On the assumption that you have a system with a dualcore cpu or higher, and are encoding with x264, set the number of threads higher than one in the configuration window of the encoder. That made an incredible difference in the speed that I encoded a personal test with.
I did find that most of the results I had after that hung pcsx (most times it happened after the movie had finished playing and was then auto-paused) and caused it to break the avi file after closing the non-responding process through process explorer.
Also mz, I noticed that the kkapture capture window bug gets even weirder when you use higher resolution captures (eg. 640x480 HQ2x un/stretched).
Yeah, that's why this was the step 1 of my AVI capturing guide:
You can also enable .kkapture's option "Enable automatic frameskip on timeout". If you don't do any of these things, .kkapture will wait infinitely until the next frame is drawn (which will never happen, since emulation is paused).
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
Okay, now that recording is done, I have a few questions.
1. Is kkapture *supposed* to record in a 640x512 window and then shuffle the image off to the corner? I set PCSX's resolution to 320x240, and while it captured it at that resolution, it placed in the in corner of a larger resolution.
2. Can I change this?
3. How do I get it to stretch the image to fill the space I want regardless of ingame rendering? Instead of recording the parts that get rendered at 256x240 at the specified 320x240 (yes, it's set to stretch the image), it just captured it at what it was rendered at.
If the answer to any of this is, "Do some post-recording processing," I'll be sad because I know nothing about such things.
I'll admit I'm feeling exceedingly n00bish right now.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
You need to use v0.0.7's TAS Video Plugin to fix this issue (you're probably using one of the test version plugins, which don't have this fix enabled).
(By the way, sorry about all this hell; you need a lot of patience to work with PCSX as it is now. Hopefully v0.0.8 will be a bit better regarding this after I get to work on it.)
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
I hate to say this, but that's the plugin kkapture can't load. It picks up the test one just fine, and others just lock up the emulator when using kkapture.
(thank you for saying this; it's just that I've come on here with so many issues, such as this one, that I can just imagine you seeing my screen name, rolling your eyes, and thinking, "Goodness, what is it now?" :P)Edit: So I purchased that cable talked about earlier, and I'm getting music now. Sweet! However, this seems to open up another can'o'worms that, from the looks of it, isn't in anyone's control. Loading a save state in another level results in the previous level's music playing, and closing the emulator or going into the menus doesn't stop the music. The former I can understand, but the latter just baffles me. It'll be fine for normal play, but while TASing I'll probably be turning it off.
This also raises the issue of how to record CD audio for a publication. <_<
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Well, the emulator simply tells the CD player itself to play this type of music, so the music you hear is coming directly from the hardware. If you go into the advanced volume control of your computer, you can adjust the volume level of the CD Player since it is considered a completely separate audio input.
Apparently PCSX doesn't keep track of where the music track is when creating a save state, so loading a save state causes the music to keep playing as if nothing happened. The second problem is obviously a bug in PCSX where it forgets to tell the CD player to stop playing the music.
<ccfreak2k> There is no 'ctrl' button on DeHackEd's computer. DeHackEd is always in control.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
Yes. It's painfully apparent how not-integrated the CD audio is in the emulator as I'm picking up a few more bugs (mainly that when the current track that is playing ends, instead of going back to the beginning like it's most often supposed to in games, it just continues onto the next track; this can lead to some unfitting music if you're taking too long).
But! None of this affects the stability and synching of the emulator, so it should probably be low priority. In fact, fixing some of these problems may lead to a host of other issues.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
I think its game dependent, see SOTN tas, theres not any audio troubles, i believe for megaman games its also very clean (altough, i have troubles with re3 audio... so im not saying this cant/doesnt happen)
Yes, the problems that Ferret Warlord is talking about only happens in games that use CDAA audio (or, essentially, audio tracks that are the same format as an audio CD). Since PCSX uses the hardware to play the CD Audio music instead of digital ripping (dunno what ePSXe uses, but hopefully the latter...), that is why those problems occur. Many games seem to not use CDAA, but some do.
<ccfreak2k> There is no 'ctrl' button on DeHackEd's computer. DeHackEd is always in control.
So that something you cant even notice while using ISOs (virtual drives)... ah now i understand better lol
What about to ISO your cd in that case... and get rid of the trouble :p
(well, that what i did for myself)
A virtual drive will always have the cable connected :)
edit:
mz: i think theres still a remanent of the "1 frame inserted" problem, even tough i have no idea how to trigger it, sometime it happen, if you close/reopen PCSX it stop doing it, if you didnt restarted you get your last action screwed endlessly lol, took me time (and many retry...) to figure i just need to close him to fix it :p
I have a good feature request i think
Can whe have in the movie replay, like for input, the hacks hotkeys
For exemple, while the hack is activated, you display "hack-name activated"
This would be easier for judges to review the movie
This is also very usefull for taser that forgot where they used it... lol
Also a parse of the total count of hotkey used would be nice :D
(sry double post..)
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
Another bug report.
"Stop screen saver" option does not work. I just tried reviewing my Punky Skunk work after an intense hex editing session and it desynched because my computer switched into screen saver mode (no damage done to the file; the emulator just skipped a beat).
Also I've noticed this emulator is a *huge* CPU hog when the game window is open, but it seems I can't do anything about it. Oh well.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Uh, I'm pretty sure Gens maxes out a core as well for me. I don't think emulation has a choice.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
?? My core2duo 2Ghz only uses about 15% of the CPU using Gens, and that's with firefox open. Maybe Upthorn could shed some light on the reason for the vast difference in resources.
I have a(nother) couple of feature requests also mz:
1) A ram dump option. Finding the key values that are most likely arbitrary is quite difficult, even with a cheat searcher and memory watcher.
2) The option to load a movie/create a new movie while a movie is already being played (also perhaps the ability to replay a movie from the start?). Hex editing a portion of a run and then having to close the movie file, and reopen the movie file when it would be more feasible just to open it again (thus skipping one action). With a lot of hexing, this would save someone a small but noticeable amount of time.
And that's all I can think of really.
What's the current consensus on CD reader plugins? I've been somewhat out of the loop so I'm not entirely sure it's currently warranted, but SaPu just released version 1.3 of his plugin together with the source. I think it's supposed to be good, and the fact that it's open-source is also good. Opinions/tests/anything?
mmbossman fixed my problem - turned out I had hog CPU turned on in Sound Emulation, and had never had a problem since I have a dual core processor.
So, now gens doesn't. Doh!
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
I've been using mz's TAS CD plugin with no hassles. I've even been able to record off a CD and play the movie back on an ISO using linuzapps' plugin with nary a problem.
From here, I'm good.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
i just downloaded source and saw a linux folder without build.sh script like the original pcsx. Look like that make cant do anything.
.. so, i suppose there is no way to compile it on linux, yet
Also does there are any kkapture-like to work on linux that work on linux?
--
Oh and I tested on my windows partition boot with your pcsx-test4 with suikoden2 and it definitly work and rocks for most thing (but it crash when i try "Start playback" in file>movie menu)
edit: ok i tried this night the whole thing... and the playback(from cmd) have defenitly some synchronisation problem and it crash after ~15minutes of replay
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
Is there any way to get the fast TAB mode back?
In v0.0.7test4 the turbo mode is very slow. It takes too long to continue with my FF7 TAS :P
also, the movieconverter doesn't seem to be working for some of my files. It has converted some, but will not convert others...
Can anyone else convert or play this:
http://antdgar.googlepages.com/test1.pxm
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
Another problem, this time with MGS:VR Missions. The record file sometimes disappears... It doesn't appear in the movie file directory...
version 0.06
Also, I cannot get any sound at all from the game. Someone else should test.
Also, also, it seems to freeze after level 1 is completed...
Can anybody tell me what's wrong? I seem to be not able to click on File>Movie>Start Playback...
Everytime i click on start playback, regardless if an img/iso/game is loaded it will crash.
I don't know if it's plugin issue and i've been tinkering around with the configurations for over an hour just to get this thing to work that I can hardly remember what works and what doesn't.
Some issues i've also run into is trying to Record AVI as well. Does this function work? It crashes everytime i try to name the file to be saved as.
Another issue involves running any game and then i press ESC and tinker around with the configurations. I dont remember what I did but i'm sure i didn't hit reset but when i clicked Emulator>run, the game reset back to the playstation loading logo screen.
what cd rom plugin do you use? I have never had any problem with linuzappz's but the tas CD ROM tends to crash if not properly configured. Record AVI works but as far as I have seen not very well.
I does this because you change the settings. If you press run without changing the settings it works tho.