Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Ghost77 on November 20, 2003, 11:08:32 pm
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While looking for mve to avi convert I found a mve to exe converter and I was wondering if it was possible to have FS2_open run the exes created by the converter instead playing the movies.
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no, the reason we don't play the movies is a legal one, that program is illigal, therefore we can't use it, or distribute it, and you can just DL the mves in AVI form
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Where from where from?????
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By the way... lets see if I get this straight:
Downloading MVE's is obviously illegal
Making Exes of the MVE's and donwloading them is also illegal (I presume it must be because they are still MVE's autoplayable)
And converting MVE's to AVI is legal?
Donwloading those AVI's is also legal then?
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no, dl'ng the mve's is as illegal as downloading the HOTU version of FS2, not all that illegal. Interplay is rather possessive about the MVE fileformat, so the actual converting is illegal, but distributing the avi's is jsut as (il)legal as distributing the mve's or HOTU.
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So basically if you distributed and played the MVE's it'd be two possible copyright violations instead of one.
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I don’t understand your reasoning because downloading those avis illegal. It is copyrighted material and you have to have Interplay’s permission to distribute that material, which they’ll never give. Also keep in mind that the copyright law is a civil law meaning that Interplay can’t charge you with anything for violating the copyright but they can sue you if violating the copyright cost them money or harms them some other way, something which that they have to prove. Bottom line is that there is no way to have the movies work in the FS2_open with without violating the copyright and I personally feel the method I proposed far less likely to anger Interplay than the method that you are encouraging people to do, I don't think that came out right but I think thats the best way to word it. As far as using those converters Interplay has no legal right stop you using them unless they can prove that using them it hurts them in some way. I am sorry if this post seems rude but I’m not very good with words and this is my very first post.
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Originally posted by Ghost77
While looking for mve to avi convert I found a mve to exe converter and I was wondering if it was possible to have FS2_open run the exes created by the converter instead playing the movies.
I actually wanted to put this in but was denied.
I didnt think so at the time but it was a good call.
No point even risking getting the source code project in trouble because of this.
Now that the mve's can be converted and fs2_open can play most video formats I think thats a good compromise solution.
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Ghost, you are indeed new here, although you are correct that downloading the avi's is dubious at best. Then again, so is the only real way to get ahold of the rest of Freespace 2 these days. The point has been discussed here extensively, and the decision has more to do with what code allows the most versitility in FSO than what is least illegal. We've abandoned the MVE filetype for all intents and purposes so your suggestion is something that is wholy unnecessary anyway. The real issue stems from the file format, and the fact that Interplay is much more likely to go up in arms if we start distributing code to crack their format than they are to be upset that we are distributing common-format versions of data once held in their format. All of the conversions have been done, so we are not advocating continuing use of the converter and are thus leaving the MVE file format alone.
EDIT: RandomTiger, you beat me to it. Does this guy need a welcome beam?
And since Interplay has outright said that the mve2exe program is illegal, integrating it into the source is indeed a bad idea it would seem, as the whole project could get canned for that alone.
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If you want to see the MVE's play the original campaign ;)
Sionce there is no way to make new MVE's, what's the compelling event to put a bunch of code in to support a dead format?
Not to mention the "dubious nature" of reverse engineering the MVE decoder.
There is no reason, other than to prove you can do it, to implement that. New mod makers make AVI's or whatever the favorite format is, so new campaigns don;t have the MVE probelm.
AND we have covered this about 100 times :)
Anywho, welcome to the forums, someone beam him :)
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:welcome:
Flamethrowers under the seats. watch out for shivans in the ductwork. There is no FS3. an0n is god on Tuesdays (at least that was the last i heard)
oh and your member #1500
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Here's a slightly different take on it.
Interplay have taken no action about FS2 appearing on HotU or any FS2 media appearing in other formats.
Interplay have however gone after any site they have found offering MVE tools of any kind.
Adding MVE playback to FS2 might bring FS2_open to their attention and that is something we don't want to do.
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Lets consider this topic closed, shall we? I think we've scared him off (which is sort of a big deal, or not, considering he was #1500 and all).
Should someone add it to the FAQ?
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I searched through the forum to see if I could find any discussion on this subject and the ones that I found did not say anything about my idea. In those discussions they were talking more about reverse engineering the actual MVE player code and putting into SCP. That is not what I was asking. To clarify what I was originally asking was to have SCP call the exes, there is one for each movie, that were created by the converter and run it, then when it’s done start running FS again, if that is even possible and if it is not then this thread is pointless. I am not asking you to put any of MVE code into SCP. As far as SCP is concern those exe files could be any exe file, and many ways very similar to your doing with the avis.
As far as avi goes I would like point out that most the movies aren’t available for download, I search the forum thoroughly for avi movies and I was only able to find 4 for FS1 and 2 for FS2. Also the avi performance on my computer isn’t all that great I occasionally get stuttering and Windows will not let the movies to be played fullscreen, every time I try Windows bumps it back down. While MVE format is completely smooth and in fullscreen. Finally the reason why I haven’t to tried converting the MVE to avi myself is because on my computer it would take 6 hour to convert one of the smaller ones and I don’t know how to use any the codecs.
Finally the reason I went that hold spiel about the copyright law was because just because Interplay that those converters were illegal doesn’t mean that unofficially they mind that they exist or if people used them. Keep in mind that the only site that I know of that was told not make them available was Voilition’s web site. In my opinion the only reason they did that was because it would look like Interplay officially allowed those converters to exist thus letting dishonest companies say that Interplay would have no right to charge them for using the MVE format because Interplay released those converters. Also non of the Fallout sites, as far as I know, have bend told to stop making those files available, again I believe because those sites are not official and can’t be used for purpose I explained above. Also Interplay does not have to tell you something illegal in order for them to sue you. This is why I don’t really want to encourage people to make avis available for download. I again personally feel that if Interplay going to have issues with this situation it going to be about make those available for download, regardless of the format, and not encouraging people to use the converters.
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Also I want to make sure everybody understood what I was asking for and why was asking for it. Because I this issue will keep coming back as you guys keep enabling more and more features in SCP the more people will want the full experience of the original campaigns because they are the most developed. And I thought my proposal would be the easiest way to do that. Finally I wanted make sure people knew why you did not want use my proposal because none of the other threads similar to this topic discuss exactly what I proposed.
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No you didn't scare me off it just took a long time for me to figure out what I wanted to say.
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Well, you're welcome here, Ghost. :) I would say that one of the huge obstacles to having the EXEs in there, assuming that had no legal issue, is that we cannot compress them at all. The install size would balloon to double or triple the size we're currently looking at.
:welcome:
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All the FS2 movies are available on Fractux's FTP server. I'll do you a deal though. Get me a list of all the movies that are already up somewhere (with valid links) and I'll put up all the missing ones myself.
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Originally posted by Ghost77
I searched through the forum to see if I could find any discussion on this subject and the ones that I found did not say anything about my idea.
It has been talked about before, see my post above.
Also the avi performance on my computer isn’t all that great I occasionally get stuttering and Windows will not let the movies to be played fullscreen, every time I try Windows bumps it back down.
The fullscreen thing is something I'm working on, not easy stuff sadly. I doupt I can do anything about the performance though.
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well the only thing is that the exe's of the MVE files are rather large (200mb for the fs1 intro) and the AVIs are compressed using DIVx something and its down to about 1/10 the size
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Is the exe maker still viable? I thought that was deemed "questionable" as well.
Now that I understand it, it's not a TERRIBLY bad idea, but folks can already do that with the converted AVI's no?
As for the AVI's themselves, thye sit in a really grey area. It's less black than an MVE converter or decoder, but it's still fuzzy :)
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Originally posted by PhReAk
well the only thing is that the exe's of the MVE files are rather large (200mb for the fs1 intro) and the AVIs are compressed using DIVx something and its down to about 1/10 the size
DivX =
+ good quality
+ small file size
+ can easily be created
- will not run properly on < 700 MHz machines (if you have good resolution and quality)
DivX is the codec with the highest CPU load i know of ;)
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Don't make required system specifications above one gigahert.
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depends on the codec you use to compress your AVIs. If your comp is too slow for DivX you may simply use another codec :)
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400-450 MHz Pentium 2 is enough (read: minimum) for a decent quality MPEG-4 file. For those who don't know, DivX, xvid, wmv9 and sorenson-what-was-the-number-again (used in quicktime) are MPEG-4 codec variations.
Apparently you can screw them up in such a way that no machine can play it well though, but I don't know how exactly. That 400 MHz computer is around the bare minimum needed to play FS2 anyway, so there's hardly any reason to distribute MPEG-1 or 2 versions (lighter to decode but bigger in size) of the MVEs, which themselves have a low resolution anyway (thus lighter). DivX/xvid/whatever is enough.
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Originally posted by Terorist
400-450 MHz Pentium 2 is enough (read: minimum) for a decent quality MPEG-4 file. For those who don't know, DivX, xvid, wmv9 and sorenson-what-was-the-number-again (used in quicktime) are MPEG-4 codec variations.
Apparently you can screw them up in such a way that no machine can play it well though, but I don't know how exactly. That 400 MHz computer is around the bare minimum needed to play FS2 anyway, so there's hardly any reason to distribute MPEG-1 or 2 versions (lighter to decode but bigger in size) of the MVEs, which themselves have a low resolution anyway (thus lighter). DivX/xvid/whatever is enough.
afraid to say, but that isn't quite correct. It highly depends on the quality you used when compressing the DivX. Good looking DivX videos did definately NOT work on my 533 MHz machine, and i have seen them locking up on several 700 MHz machines as well. However, if you have a 1 GHz+ PC you should be able to watch most DivX without any problems. And if I mean good looking i refer as to not seeing any artifacts.
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Compressing videos properly is an art on its own.
Actually some two pass encodings can be very good.
The problem is that you need a very clear source for any blurryness will actually increase the file size since MPEG codecs have a hard time dealing with gradients.
Cutting of the edges helps too, since the said edge - the point where it blurs into black - is also a waste of bits and processor power.
Cutting down the resolution a bit is not as much of a loss as you would think - it actually helps in some cases.
Divx has excelent image filters, than can restore to full screen glory a file you couldn't with other codecs.
A bigger size however often wastes reasources since the picture gets cut donw to more block (that was the resaon behind the blocking of some poor MPEG-I files), whereas a smaller resolution would allow a more economic enciding, still within the limits of the retouch filters.
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Originally posted by Lightspeed
afraid to say, but that isn't quite correct. It highly depends on the quality you used when compressing the DivX. Good looking DivX videos did definately NOT work on my 533 MHz machine,
[/size]I used to watch DivX files with my 400 MHz K6/2 without problems when they first came around...
If you try to tell me I'd need a 1 GHz processor instead of my current Duron (somewhere near 800) to see the good looking files I currently watch (without any evidence of shortage of processing power) then I'll just have to laugh you out the window, sorry. :-)Originally posted by Lightspeed
and i have seen them locking up on several 700 MHz machines as well. However, if you have a 1 GHz+ PC you should be able to watch most DivX without any problems. And if I mean good looking i refer as to not seeing any artifacts.
[/size]I can only speak from my experience, and based on that I'll have to assume there's something else wrong with your system and/or files; poor encodes, inefficiently configured system and so on (I guess you use XP, hah). I used to routinely fix badly put together files with Virtualdub before they played nicely... there's lots of bad work out there.
Using an actual player like Media Player Classic (http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli) instead of bloated pieces of crap like the later versions of Windows Media Player (6.4 rocks, and was my choice before finding MPC) or other similar horrors helps. Also use ffdshow (http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow) instead of the current dubious versions of DivX - the 5.x series even had a built-in film grain adder, how ****ed up is that? I couldn't belive my eyes when I saw that, and stopped using such a idiotic product altogether. As if the picture quality could ever be good enough to need ruining like that...
Anyway, back to topic: the MVEs are somewhat low resolution to begin with; if they're converted to some MPEG-4 format properly, no decent system that can play FS2 should have problems with them processing power-wise. (Although I suppose there are people with ~200 MHz machines out there... well, I just hope they won't mind.) There's always some even with better computers who will have problems, as always, but those won't have anything to do with needing a gazillion hertz CPU.
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Originally posted by Lightspeed
- will not run properly on < 700 MHz machines (if you have good resolution and quality)
are you f***ing kidding me ligtspeed? i (used to, before i stole its speakers for my stereo) play high-res Divx vids on my old 400 Mhz P2
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I've seen divx 5.1 hog up more then its fair share of CPU time on my 2.4 GHz. However, Divx3 encodes are cake.
-Krom
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I'll quite happily convert the cutscenes again if someone will give me a rough idea what settings to use in VirtualDub (or TMPG for that matter). I'm pretty new to encoding movies so I just did the best I could.