1622 replies to this topic

[Phazer51]

I installed the 32-bit version of PinballY.
 
I selected "share PinballX folders" during installation.  However, PinballY is not showing any of my table media (no wheel images, backglasses, DMD videos, or table videos).

 
If you could go to the options dialog (press letter "O" (that's the letter O, not a zero)), select the Log File page, and check the boxes below, it'll put more information in the log that should hopefully explain it:
 
  Player system setup and table searches
  Media file searches

That answered the question. PBY was looking for a "Visual Pinball X" folder. But, I'd called it "VPX" as a PBX system. I renamed "visual Pinball X" to "VPX" in PBY. That got most of my media working. I'm not sure why some wheel art, back glasses, and playfields still don't display.

Now, I need to learn how to set up game lists in PBY. All I now get is one large list.

Edited by Phazer51, 10 February 2019 - 04:04 AM.

[mjr]

That answered the question. PBY was looking for a "Visual Pinball X" folder. But, I'd called it "VPX" as a PBX system. I'm renaming my PBX folder & system to "Visual Pinball X."

 

Great.  You could alternatively change the path in the settings on the PinballY side - go back to the options dialog and select the Visual Pinball X section, and you'll find options to customize the various paths it uses.  No real need since you already changed the folder name, but I thought I'd at least mention it for future reference.

 

 

Now, I need to learn how to set up game lists in PBY. All I now get is one large list.

 

If you were using PBX game lists, they should already be available in PinballY as "categories".  On the main menu, select Filter by category, and you should get a menu with the game lists you were using before.  PinballY doesn't really have "lists" in the same sense as PBX, but it does translate the PBX lists to categories, if you've already set up PBX-style game lists.  Categories are basically tags that you can assign to games.  The big difference from PBX lists is that you can tag any game with any number of categories, so you're not limited to having each game in one list.  There are also the various other dynamic filters you can use to select subsets of your collection (manufacturer, era, etc).  And with Javascript you can create your own custom filters, if you want to do something fancier than the bulit-in filters.

[Phazer51]

I loaded PinballY long after I'd set up PBX.  I set up PBY to use PBX media (and got it working).  But, PBY was not matching some wheel art images to the games. So,I copied all of my media to a PBY media folder so that I could work with PBY separately from PBX.
 
PBX expects media files and images to have the same filename as the .vpx files.
 
PBY appears to associate media files (especially wheel images) with the "title" of the .vpx table (also known as the "discription" of the table in the database .xml file).  For example:
 

 
I had a wheel image "Batman (Data East 1991) VPX 1.3.png" in my PBX media folder.  PBY did not recognize/display the wheel image.  But, when I renamed the wheel image to "Batman.png," it worked fine.
 
There appeared to be some tables with which I could not seem to associate with wheel images. For example, with PBX, I've got a Gorgar (Williams 1979)_1.3.vpx table. I have similarly named backglass, playfield, and wheel images.  PBY loaded the backglass and playfield, but not the wheel image.  When I went through the PBY "Edit game data," I let PBY reassign naming designations for the media.  It renamed the backglass and playfield videos to "Gorgar (Willliams 1979).f4v."  My wheel image was not renamed and was not displayed.  Once I renamed the wheel image to "Gorgar (Willliams 1979).png" it displayed properly.
 
In any case,  PinballY is a really responsive front end.  Backglass and playfield video captures through PBY worked great (once I selected the "two-pass video encoding" under Media Capture so that videos didn't stutter).

Edited by Phazer51, 10 February 2019 - 05:45 PM.

[gtxjoe]

FYI. Pinballx supports two ways of media file naming. Matches table filename or table description name

That way once you have wheel images, audio, toppers, flyers and instructions named by table description, you never have to rename them as you upgrade tables versions

Based on your Gorgar description, it seems PBY stops wheel matching at the _ underscore in the file name

Edited by gtxjoe, 10 February 2019 - 05:02 PM.

[Brer Frog]

Whenever I have a question about a table’s “description” to use for the media files, I go to PinballY > Databases > Visual Pinball X > Visual Pinball X.xml and open it with Notepad. Look for the table name and it will show the description between the “>“ and “<“ brackets.

Or if one of the media images does display, such as the table, I just copy/paste its filename to the other images, such as the Wheel image.

Edited by Brer Frog, 10 February 2019 - 05:06 PM.

[Phazer51]

Whenever I have a question about a tables description to use for the media files, I go to PinballY > Databases > Visual Pinball X > Visual Pinball X.xml and open it with Notepad. Look for the table name and it will show the description between the > and < brackets.

That's exactly what I wound up doing.

Has anyone found out how to select and display specific game "categories"?

I've created two categories: VPX and Favorites. But, PBY just displays all configured tables.

Edited by Phazer51, 10 February 2019 - 05:42 PM.

[mjr]

Has anyone found out how to select and display specific game "categories"?

I've created two categories: VPX and Favorites. But, PBY just displays all configured tables.

 

Did you try main menu > Filter by Category?  That should give you options for the lists you've created. 

[Phazer51]

 

Has anyone found out how to select and display specific game "categories"?

I've created two categories: VPX and Favorites. But, PBY just displays all configured tables.

 

Did you try main menu > Filter by Category?  That should give you options for the lists you've created. 

 

 

I cannot find "Filter by Category" anywhere.

 

When editing the settings for a specific game, I can assign it to a category(s) that I've defined. But, I have been unable to find any options that allow me to filter my displayed list of tables.

 

Clearly, I'm missing something.

[mjr]

I cannot find "Filter by Category" anywhere.

 

When editing the settings for a specific game, I can assign it to a category(s) that I've defined. But, I have been unable to find any options that allow me to filter my displayed list of tables.

 

It should be right on the main menu - press "1" (that's the digit "one" key) (unless you've changed the key assignments - it's the button you've assigned for the Select command):

 

 

Let me know if you're not seeing the same thing there.

[Phazer51]

 

I cannot find "Filter by Category" anywhere.

 

When editing the settings for a specific game, I can assign it to a category(s) that I've defined. But, I have been unable to find any options that allow me to filter my displayed list of tables.

 

It should be right on the main menu - press "1" (that's the digit "one" key) (unless you've changed the key assignments - it's the button you've assigned for the Select command):

 

 

Let me know if you're not seeing the same thing there.

 

 

THAT certainly works.  I had completely missed that menu altogether.

 

Since you have included a Favorites category, I can remove the one that I created.

 

I now see that I can use the "Filter by System" option to view all of my VPX tables at once.

 

For DOF, I've only got a Teensy set up with left and right playfield addressable LEDs (so far).   Should I be seeing any default effects?  Or, do they all need to be selected in the DOF Config Tool?

Edited by Phazer51, 11 February 2019 - 12:27 AM.

[mjr]

Is there some way that I can manually add all of my VPX tables to my "VPX" category, in one shot, without having to add each one individually from the wheel?

 

I think so... If I understand your setup correctly, you've already created two VPX lists, right?  So you have these two XML files in your VPX\Databases\VPX folder, representing the two lists:

 

VPX.xml

Favorites.xml

 

The reason you're not seeing a "VPX" category is that there's a special case for the "generic" XML file, meaning the one that has exactly the same name as the system folder.  That one is considered to be not a category - it's the default list for the otherwise uncategorized games for that system.

 

The easy way to turn it into a category in PinballY is to change the file OR folder name so that they're not the same.  If you change the file's name to VP10.xml, for example, it'll consider it a category called "VP10".

 

If you want to keep the category name as "VPX", you can change the folder name instead:

 

Step 1:  rename the folder in Windows (call it "Visual Pinball X", say)

Step 2:  go into the PinballY options for Visual Pinball 10 and update the "databases" folder to point to the new name

 

The key is just that you want the folder and file to have different names.  That'll make the file into a category.

Edited by mjr, 11 February 2019 - 12:29 AM.

[Phazer51]

mjr:

 

Thanks for all of your help.  Your PinballY front end is great.  I don't have any of the issues with PBY that I was having with PBX.

 

We'll see if I can get Future Pinball and Pinball FX3 running through PBY.

 

Small steps......

 

BTW - I tried messaging you, but it appears your inbox is full.  (Not hard to believe given all of the virtual pinball related projects you're spearheading)

[Herweh]

Hi MJR,

first of all PinballY is awesome stuff. I love how user friendly and intuitive it is. Congratz!
I'm running Windows10 64Bit on my cab and have installed PinballY 64Bit. Super easy installation, no problems with DOF, its working nearly perfect out of the box.

Just one problem with the Capture media part: I'm not able to capture a playfield video. No matter what options I configure in the options dialog, it looks like the playfield video capturing is always starting immediately after pressing "Begin capture". Result is a grey video with the text "Capturing Media".
Capturing a backglass video is working fine.

Here are screenshots of my current capture options and of the resulting playfield video.

Do you have any ideas what to do? Thx a lot.

Attached Files

•  C2D5B734-039B-4099-A2DD-C5AA0E238573.jpeg   155.01KB   2 downloads
•  355F6ACD-4F67-45D4-B499-3147DCCA7723.jpeg   143.66KB   2 downloads

Edited by Herweh, 14 February 2019 - 10:50 PM.

[mjr]

Just one problem with the Capture media part: I'm not able to capture a playfield video. No matter what options I configure in the options dialog, it looks like the playfield video capturing is always starting immediately after pressing "Begin capture". Result is a grey video with the text "Capturing Media".

 

Hmm... could you maybe take a video of the whole cab (all of the screens, I mean) as you go through the capture process?  I don't have any guess off-hand, but if I could see what's going on at each step of the process, that might give an idea of where it's going wrong.

[Herweh]

 

Just one problem with the Capture media part: I'm not able to capture a playfield video. No matter what options I configure in the options dialog, it looks like the playfield video capturing is always starting immediately after pressing "Begin capture". Result is a grey video with the text "Capturing Media".

 

Hmm... could you maybe take a video of the whole cab (all of the screens, I mean) as you go through the capture process?  I don't have any guess off-hand, but if I could see what's going on at each step of the process, that might give an idea of where it's going wrong.

 

 

Here we go. I have shortened the time slots for capturing a bit, please check out the image with my settings. DMD and topper are set to hidden. 

 

And hopefully here is the video

https://youtu.be/9FQvLKrMkFA

 

PS: If you stop at about one second you can see that the calculation for the complete time frame is 25 seconds. I would expect that it's 30 seconds as my settings  are 15 seconds waiting and 5 seconds for playfield video, sound and backglass Video. Am I wrong?

Attached Files

•  IMG_1276 (Bearbeitet).JPG   130.64KB   4 downloads

[mjr]

Herweh - thanks for the video.  That definitely helps.  I think what's going on is pretty simple: it looks like your initial delay before the capture starts is just too short.  You have it set for 15 seconds, but watching the video, it looks like it's actually taking about 20 seconds to reach the point where the game has started.  That's why you're capturing the gray screen - the capture is actually starting while the PBY screen is still showing, so you're capturing PBY instead of the game. 

 

So I think the solution is just to increase the startup delay time a bit.  For this game, it looks like 20 seconds would work.  But VP startup times can vary quite a bit, so I'd add a bit of padding so that you don't have to keep readjusting it for every game.  Maybe 25 or 30 seconds.

 

Alternatively, if you have a lot of variation from game to game, you might want to switch to the manual startup mode instead.  That's in the capture options.  In manual mode, you simply watch the startup process yourself and press the flipper buttons (both at the same time) when the game is up and running.  There's an on-screen prompt to remind you that it's waiting for your input.

 

Anyway, at least try bumping up the initial delay time a bit and see if that helps.

[Herweh]

mjr - thanks a lot, you put me in the right direction. It wasn't the startup delay, but you mentioned that there are on-screen prompts telling me that PinballY is waiting for response. But although I tested this manual mode I have never seen these prompts.

The trick is: Cause of the "Force exclusive fullscreen mode" setting of VPX all these prompts are getting lost. My playfield TV is changing his resolution (although it is set to 60Hz and I'm forcing it to 60Hz in VPX) and is getting dark during the loading of a table for a few seconds. After switching the resolution the prompts didn't show up and maybe the capturing of the TV screen doesn't work. Without the "Force …" option set all is fine, even with a shorter startup delay.

Does this make sense to you?

Edited by Herweh, 15 February 2019 - 08:07 PM.

[mjr]

mjr - thanks a lot, you put me in the right direction. It wasn't the startup delay, but you mentioned that there are on-screen prompts telling me that PinballY is waiting for response. But although I tested this manual mode I have never seen these prompts.

The trick is: Cause of the "Force exclusive fullscreen mode" setting of VPX all these prompts are getting lost. My playfield TV is changing his resolution (although it is set to 60Hz and I'm forcing it to 60Hz in VPX) and is getting dark during the loading of a table for a few seconds. After switching the resolution the prompts didn't show up and maybe the capturing of the TV screen doesn't work. Without the "Force …" option set all is fine, even with a shorter startup delay.

Does this make sense to you?

 

Yes, that seems entirely plausible.  I'm really not sure whether or not FFMPEG is capable of capturing in exclusive FS mode, but it seems like a good bet it's not.  FFMPEG captures by reading pixels from the GDI drawing surface, which probably gets bypassed entirely in exclusive mode.

 

Glad you figured it out!  One more little detail to remember.

[mjr]

I have a report from one person that the mouse cursor isn't getting hidden when you press a button.  Is anyone else seeing that?  Here's what *should* be happening:

 

- IF the mouse is over a PinballY Window, THEN on pressing any key (e.g., the "next game" button), the mouse cursor should disappear

 

- On any subsequent motion of the mouse, the mouse cursor should reappear

 

Is anyone else having the same situation where the mouse *isn't* disappearing when a key is pressed?  Take note that it must be over a PinballY window for the mouse to disappear, and that it should reappear the instant there's any motion.  I can't reproduce this on any of my machines, so I'm thinking it's a Windows version issue or interaction with some other software - if anyone else is seeing it, maybe we can figure out what the common element is.

[Herweh]

Mouse cursor disappears fine at my cab when I press a button. The mouse and waiting cursor appears for a few seconds when loading a table. Don‘t know whether it should be invisible here, too.

I have a focus issue. I‘ve activated the „Autostart“ option at „Startup“ (the standard one, not the Admin one), and it‘s working pretty fine but after startup no button is working. Looks like a focus thing as I have to do one mouse click on the playfield.
Doesn‘t happen when starting PinballY from the desktop.

mjr, one question: Is it okay to post here? Or do you prefer these stuff via PM?

All in all I love PinballY. I will never go back to Hyperpin or PinballX. Awesome job!