I have the commercial version of 3DGS. We are trying to play a AVI as an opening sequence after the A5 logo. I have not been able to see how to set this up from the docs (just may not be digging deep enough, don't know). What do you use to set this up? Any example code anyplace? What if I want to play an AVI after a level is completed? How do you play or execute it?

Thanks

if you have the commerical version go to http://www.xeroxa.com
go to downloads click on movie player picture the code is there, along with all the files you need,
avi will not work with the trail version A5.

Also, AVI's in 3DGS react differently on different machines. (or at least did, back when I attempted them back in Version 5.05)

I had an avi file that I could view outside of 3DGS using realplayer on two different machines.

When 3DGS ran on one machine, the Avi played and worked fine, and on the other machine, the AVI did not work at all. (It seemed to ignore the AVI altogether)

I had heard that the only way to gaurentee that an AVI will be viewable on all machines from 3DGS is to make sure there is NO compression. Otherwise, it was a crap shoot as to what video codecs 3DGS could find on your machine.

I hope that's not the case anymore, but before you go to far, try your AVI code on a couple different machines, just to be safe.

- WildCat

The other possibility is that you deliever the codec you used along with your game. The codec has to be a free one for this of course.

AVI files are just containers with no default compression scheme (as opposed to MPEGs). Thus you always have to specify the compression to be used and make sure that the corresponding CODEC is available on the target machine. Some CODECs ar preinstalled by Windows, such as uncompressed bitmaps, RLE, Video1, etc. But they are usually not a good choice. Indeo 5 is something worth looking into.

I don't understand why a outside program would have to be used... I thought the point of the commercial version was that it would play AVI's on it's own?

quote:

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Originally posted by whisper:
if you have the commerical version go to http://www.xeroxa.com
go to downloads click on movie player picture the code is there, along with all the files you need,
avi will not work with the trail version A5.

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Marco,

How do we include a new codec? Lets say I wish to include AVI's with the INDEO 5 compression, as you suggest... is this something as easy as including an additional file in the path of my game, or does this require a user to go through a separte windows type of installation?

More details, Please!

- WildCat

the purpose of a stand alone player is to play avi movie in a small screen at the beginning of your game,after you publish so when you copy your game to cd, it will play in small screen instead of default A5 full screen, no you don't have to have the stand alone player. a present as far as i know A5 commerical version doesn't need a avi player.

play_moviefile (“filename”);
Starts a full-screen movie sequence (some editions only). Filename is an AVI animation file. It
can™t be played from within a resource file, but must exist as an external file, so the filename
should be given in double qotes instead of angular brackets. During movie play the rendering
and the entity actions will be suspended. The predefined variable movie_frame will contain the
number of the frame currently displayed, or 0 if the movie has come to an end.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by dsullinger:
[QB]I don't understand why a outside program would have to be used... I thought the point of the commercial version was that it would play AVI's on it's own?

Sorry to dredge up an older topic, but this really caught my eye!

Is there a way to work around the codec problem?
How about alternative file formats? Would an mpeg work with A5... and then, would it work on a non windows OS?

I think there are enough of us out here who wish to do "professional" presentations like this that we need to look into how this can be done consistently and effectively.

Incidentally... if you want to use the engine for your "cutscenes", you can script the events in manually, but I think it would be better to go the avi/mpeg route. This would allow high quality cutscenes to be produced with such apps as Animation Master, Maya, TruSpace, 3D Studio Max, etc.

We need to find an answer here... this could be a rather large void in A5!