough*

The "Raider Wars" wars campaign from TBP uses an avi movie for the credits, it's not a disaster if that would stop working though. Some of the WIP campaigns are using avi movies too, but that's just a matter of re-encoding.

Having read up on Theora, I agree that it's the best choice to go, and the sooner it's implemented the better.

[taylor]

If I can get the Theora player coded up this/next week then I'll go ahead and get it in for 3.6.9.  I'll leave the current DirectShow support in there for the time being though (and it will remain in for 3.6.9).  So, the load order would be Theora->MVE->DirectShow.  That way no one has to change anything movie wise for 3.6.9, but the code will support them if they do decide to release Theora movies.

[Tolwyn]

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

Hmm. Does anyone happen to have the package? The link above is down.

[fizz]

Hmm. Does anyone happen to have the package? The link above is down.

Works fine for me...

[Tolwyn]

looks like the server was down for a couple of hours.

[Tolwyn]

I wonder, have you ever considered using Bink codec? Or are there any licensing issues I am not aware of?

http://www.radgametools.com/default.htm

[Colonol Dekker]

The file size is a bit large isnt it?

[taylor]

I wonder, have you ever considered using Bink codec? Or are there any licensing issues I am not aware of?

Bink is commercial.  I think it's like $5,000-$6,000 per OS for the SDK.  I you want to fork over the $18,000 needed for just one developer to do the Bink code, then you can send the check my way.    


I think we'll just stay with Theora though, it's file sizes are a good bit smaller than even DivX.  Plus, I've got video almost working in the player now.   I just need to get the YUV->RGB conversion working better, and much faster.  Then it's on to audio, and after that it's done.