how can i play mame recorded videos ? mng files ?

[jonnytracker]

how can i play mame recorded videos ? mng files ?

[hermine.potter]

Have a look at this. Convert mng-files to avi. Copy them to scraper folder (e.g. C:\attract\scraper\mame\videos)

[jonnytracker]

why not a plugin to play directly

[akafox]

simply put..it is like this. A jepg is a still picture. An animated gif is a moving picture. A png is s still picture..and mng is a moving picture. png are not compressed like a jepg. A mng is not compressed like a gif is. mng are not video formats to a computer. However avi or mp4 are.

If you are wanting to record movies from MAME in a video format then use this

mame game -aviwrite game.avi (example mame dkong -aviwrite dkong.avi) the name.avi part can be anything (ex. movie.avi mygameplay.avi)

(please move this to the emulators section)

[battlecat]

Hi jonnytracker:

I have found that downloading the video snaps from progetto actually works better and looks better than the old ming files floating around the net.

-BC

[jonnytracker]

the frontend should recognize the mng recorded by Mame it saves alot of troubles.. reading from the snaps folder automatically ..

[battlecat]

Hi:

Unfortunately the Attract Mode front end does not have the capability to play back mng files. I personally do not see this as a problem except that it does remove a historical set of support files from being used.

I have downloaded the newest videos, from progetto, in mp4 format and they work great with the small exception that the video file sets are incomplete.

Perhaps the developers of AM will add playback of mng files to it's already long list of enhancements for the future.

--bc

[verion]

I don't see the point in adding this, because you can easily:

- convert existing mng videos to supported format
- record new videos in avi format

problem solved.

[battlecat]

I can see adding this because it would allow the use of a set of historically interesting files to be used natively without conversion.

Mind you I am not a programmer so I can't say how difficult this would be for this project's team.

-bc

[verion]

It is not about "how difficult it is" but IMHO it is just a waste of development time/energy.
But it's just my opinion, but hey - easy for me to say, because I don't have a single mng file

[battlecat]

I do understand your viewpoint.

As a non-programmer and yet someone who manages projects with teams of programmers I can see the value when it comes to backwards compatibility. So the active programmers of this awesome project will have to determine for themselves if it would be easy/hard and how much or how little time would make it worth adding this compatibility in would be.

Personally I would say that incorporating it would be nice if it were easy and cost little in time as well as introduce few or no bugs to the project. Otherwise it is something that I think would be on a long term wish list.

BC

[jonnytracker]

I love attract mode for its simplicity and features.. mng is a small file compared to avi .. pressing F12 to record and attract mode playing it in the front end this saves time instead of manually converting again all the recorded files...

[akafox]

Ok....I have to get into this one....

I have tried AdvanceMENU and had it set up. It uses mng format for the default vid snaps. Works very well. However it was not that easy to set up as attract mode..or even mamewah or mala and I don't like that i could not show different system backgrounds...(yeah yeah i'm being picky) It is VERY powerful though..IF you know what you are doing.

That is my problem..I don't know when it comes to mng. I used a newer version of mame with advancemenu so that i could play cps3 roms (the current advance mame at the time did not) and thus I did not have a sf3 mng to use. I DID make one...I went through A LOT of trouble to do it! Too much than it was worth anyway. It may not be that hard idk i just could not figure out how to use advancecomp..(the tool to edit and compress the mng)

The reason I was using this is because advance mame can run DOS..I have an old system still collecting dust..thought i would "up cycle" it...I had a small 40 gb hard drive as well..the vid snaps used a lot of my hd...the mngs were smaller. I eventually went with mala and windows 98 because I could not get mngs of the missing snaps I needed. (no i was not trying to run a cps3 game on a 400mhz...I know better )

However the size depends on how it is converted (I found out later) and avi format is just more widely used..it makes sense coming from a programmers point of view. A 15 second mng (made from advancemame and compressed) is around 7.7mb (1943) with the mng and the mp3 . However the 35 second mp4 I have (that was converted from a mame avi) is only 3.3 mb. So twice as long but half the size and MUCH easier to convert, format and compress!

When you record an avi with mame it is uncompressed..thus HUGE. But once converted it can be very small and the same or better quality than a mng.

To record avi you open a command prompt (or terminal) and then type (for example) mame 1943 -aviwrite 1943.avi Yes it will be a huge file..even after 30 seconds but when converted it is MUCH smaller. MANY good FREE tools out there to do just that.

If you just want to record yourself playing so you can watch it later just have mame record your input. That is MUCH smaller and no need to convert it!

[verion]

For converting videos I recommend Handbrake (www.handbrake.fr)

It's free and it's multi-platform (Windows, Mac and Linux) - and default settings are ok for most users.
If you want mp4 files just drag and drop your HUGE avi and click start button... and that's it (or maybe you have to set it to 4:3 - I don't remember).

mp4 is so convenient and small, but also CPU intensive if there is no hardware acceleration for decoding (and AM doesn't use hardware acceleration for playing mp4 - at least on OS X).

See my other post with some test data http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=251.msg1580#msg1580

If you have slow CPU (like RPi) you may want to use XviD encoding instead - it's not that CPU intensive and files are still pretty small.
If you want XviD files you have to download older version of Handbrake (earlier than 0.9.4) - because from 0.9.4 devs ditched Xvid.

[jonnytracker]

i rather download then convert