pscammp on 24/2/2014 at 19:26
Hey all,
I have a question (or maybe just a curiosity) probibly for the technical boys.
I know the in game video's are encoded with Indeo Video 5.1 @ 320 x 240
When Thief 1 & 2 play their in game video's between the levels etc, what video player
if used to play them ??? or is it a custom one built into the software even ???
Strange question i know but lets see if anyone knows the answer :wot:
Cheers all
Paul
DJ Riff on 24/2/2014 at 19:52
LGVID.AX ActiveX control, can be found in Thief's root directory. If that's what you want to know.
ZylonBane on 24/2/2014 at 21:08
It's not what he wants to know. In the original engine, videos (not "video's", yeesh) are played by Windows, which is why it fails when the Indeo codec isn't registered. In the NewDark version of the engine, videos are played by an embedded FFMpeg player, which means it's no longer dependent on the operating system to play videos (though you can optionally configure it to use the native Indeo codec for performance reasons).
pscammp on 26/2/2014 at 17:27
Thanks Zylon,
Interesting, i updated my Thief 1 with the mod which states the 'NewDark' so im assuming mine is now playing them internally.
So here's my point. Im a bit of a video editor and while playing around the other night i loaded one of Thief 1's Vids (B01.avi) into Sony Vegas and produced a really impressive Widescreen version which fills the whole screen when in full screen mode, runs beautifully on Windows media player at full screen without any of the blockyness you normally see. When Thief plays it, it also plays it wonderfully but wont allow the Widescreen tag to take affect, as a result this 16:9 wonder gets crunched back to 4:3 like the origonal vids do.
How can i tell my modded installation to revert back to using windows to play the vid, i want to see if this will allow my 16:9 version to go full screen correctly.....
Or.....
Is there a way to tell Thief to respect the 16:9 tag in the avi file ????
Waiting Paciently
Paul
TheDuriel on 26/2/2014 at 17:48
newdark is probably doing that
take a look at your cam_ext video playback settings you should be able to find a fix there
ZylonBane on 26/2/2014 at 18:06
NewDark already has the ability to automatically crop selected videos. I thought Tafferpatcher and TFix already configured that stuff.
Either way, I have no idea why you'd be faffing about with the barely-supported widescreen tag instead of using proper square pixels.
voodoo47 on 26/2/2014 at 19:46
the proper way of making a widescreen cutscene for a (New)Dark game is to make it 640*480 (max the engine supports) letterboxed (SS2 cutscenes are a good example), and then tell the engine to crop it in cam_ext.cfg (see movie playback).
TafferPatcher does this for T2 videos (there are only two or three of them in the letterboxed format if memory serves), but TFix leaves it alone, as all T1/TG cutscenes are 4:3 (by cropping, parts of the animation would be lost).
ZylonBane on 26/2/2014 at 20:27
Ah, I'd forgotten Thief didn't have any letterboxed videos. I wonder whether pscammp's "really impressive" version was accomplished by chopping the top and bottom off the video, or by mutilating the aspect ratio.
voodoo47 on 26/2/2014 at 20:54
ah yes, letterboxed, that was the word I was trying to find. and yeah, a proper cutscene overhaul is something we are yet to see - anyone attempting this would either have to be godlike with some video editor, or redo the visual part of the cutscenes from a scratch (seeing the T2x cutscenes, certainly not impossible, but pretty sure it's far from easy).
pscammp on 27/2/2014 at 18:15
Hey all,
Zylon,
Not using the tag in the true sense of the word......
In sony vegas i create a frame size which is native 16:9 widescreen which has square pixels, When i load the T1 vid onto the timeline it has black bars to the sides as the vid is 4:3 ratio, in the T1 clip properties i tell it to change the pixel aspect ratio to 1.45 which then stretches the clip horizontally to fill the 16:9 frame (no cropping here), this gives a little bit of deformation (ie shorter & fatter) horizontally but it's hardly noticable really, then i render at the 16:9 resolution with square pixels. Thus giving me a native 16:9 video, yes, with a little horizontal stretching, but a pure widescreen vid either way.
I have seen the crop settings in cam_ext.cfg but i dont want to crop anything, i just want T1 to put the vid on the screen as is at full screen and then it will fill my full screen.
My vid clip is 768 x 432 which is a native 19:9 res with square pixels, tried all sorts of resolutions even below 640 x 480 (4:3)
I have Crop Movies setting set as 'Crop_Movies 0 0 768 432' which theroetically gives my full res with no cropping
I tried this and it played the vid full wide screen but it looks like there is a bit of vertical cropping still going on.
GRRrrrrrr
So close yet so far
