1622 replies to this topic

[hlr53]

 

 

Yep, everything works in silent mode on both systems. Whew!!! I don't have an independent recollection (watching too much legal stuff this week) of having to mess with the pincab audio before but who knows? 

 

I'll research this week and see if I can both working. Probably good info for others in the future.

 

Sounds good.  I can add any tips you come up with to the documentation.

 

So the weird freeze-up behavior seems to have been caused by the audio issue?  I'll have to see if I can reproduce that.  It should just display the error and send you back into the normal UI, not do anything untoward like freezing or crashing.

 

Yes it was the audio issue. I DO NOT understand why the behavior was so weird on my Pincab's Win 10 Pro. It is a fresh install, and with that said, I always worry something is missing now? I think it has a mind of its own at times. But yeah, I would have expected what my 10 Home system did and give a stereo mix error. Really freaked me out because I just got the table set up working. Both systems hardware wise are pretty much the same. 

 

Too bad ffmpeg is not more robust in the audio dept.

 

Well, it's not really ffmpeg's fault, it's more a matter of the Windows media APIs being incredibly scattered and hard to use.  Media seems to be an area where they had fifteen groups at Microsoft all having turf wars over a couple of decades about what's the best way to do it, so there are something like six completely separate official Microsoft media APIs, with varying degrees of hardware and OS version compatibility.  And they're basically all obsolete anyway.  Every group's documentation says that the *other* groups' versions are all deprecated and obsolete, claiming that *theirs* is the one true media API.  So it's difficult to know what to do or whom to trust when developing media software. 

 

Anyway, ffmpeg actually has multiple ways of capturing audio, but the only one that's built in is the "Stereo Mix" scheme.  Everything else requires installing some other software or device drivers.  I didn't want to go down that road and create a big pyramid of dependencies on third-party software for different systems.  But I suppose it might come to that anyway, since Stereo Mix is apparently no longer standard in Windows 10.  I believe it's installed in pretty much every Windows 7 and 8 system by default, which is probably why it became the universal ffmpeg solution in the first place, but apparently with Win 10 there is no standard, universal, built-in solution any more.  I guess every Win 10 user needs to install something additional now.  So this might merit more consideration to see if we can come up with something that will work for everyone on Win 10.  Let me know if you have any ideas about that - so far I haven't come up with anything that's suitably one-size-fits-all.  It seems to be a function of your sound card now.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

I still need a Master Class on quoting. Thinking about it and Stereo Mix default does make a lot of sense. I can see where you do not want to go through the API looking glass for recording videos. Not sure what is standard nowadays? In the old days it was SoundBlaster or SoundBlaster compatible on 2 speakers or 2.1 speakers. SB and Realtek are probably the main players today with multiple flavors of stereo and surround sound.

 

I did find the Realtek stereo mix on the pincab (I'm an idiot and wasn't clicking on the recording tab) but when I enabled, it cut off the system sound which made no sense? I was changing recording and not playback. After I shutdown I was reading you then have to then disable the Realtek Hi-Def driver and use the regular speakers, or something like that? I'll play with this week and get it fixed. You'll come up with something in the docs for things to check if a user has this problem.

 

Thanks!

Edited by hlr53, 29 September 2018 - 11:16 PM.

[mjr]

Not sure what is standard nowadays? 

 

Well, that's basically the issue; there's isn't one.  In Win 7 and 8, "Stereo Mix" was ubiquitous.  I'm not sure it was quite "standard" in any official way, but it was almost certain to be there.  In Win 10, it's almost certain *not* to be there, apparently, and there's no new equivalent to replace it.

[crashb4]

Installed in my cab today. All tables were recognized in duplicate. Once based on Pinballx data base, and again as not configured. I hid the UN-configured tables and all media was picked up and displayed. I went to launch the first table (all vpx) and got a launch error with no description. While messing with settings, I found that disabling VP9, all tables disappeared even though VPX was enabled. I worked around this by enabling VP9 and configuring the .exe to VPX and manually setting the path to the tables. Now all tables launch and media is displayed as it should. Not sure why that is, but i like the speed of the program and the easy setup. Thanks for the time invested.

[mjr]

Installed in my cab today. All tables were recognized in duplicate. Once based on Pinballx data base, and again as not configured. I hid the UN-configured tables and all media was picked up and displayed. I went to launch the first table (all vpx) and got a launch error with no description. While messing with settings, I found that disabling VP9, all tables disappeared even though VPX was enabled. I worked around this by enabling VP9 and configuring the .exe to VPX and manually setting the path to the tables. Now all tables launch and media is displayed as it should. Not sure why that is, but i like the speed of the program and the easy setup. Thanks for the time invested.

 

If you have any more problems with game lists, here are a couple of troubleshooting tips:

 

- Read the Help section on "Files and Folders".  That should demystify where all of the files are coming from.

 

- In the options dialog -> Log File section, enable "Player system setup and table searches".  Exit the program.  View PinballY.log in Notepad.  That will show a lot of information about exactly where all of the game lists are coming from and which folders are being searched for game files.

[hlr53]

 

Yep, everything works in silent mode on both systems. Whew!!! I don't have an independent recollection (watching too much legal stuff this week) of having to mess with the pincab audio before but who knows? 

 

I'll research this week and see if I can both working. Probably good info for others in the future.

 

Sounds good.  I can add any tips you come up with to the documentation.

 

So the weird freeze-up behavior seems to have been caused by the audio issue?  I'll have to see if I can reproduce that.  It should just display the error and send you back into the normal UI, not do anything untoward like freezing or crashing.

 

Just some additional FYI.

 

On the Pincab I updated the Realtek drivers (probably didn't have to but what the heck) and through the lower right hidden icons off the task bar right clicked Audio Devices. I made Stereo Mix in recording the default. For playback I set to Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio) as the default. Other choice was Realtek Digital Output which would not work. As we say to others YMMV. PBY media capture is now copacetic.

 

Regarding weird lockup behavior on the cab before fixing stereo mix, and this may be meaningless:

 

Recent Win 10 Pro install has Microsoft C++ Redistributable 2008 x64, 2010 x64 & x86 and 2013 x64. I didn't see any .Net listed in the Apps control panel.

 

On my Alienware there is 2008 both, 2010 both, 2013 both and 2017 both and dotNet Framework 4.5.1 & 4.6.1 ( and tons of other CLR & database stuff due to Visual Studio installed).

Edited by hlr53, 01 October 2018 - 09:10 PM.

[mjr]

Regarding weird lockup behavior on the cab before fixing stereo mix, and this may be meaningless: [.Net, MSVC DLLs]

 

.Net is definitely not a factor;neither PBY nor ffmpeg have any dependencies whatsoever on .Net.  PBY doesn't have any MSVC DLL dependencies either.  ffmpeg does import msvcrt.dll, but it's still unlikely to be related; what you'd see in the absence of the required DLL is a complete failure of ffmpeg to start, with an error message about a missing DLL.  That would happen unconditionally whether it was trying to take a still screenshot PNG or a video with audio, so we can rule that out given that stills were working for you. 

I really don't think there's too much mystery about the source of the problem - it was pretty clearly the missing Stereo Mix device.  What's not clear is why the failure mode was "system freezes" rather than an error box saying that Stereo Mix was missing, which is what should have happened.

[hlr53]

MJR,

 

How do I get wheel images to display? Example: Visual Pinball X Big Game

 

I set up a Wheel Images folder off C:\PinballY\Media\Visual Pinball X and named the image the same as the table. It is a PNG file. It is still displaying as text on the wheel.

 

Is this setup incorrect?

[mjr]

MJR,

 

How do I get wheel images to display? Example: Visual Pinball X Big Game

 

I set up a Wheel Images folder off C:\PinballY\Media\Visual Pinball X and named the image the same as the table. It is a PNG file. It is still displaying as text on the wheel.

 

Is this setup incorrect?

 

As always, try the Media Files list to see what the program thinks it's looking for:

 

Operator Menu ("0") -> Game Setup -> Show Media Files

 

Find the section for Wheel Images and see what it thinks it's looking for.  That'll give you the folder path, and you can open the folder in Windows Explorer to see if it is or isn't the one where you're putting your images (navigate down to Wheel Images, press "1", navigate over to Open, press "1").

 

And note that setting up wheel images is a lot easier if you use drag and drop, since that will stick them in the right folder and give them the right name.  

 

1.  Bring up the game you want to set up

 

2.  Go to the Windows Explorer folder where you have the PNG file you want to use

 

3.  Drag and drop the file onto the main playfield window, dropping it into the "Drop Here To Install As The Wheel Image" area.

 

No guesswork about folder or file name if you do it that way.

[hlr53]

Doh! Drag & Drop. I keep forgetting. Too many years doing it the other way.

[hlr53]

MJR,

 

Media capture question since I have FX3 tables direct launching again. Can we record real DMD videos? When doing FX3 media capture the DMD displays some nice animation for each table. I tried recording 2 tables but the DMD displays black boxes.

 

 

Friday, October 5, 2018, 4:34:43 PM: Session started
PinballY 1.0.0 (Alpha 22), build 6750 (x64, 20180928-1854)

Detecting and configuring real DMD device
+ Searching for dmddevice.dll

Searching for real DMD device DLL
+ Found the DLL in the PinballY folder: C:\PinballY\DmdDevice.dll
+ found DMD interface DLL: C:\PinballY\DmdDevice.dll
+ retrieving file version info for DLL, to check for special handling
+ Version Info data: version=1.7.2.0, product name="Universal DmdDevice.dll for Visual PinMAME", comments="Universal DmdDevice.dll for Visual PinMAME for all displays, inclusively frame-by-frame coloring support. Unofficial mjr build; includes fixes #122, #127.", copyright="Copyright © 2018 [email protected]"
+ This appears to be the dmd-extensions version of the DLL, based on the product/copyright strings
+ Based on the version number, this version has the fix for the PM_GameSettings bug
+ Based on the version number, this version has the fix for the Open/Close bug
+ Checking if dmd-extensions virtual DMD mode is enabled
+ Loading DmdDevice.ini from DLL folder (C:\PinballY\DmdDevice.ini)
+ DmdDevice.ini not found or load failed; assuming default settings (with virtual dmd enabled)
+ It looks like virtual dmd mode is enabled in the dmd-extensions DLL.  Your
  PinballY real DMD setting is "Always On", so we're going to use the DLL
  anyway.  Note that you'll see two simulated DMDs on the screen - one from
  the DLL, and another from PinballY's built-in DMD window.  If you want to
  get rid of the one from the DLL, change its virtual dmd setting to disabled
  in the DLL's DmdDevice.ini file.
+ dmddevice.dll successfully loaded
+ It looks like virtual dmd mode is enabled in the dmd-extensions DLL.  Your
  PinballY real DMD setting is "Always On", so we're going to use the DLL
  anyway.  Note that you'll see two simulated DMDs on the screen - one from
  the DLL, and another from PinballY's built-in DMD window.  If you want to
  get rid of the one from the DLL, change its virtual dmd setting to disabled
  in the DLL's DmdDevice.ini file.

Friday, October 5, 2018, 4:35:16 PM: PinballY session ending

FYI for anyone who runs into not being able to launch FX3 tables directly. When I was launching a table, Steam was interrupting the launch with a "Press Enter to continue" pop up. After pressing (or clicking) that, FX3 went to the main menu.

 

Someone on the Steam FX3 forum told me to reenter my cabinet activation code even though my cabinet mode was working. Once I did that it I could launch tables directly. (Thankfully I kept the old FX2 code on my backup cloud).

 

Forgot to post media capture. Tried again but black screens showing 

 

 

Media capture: Capturing DMD Image: launching FFMPEG
> "C:\PinballY\ffmpeg\ffmpeg.exe" -y -loglevel warning -probesize 30M -thread_queue_size 32  -f gdigrab -framerate 30 -offset_x 1338 -offset_y 763 -video_size 582x200 -i desktop    -vframes 1 -rtbufsize 2000M "C:\PinballY\Media\Pinball FX3\DMD Images\Family Guy.png"

+ FFMPEG completed: process exit code 0

Media capture: Capturing DMD Video: launching FFMPEG
> "C:\PinballY\ffmpeg\ffmpeg.exe" -y -loglevel warning -probesize 30M -thread_queue_size 32  -f gdigrab -framerate 30 -offset_x 1338 -offset_y 763 -video_size 582x200 -i desktop -c:a none   -t 15 -rtbufsize 2000M "C:\PinballY\Media\Pinball FX3\DMD Videos\Family Guy.f4v"

+ FFMPEG completed: process exit code 0

 

They are blank.standalone via VLC player .

Edited by hlr53, 06 October 2018 - 11:42 AM.

[jthompson]

 

FYI for anyone who runs into not being able to launch FX3 tables directly. When I was launching a table, Steam was interrupting the launch with a "Press Enter to continue" pop up. After pressing (or clicking) that, FX3 went to the main menu.

 

Someone on the Steam FX3 forum told me to reenter my cabinet activation code even though my cabinet mode was working. Once I did that it I could launch tables directly. (Thankfully I kept the old FX2 code on my backup cloud).

 

Weird that you bring up FX3! I was trying to set up FX3 tables last night. Same thing. In PBY when I try to launch an FX3 table, it goes to the main FX3 screen instead of the table. I have FX3 set up in PBX and the tables launch fine. Are you doing anything different in your setup apart from what MJR has as the FX3 recipe in the help file? Perhaps I need to not point to the PBX database for FX3 and let PBY discover the tables on its own? All the media from PBX shows up, just launching tables direct seems to not work. I can't imagine I need to add the cabinet activation code in Steam again since it is already working in PBX. Hmmm.... I guess I know what I'll be tinkering with this evening when I get off work.

Not trying to contradict you BTW, just seems really odd to re-enter that activation stuff. I'll definitely try it though. 

[hlr53]

 

 

FYI for anyone who runs into not being able to launch FX3 tables directly. When I was launching a table, Steam was interrupting the launch with a "Press Enter to continue" pop up. After pressing (or clicking) that, FX3 went to the main menu.

 

Someone on the Steam FX3 forum told me to reenter my cabinet activation code even though my cabinet mode was working. Once I did that it I could launch tables directly. (Thankfully I kept the old FX2 code on my backup cloud).

 

Weird that you bring up FX3! I was trying to set up FX3 tables last night. Same thing. In PBY when I try to launch an FX3 table, it goes to the main FX3 screen instead of the table. I have FX3 set up in PBX and the tables launch fine. Are you doing anything different in your setup apart from what MJR has as the FX3 recipe in the help file? Perhaps I need to not point to the PBX database for FX3 and let PBY discover the tables on its own? All the media from PBX shows up, just launching tables direct seems to not work. I can't imagine I need to add the cabinet activation code in Steam again since it is already working in PBX. Hmmm.... I guess I know what I'll be tinkering with this evening when I get off work.

Not trying to contradict you BTW, just seems really odd to re-enter that activation stuff. I'll definitely try it though. 

 

 

Yeah, I don't understand about reentering either - LOL. At first I could only get PBX to direct launch after reentering the code. PBY wouldn't do it. In folders options I pointed to the PBX XML and then back to PBY. I dropped the PBX XML into the PBY database folder and took it out. I was messing with a bunch of stuff. To be honest I don't know how I got it working? SATURDAY EDIT: I have to launch off an XML file in my FX3 database directory

 

In F3X options the parameters I am now using are:

 

-applaunch 442120 "-table_[TABLEFILE]" 

 

WIndow mode is still Minimize''

 

I have the Table folder left blank.

 

I have a real DMD so in Run before I have: [NOWAIT TERMINATE]D:\dmdext.exe mirror --source=pinballfx3 --no-virtual

Edited by hlr53, 06 October 2018 - 03:01 PM.

[jthompson]

 

 

Yeah, I don't understand about reentering either - LOL. At first I could only get PBX to direct launch after reentering the code. PBY wouldn't do it. In folders options I pointed to the PBX XML and then back to PBY. I dropped the PBX XML into the PBY database folder and took it out. I was messing with a bunch of stuff. To be honest I don't know how I got it working? PBY is loading all my tables from C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Pinball FX3\data\steam because my wheel menu is correct.

 

In F3X options the parameters I am now using are:

 

-applaunch 442120 "-table_[TABLEFILE]" 

 

WIndow mode is still Minimize''

 

I have the Table folder left blank.

 

I have a real DMD so in Run before I have: [NOWAIT TERMINATE]D:\dmdext.exe mirror --source=pinballfx3 --no-virtual

 

 

Thanks. That "recipe" worked for me. I didn't have to re-add the code - couldn't see a way to do it anyways but the settings you shared worked. FX3 tables launch directly to the table now and skips the FX3 splashscreen and menu.

 

[hlr53]

 

 

 

Yeah, I don't understand about reentering either - LOL. At first I could only get PBX to direct launch after reentering the code. PBY wouldn't do it. In folders options I pointed to the PBX XML and then back to PBY. I dropped the PBX XML into the PBY database folder and took it out. I was messing with a bunch of stuff. To be honest I don't know how I got it working? SAURDAY EDIT: PBY is loading all my tables via the PBX XML file that I have placed in the PBY database folder. Only way I can get it to work.

 

In F3X options the parameters I am now using are:

 

-applaunch 442120 "-table_[TABLEFILE]" 

 

WIndow mode is still Minimize''

 

I have the Table folder left blank.

 

I have a real DMD so in Run before I have: [NOWAIT TERMINATE]D:\dmdext.exe mirror --source=pinballfx3 --no-virtual

 

 

Thanks. That "recipe" worked for me. I didn't have to re-add the code - couldn't see a way to do it anyways but the settings you shared worked. FX3 tables launch directly to the table now and skips the FX3 splashscreen and menu.

 

 

 

Good to go. I was wondering if you had to reactivate since it was already working via PBX. It wasn't for me before activation. I activated back in 2016 with FX2.

Edited by hlr53, 06 October 2018 - 11:53 AM.

[mjr]

Media capture question since I have FX3 tables direct launching again. Can we record real DMD videos? When doing FX3 media capture the DMD displays some nice animation for each table. I tried recording 2 tables but the DMD displays black boxes.

 

You can't record from the real DMD itself, but you should be able to record from the dmd-extensions virtual DMD window.  The trick is that you have to get the PinballY DMD window and the virtual DMD window to be at exactly the same place on the screen, so that PBY knows where to grab the screen shots from while recording.

 

I'd like to make direct capture from the real DMD possible too at some point.  dmd-extensions has a capture mode, but it can only be triggered right now from the command line.  What I want to do is add a way for external programs to send it commands to start and stop recordings, so that PBY and others could do the recording as part of an automated capture.  That will take some work, though.

In F3X options the parameters I am now using are:

 

-applaunch 442120 "-table_[TABLEFILE]" 

 

I'll add that to the recipe in the help file.  That applies to FX2 as well, right?

[Outhere]

fx2

-applaunch 226980 "[TABLEFILE]"

[mjr]

fx2

-applaunch 226980 "[TABLEFILE]"

 

So no "table_" prefix like on FX3?

[Outhere]

 

fx2

-applaunch 226980 "[TABLEFILE]"

 

So no "table_" prefix like on FX3?

 

Yes

This is what I used to go straight into the game   ---  (-applaunch 226980 "[TABLEFILE]")

Edited by Outhere, 07 October 2018 - 12:49 AM.

[mjr]

 

Yep, everything works in silent mode on both systems. Whew!!! I don't have an independent recollection (watching too much legal stuff this week) of having to mess with the pincab audio before but who knows? 

 

I'll research this week and see if I can both working. Probably good info for others in the future.

 

So the weird freeze-up behavior seems to have been caused by the audio issue?  I'll have to see if I can reproduce that.  It should just display the error and send you back into the normal UI, not do anything untoward like freezing or crashing.

 

FYI - finally had a chance to look into this, and tracked it down.  There was a bug in the error handling for the case where the capture device list was empty, which caused the capture thread to crash, which was causing the freeze-up behavior you were seeing.  It'll be fixed in the next update (to do what it should have done all along: just fail the capture with an error message explaining about the missing Stereo Mix).

[mjr]

Beta 1 is now available.