Visual Pinball Preview

[Circo]

Got a bit sidetracked today.... Finally started playing around with Visual Pinball/PinMAME. Anyway did about 70 videos, not bad, mostly at random lol. But I did want to share and maybe get feedback on results. Due to the full screen pinball theme, I am trying something new (SHiQ) Super High Quality videos. :D

Included in the link are currently 9 tables all in flv format at 1024x768 res with file sizes avg 4MB :) There is also a Quality Test Folder that has SHiQ, HQ, and an SQ version of a video. Should help judge quality vs performance size issue with this set.

EmuMovies Visual Pinball Video Test (http://www.emumovies.com/work/vp)

update: test one - failed / test 2 - failed / test 3 (poss final)

[The Loafer]

Cool! I'll check this out as soon as I get home (8 hours, Arggghhh).

[Dazz]

Wow, the difference is only 200k between HiQ and SHiQ. :o

[deadsoulz]

The Quality looks good, Some of the tables are outdated versions, but thanks, I think they look great.

[BadBoyBill]

Thanks Circo, cant wait to check it out.

[Circo]

The Quality looks good, Some of the tables are outdated versions, but thanks, I think they look great.

Visual Pinball site was down yesterday, and I got these from the just updated torrent at PD. I sure hope that most are not out of date or I just wasted a bunch of time :(

[Circo]

Wow, the difference is only 200k between HiQ and SHiQ. :o

Yeah that kinda floored me as well, I doubt that I would see this with video games as well. You should see how small the avi's come out, seems they handle the almost static image a bit better than flv. Almost half the size as a rule. What I am curious about though is how well hyperspin performs with a 1024x768 background.

[The Loafer]

Circo: I checked out one of the vids (Monopoly), quality of the video is VERY NICE but the ball flow was really bad. Is that an effect of the framerate of the vid, the capture of the video or the PC you were using?

I tried another video "Star Wars Trilogy" and it's the same thing). I then reread your OP and noticed your reference to the 3 test videos. Got those 3 and of course it had to be Monopoly eheh. Anyway, the SQ one is certainly blah, the HiQ one isn't bad but for the extra 200k, the SHiQ version is the best and certainly worth it.

Ball flow issue: Don't get me wrong, it does the job, I'm just curious if this is due to technical limitations of the process. My test PC is a 2.4ghz, typically .flv's play just fine and smooth though it's possible something like ball flow is more noticeable in a pin video as nothing else is moving and thus it gets your full attention.

If ever it's the frame rate selection, try doing one at 30FPS, since the only change is the small ball moving, the file size may not be greatly affected.

Nicely done, I'd certainly get these for sure to use with HyperSpin. Those are older versions. If I may recommend, for other tests or if you're doing the vids, you may want to start with the 50 tables identified as the initial 50 to be supported in HyperSpin, as we'll need vids of those for sure. If you need any assistance with getting these done, I've be happy to help.

[Circo]

Circo: I checked out one of the vids (Monopoly), quality of the video is VERY NICE but the ball flow was really bad. Is that an effect of the framerate of the vid, the capture of the video or the PC you were using?

I tried another video "Star Wars Trilogy" and it's the same thing). I then reread your OP and noticed your reference to the 3 test videos. Got those 3 and of course it had to be Monopoly eheh. Anyway, the SQ one is certainly blah, the HiQ one isn't bad but for the extra 200k, the SHiQ version is the best and certainly worth it.

Ball flow issue: Don't get me wrong, it does the job, I'm just curious if this is due to technical limitations of the process. My test PC is a 2.4ghz, typically .flv's play just fine and smooth though it's possible something like ball flow is more noticeable in a pin video as nothing else is moving and thus it gets your full attention.

If ever it's the frame rate selection, try doing one at 30FPS, since the only change is the small ball moving, the file size may not be greatly affected.

Nicely done, I'd certainly get these for sure to use with HyperSpin. Those are older versions. If I may recommend, for other tests or if you're doing the vids, you may want to start with the 50 tables identified as the initial 50 to be supported in HyperSpin, as we'll need vids of those for sure. If you need any assistance with getting these done, I've be happy to help.

The ball flow issue is unaviodable as far as I can tell. My PC was built specifically to do this very thing, EmuMovies.com right?

Anyway no matter what I did the ball was VERY choppy. Usually it would skip whole sections, at 30 and 60 fps it was horrible. Only at 15fps was it somewhat bearable. The other issue is it takes a ton of horsepower to capture at that high of a resolution, but even at 800x600 it was just as bad. I did three hours of test captures and setting tweaks to get the ball flow as smooth as you see it.

I am running a Core2Duo clocked at 3.9GHz so I can't go up too much more on the processing speed, and even if I was able to capture at my normal 640x480 the picture is so muddy its not worth it. If anyone is able to get better results please let me know. :)

[Circo]

Ok I think I was using an older version of Visual Pinbal, upgraded and results got a tad better. Then I rotated monitor and tried at 768x1024, seemed to work a little better. Still a couple of small skips but overall much smoother. Please check out the multiple views though, im thinking that vertical one would be incredible for themes.

anyway test 2 in the folder, waiting to proceed until feedback recieved this time :)

Also left in avi format, flv will look the same. Didnt worry about it because only a test.

EDIT: Ok problem with avi's that do link from html.... Converting flvs now

Future Pinball Video Test (http://www.emumovies.com/work/vp)

[Circo]

And I think I finally found perfection, makes a difference when using clean tables though. Alright 800x600 variable fps and did a horizontal and vertical version. I think this is how I'm going to move forward, seems very smooth.

[The Loafer]

Circo,

Your rig blows away mine so there's nothing I could bring to converting the movies! wow. As for the new flv's, I do find them better. I'm ont a fan of the vertical flv's though, as the graphics tend to be distorted (a bumper is now an elongated oval as opposed to round). This is no fault to your technique, it's a limitation of the VP you are using. Hopefully someday, it would be awesome if Randy came back and added a proper vertical mode.

If I recall, VP6.1 can do a better job of doing a top view table for fitting in a vertical cab, but every table would need to be adjusted AND many of the new ones from the past few years don't work in vp6.1 unfortunately. I could be wrong though.

note: the star trek table: your sounds aren't enabled, I believe it's because you need the Bally sound sample zip (s3250u3.zip) available at www.pinmame.com under downloads OR you don't have them enabled (press F1 or F6 for the dipswitch). But I'd bet cash you don't have the sample zip, make sure you get the others too!

[Circo]

Circo,


note: the star trek table: your sounds aren't enabled, I believe it's because you need the Bally sound sample zip (s3250u3.zip) available at www.pinmame.com under downloads OR you don't have them enabled (press F1 or F6 for the dipswitch). But I'd bet cash you don't have the sample zip, make sure you get the others too!

Hmm, cant seem to be able to get samples to work, they are in the pinmame folder under samples, have zip and just loose files. The directories are set correctly in pinmame, any ideas?

EDIT: never mind had to select samples in pinmame.

OK, next topic, is there a standard naming convention?

[The Loafer]

Not that I'm aware of, so I'm going with the naming convention of the author's own .vpt file name, or the site it was originally hosted and referenced to whenever possible. Here's a copy of the xml file if you want to see the naming convention used; renamed to .txt so I could upload it.

[Circo]

i have just added test three to the link. I think this will be the final as i have much smoother ball travel, hig quality and 50% file sizes. This set includes 16 files.

Edit there are now 27 files in test folder 3

Currently I am grabbing tables from pinbal nirvana, as soon as aj's opens i will work on the ones in your dat. Do you mind if I ass the ones that I finished to the dat, I will of course fix the file names.

[The Loafer]

I don't have a problem with that, but Billy wanted a finite number of titles on this list as themes/wheel images have to be made so he wanted a good "start", adding to it probably would increase the workload so I wouldn't submit it to him until he's ready for more.

[BadBoyBill]

I'm still working wheel images for the first 50

[Circo]

Sounds like a good idea, I'm really excited about this pinball. Getting ready to upload another 50 videos to server.

EmuMovies Visual Pinball Video Test (http://www.emumovies.com/work/vp)

[The Loafer]

They look good, nice to see the file size isn't that big too. But I'm curious did you find a standard naming convention? I notice the name of the FLV's don't match those in the xml or the .vpt file itself.

[Circo]

That's just for me, I made it up so that I could keep track of exactly what videos match what sets. The filenames are a mess which sucks, I will rename against dat when I get those 50 done though.