SNES emulator movie replay problem

2006-06-16 08:47:12 am

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Alright, I know this isn't really a site for emulator talk but I was wondering if anyone here could help me with this. Oddly enough this problem happens with me on my Mac AND PC on two entirely different emulators.

When I'm watching a recorded movie on SNES9X (Mac) generally the first 3 or so minutes is accurate to what I did, but later on everything becomes screwed up and looks like whatever character I'm playing just had they're IQ dropped to about 2. They'll run into walls, jump off/into stuff, commit suicide...pretty much the control inputs get mixed up. Oddly enough ZSNES for PC has the same problem expect takes effect more quickly

I was wondering if anyone else ran into this problem and/or if anyone knows how to fix this.

Additional info: I'm using a logitech dual action (I think that's right) controller, and I'm using the most recent versions of the emulators. This problem happens with every game.

Thread title:

nate

2006-06-16 08:53:15 am

need the same version of the rom and the same version of the emulator as the video was recorded on. also need to make sure there's plenty of cpu time for the emulator. also, i had no idea snes9x mac builds supported emu vids now. that's very interesting.

Zhegan

2006-06-16 09:05:17 am

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Quote:

need the same version of the rom and the same version of the emulator as the video was recorded on. also need to make sure there's plenty of cpu time for the emulator. also, i had no idea snes9x mac builds supported emu vids now. that's very interesting.

Well, I'll record it myself and replay it right after I'm done and it'll screw up after a little bit. It should have enough CPU, I'm running it fullscreen with no other apps open. While some games start off ok for alittle while (super mario world lasts about 10 minutes), other games take a dive right away (Super Puyo Puyo 2 Remix). Snes9x has movie support, you can currently export vids in a quicktime .mov file that encodes at around a whooping 40 MB per minute of video :(. I've been having alot of problems with the emulator lately, the freeze states only save and load from the 3rd slot (out of 12). Theres also the controller bug but I have a USB program that gets past that (I've turned it off and tried the normal method for control configuration for recording movies, still no go).

[quote]need the same version of the rom and the same version of the emulator as the video was recorded on. also need to make sure there's plenty of cpu time for the emulator. also, i had no idea snes9x mac builds supported emu vids now. that's very interesting.[/quote]

Well, I'll record it myself and replay it right after I'm done and it'll screw up after a little bit. It should have enough CPU, I'm running it fullscreen with no other apps open. While some games start off ok for alittle while (super mario world lasts about 10 minutes), other games take a dive right away (Super Puyo Puyo 2 Remix). Snes9x has movie support, you can currently export vids in a quicktime .mov file that encodes at around a whooping 40 MB per minute of video :(. I've been having alot of problems with the emulator lately, the freeze states only save and load from the 3rd slot (out of 12). Theres also the controller bug but I have a USB program that gets past that (I've turned it off and tried the normal method for control configuration for recording movies, still no go).

nate

2006-06-16 09:07:27 am

does it screw up if you record yourself under windoze? using zsnes?

Zhegan

2006-06-16 09:15:14 am

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does it screw up if you record yourself under windoze? using zsnes?

It's even worse on Windows using Zsnes, Mario doesn't even make it past the first level before he goes off track.

nate

2006-06-16 09:18:55 am

bizarre. you should definitely be able to play back videos you yourself created using that same emulator and rom. does anyone else have any ideas?

spineshark

2006-06-16 02:50:03 pm

新世紀進歩的羽扇子音楽

actually you can get a lot of desyncs even on your own movies.

i don't really know what that's about, if it's happening all the time then you've got some serious problems.

Zhegan

2006-06-16 07:41:35 pm

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Quote:

actually you can get a lot of desyncs even on your own movies.

i don't really know what that's about, if it's happening all the time then you've got some serious problems.

Sadly it happens every time, I'm pretty sure it isn't a system problem with my mac (G4 Powerbook 1.6 Ghz with 1 gig of ram) but my PC might not be that big of a surprize (900 Mhz with about 320 megs of ram, it's about 5 years old). I'll try some other stuff to see if I can get it to produce anything normally and report back later.

nate

2006-06-17 12:20:13 am

definitely try zsnes for windoze.

Zhegan

Edit history:

Zhegan: 2006-06-17 12:54:23 am

2006-06-17 12:47:03 am

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alright, I did acouple tests on my mac and got it to work...kinda. I've managed to make acouple vids that worked by recording, then replaying it to the part where it screws up, saving a movie savestate before the bad part and rerecording it. It works for now but the process is a major pain. I haven't tested much on the PC but when I was trying out Donkey Kong Country it screwed up after about 30 seconds, I WAS playing with slowmotion on but would that make that big of a difference? Later on I'll test Zsnes on here and see if I can get it working.

nate

2006-06-17 12:57:26 am

have you tried waiting for ten seconds before doing control input at the start of a movie?

Zhegan

2006-06-17 01:37:12 am

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Ok, I tested Zsnes again on the PC, everything works well (it records everything the way I want) but it screws up if I use fastforward, rewind, or slowmotion, is that normal?

nate

2006-06-17 02:32:14 am

yes, but it's probably just because you have a slow pc.

Enhasa

Edit history:

Enhasa: 2006-06-19 08:02:13 am

2006-06-18 06:43:52 am

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Ok, I can actually answer most of this.

This is called desyncing and it's normal. It happens due to minor variations in timing between different emulator versions, different settings in the emulator that affect timing (such as WIP timing and fake mute in snes9x... a lot of these have to do with sound emulation, so if you're only recording for yourself, you can try with sound emulation off), or rom versions. Might be hard/impossible to notice normally, but obviously it will matter on something as precise as movie playback.

To prevent desync, the best way is to find out what emulator version and rom version were used. If you don't know this, typically for the roms, you want the "good" (as in goodSNES) version. These will often have a ! in the filename. Usually it will be obvious which region version you want... usually (U) for US. If there are multiple versions (like 1.0 vs 1.1) you might have to guess. For the movies on zophar.net, or other older things like Super Metroid vids, use an older version of ZSNES like .7 or .9 or so. I know Saturn had an old version posted; here it is. For settings, default has the highest chance of working. In snes9x, I've usually had luck with fake mute off, WIP timing on, and sync to sound CPU off.

The best part about nitsuja's emulator versions is that they tell you which rom was used, if yours matches, and saves what settings the guy who recorded used, so that it can automatically set yours the same way. Brilliant!

The version of ZSNES you want (it's guaranteed much new and improved over what you have) is here. For snes9x, you want to go here. I think the first link is only a Windows binary, so if you have OS X, you want to download the source and compile it yourself, or look for a Mac binary that may or may not exist.

Other points:

- CPU time shouldn't matter.
- snes9x for mac has supported movies for a while I think.
- You can get desyncs on your own movies, but it's on the rare side (or else TAS's would never get made), and it depends on how good the emulator is and some on the particular rom. Certainly not "every time."
- I use ZSNES myself because there are some things about snes9x I don't like, but recording in snes9x is currently more stable/advanced due to nitsuja's improvements.
- The screwup if you ff/rewind/slo-mo should only happen when you're doing that while recording, not playback. I know it used to be a bad idea in older versions of ZSNES, but I think it's fixed now (haven't tried). It was just never correctly implemented originally. There's nothing fundamental that makes this hard to implement.

Ok, I can actually answer most of this.

This is called desyncing and it's normal. It happens due to minor variations in timing between different emulator versions, different settings in the emulator that affect timing (such as WIP timing and fake mute in snes9x... a lot of these have to do with sound emulation, so if you're only recording for yourself, you can try with sound emulation off), or rom versions. Might be hard/impossible to notice normally, but obviously it will matter on something as precise as movie playback.

To prevent desync, the best way is to find out what emulator version and rom version were used. If you don't know this, typically for the roms, you want the "good" (as in goodSNES) version. These will often have a ! in the filename. Usually it will be obvious which region version you want... usually (U) for US. If there are multiple versions (like 1.0 vs 1.1) you might have to guess. For the movies on zophar.net, or other older things like Super Metroid vids, use an older version of ZSNES like .7 or .9 or so. I know Saturn had an old version posted; [url=http://www.freewebs.com/saturnsmovies/zsnesmovies.htm]here[/url] it is. For settings, default has the highest chance of working. In snes9x, I've usually had luck with fake mute off, WIP timing on, and sync to sound CPU off.

The best part about nitsuja's emulator versions is that they tell you which rom was used, if yours matches, and saves what settings the guy who recorded used, so that it can automatically set yours the same way. Brilliant!

The version of ZSNES you want (it's guaranteed much new and improved over what you have) is [url=http://zsnes.ipherswipsite.com/]here[/url]. For snes9x, you want to go [url=http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=535&start=106]here[/url]. I think the first link is only a Windows binary, so if you have OS X, you want to download the source and compile it yourself, or look for a Mac binary that may or may not exist.

Other points:

- CPU time shouldn't matter.
- snes9x for mac has supported movies for a while I think.
- You can get desyncs on your own movies, but it's on the rare side (or else TAS's would never get made), and it depends on how good the emulator is and some on the particular rom. Certainly not "every time."
- I use ZSNES myself because there are some things about snes9x I don't like, but recording in snes9x is currently more stable/advanced due to nitsuja's improvements.
- The screwup if you ff/rewind/slo-mo should [i]only[/i] happen when you're doing that while [i]recording[/i], not playback. I know it used to be a bad idea in older versions of ZSNES, but [i]I think it's fixed now[/i] (haven't tried). It was just never correctly implemented originally. There's nothing fundamental that makes this hard to implement.

Zhegan

2006-06-19 06:47:24 pm

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Thanks for the info, I tried to get the modified version of Snes9X and got the message "You have been banned from this forum. Please contact the webmaster or board administrator for more information." even though I've never been to the forum before.

kwinse

Edit history:

kwinse: 2006-06-20 07:53:49 am

2006-06-20 07:53:18 am

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Thanks for the info, I tried to get the modified version of Snes9X and got the message "You have been banned from this forum. Please contact the webmaster or board administrator for more information." even though I've never been to the forum before.

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Here is Snes9x 1.43+ v9.

If you want me to include the rest of it (just a changelog) let me know, and sorry if I shouldn't have posted the quote at all...

Zhegan

2006-06-20 05:17:10 pm

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Quote:

If you want me to include the rest of it (just a changelog) let me know, and sorry if I shouldn't have posted the quote at all...

Thanks kwinse! The link will do just fine, I don't mind that it's in quotes Tongue