1630 replies to this topic

[apophis]

Does PinballY support hardware accelerated video playback? My CPU is getting CRUSHED during video playback. I had to disable videos which makes me sad.

I have a 4k 60Hz playfield TV, i5 quad core CPU, GTX 1070, and am running the 64-bit PinballY. I tried turning on pinaffinity with ffmpeg.exe and PinballY.exe in the pinball group and that crashed PinballY.

Another thought if hardware acceleration not possible: if I could capture the videos to HD resolution, my CPU would be much happier. Is that possible?

I really want to make this work!

Edited by dmassie, 28 April 2020 - 04:43 PM.

[mjr]

Forgive me f this has been addressed MJR, but does pinball y support multiple page instruction cards? Some Pinballfx3 instruction cards are multiple pages I think. Just wondered if it is possible or there is a workaround?

 

Yes - just name them <media name> 1.swf, <media name> 2.swf (you can also use .png or .jpg).  There are actually lots of media packs that do this to provide multiple versions (e.g., a 3-ball version and a 5-ball version, or English and German cards), but you could use it just as well for the FX3 multi-page cards.  When viewing them, just use the regular Next/Previous buttons (usually flipper buttons) to page through them.

Does PinballY support hardware accelerated video playback? My CPU is getting CRUSHED during video playback. I had to disable videos which makes me sad.

 

Sadly, no.  libvlc unfortunately can't use hardware acceleration for the kind of playback I'm doing that can play into D3D surfaces.  Once the video has been decoded, the rest of the graphics pipeline goes through D3D, which does use the GPU, but the decoding itself is all in the CPU.

 

 

Another thought if hardware acceleration not possible: if I could capture the videos to HD resolution, my CPU would be much happier. Is that possible?

 

I think that's a good workaround - HD is no problem even for older CPUs at this point.  There aren't currently any PinballY settings to override the capture settings like that, but I can think of a couple of manaul approaches you could use:

 

The first is to just switch your monitor to HD mode when you want to do a capture.  PinballY will capture in whatever mode you're currently in.

 

The second is to go through your existing captured videos with a batch file and transcode them to HD using ffmpeg.  The ffmpeg command line for that should be pretty simple - a little web searching should find an example.

And by the way, if PinballY is actually crashing with 4K video (by which I mean the process is terminating abruptly), the problem is probably memory.  4K decoding takes an insane amount of memory - that's why 64-bit is needed; the paltry 4GB that a 32-bit process can access is just not enough.  If you have an older system, it might not be possible or practical to add more memory, but if you can have free slots and can find cheap RAM of the right type, it might worth adding a few GB and see if tha thelps with the 4K.

[Teahaus]

Apologies if this has been asked and answered, but how do you scroll through tables if you just want let's say, the ones that start with 'S'?  I think I saw this addressed somewhere but cannot find it.  Is it some sort of added button press or something on the keyboard?

[jaharr01]

Also MJR, I forgot to ask you is there way to put a manufacturers logo somewhere on the wheel or near it? Or is there some workaround ?

[mjr]

Apologies if this has been asked and answered, but how do you scroll through tables if you just want let's say, the ones that start with 'S'?  I think I saw this addressed somewhere but cannot find it.  Is it some sort of added button press or something on the keyboard?

 

Are you asking if there's a built-in filter for "Games starting with the letter 'S'"?  There's not, but you could create a custom filter like that easily with Javascript - see the help under Javascript scripting > System Classes > FilterInfo, and scroll down to "Custom filters".  There are some examples that should help - the example for "Short, medium, and long titles" is a pretty direct template for what you're thinking.

 

 

Also MJR, I forgot to ask you is there way to put a manufacturers logo somewhere on the wheel or near it? Or is there some workaround ?

 

Nope, but again, Javascript can be brought to bear here.  What you'd want to do is create a custom drawing layer in the main window, and draw the logo there. The help under Javascript scripting > Drawing Layers should get you started.

[apophis]

This might be a bug, or user error. There seems to be a duplicate table in my table list. My "Pirates of the Caribbean" table is listed twice, and any change I make to one affects the other. Any thoughts on how to fix this?

Edited by dmassie, 01 May 2020 - 03:51 AM.

[Thalamus]

Sounds like you need to delete one of the tables from your tables list ? I expect that they have the same description and will then use the same media, is my guess. Move one of the tables out, and re-add it with a slightly different description should fix it.

[apophis]

Sounds like you need to delete one of the tables from your tables list ? I expect that they have the same description and will then use the same media, is my guess. Move one of the tables out, and re-add it with a slightly different description should fix it.

So, yes I had two version of POTC in my Tables directory. If I remove one from the directory and restart PinballY, I still see the table in my wheel. I can hide it, but I’d rather remove it. Can I do that from the front end? Or do I need to delete it from the database somehow? I looked thru the help files and couldn’t find any guidance. Thanks.

Update - I simply deleted the game entry from the XML database file. That worked. That's probably what your meant for me to do anyway.

Edited by dmassie, 01 May 2020 - 08:45 PM.

[Thalamus]

Yes

[jaharr01]

Hey MJR, I was wondering is there an easier way to put instruction cards in pinball y, like drag and drip, instead of doing them manually 1 at a time

Thanks Jay

[miguelcerca]

Is it possible to change the location and size of the DMD on a per game basis? I've got my Sega large DMD games in a different location via dmddevice.dll, but in pinbally, the DMD is in the same location as everything else. This makes the recorded DMD get cut off...

[mjr]

Hey MJR, I was wondering is there an easier way to put instruction cards in pinball y, like drag and drip, instead of doing them manually 1 at a time

 

If you open up the instruction card window, and drop files onto that, it should install them as the cards for the current game.

 

 

Is it possible to change the location and size of the DMD on a per game basis? I've got my Sega large DMD games in a different location via dmddevice.dll, but in pinbally, the DMD is in the same location as everything else. This makes the recorded DMD get cut off...

 

There isn't a built-in way to do that, but you could do it with a little Javascript.  Javascript can change window positions, so you could write a gameselect event handler that checks the current game to see if it's one of the special Sega games, and change the layout accordingly (or change it back to normal if it's not one of those games).  These help sections should be relevant:

 

Javascript scripting > Events > Event Types > GameSelectEvent

Javascript scripting > System Classes > GameInfo

Javascript scripting > System Objects > Window Objects

 

Something along these lines (not tested):

const SEGA_DMD_WIDTH = <set to the desired pixel size>;
const NORMAL_DMD_WIDTH = <set to the desired pixel size>;
gameList.on("gameselect", ev => {
    let width = ev.game.categories.indexOf("sega-large-dmd") < 0 ? NORMAL_DMD_WIDTH : SEGA_DMD_WIDTH;
    dmdWindow.setWindowPos(null, -1, -1, width, -1, SWP_NOMOVE | SWP_NOACTIVATE | SWP_NOZORDER);
});

Note that this assumes that you're going to tag the Sega games with a category named sega-large-dmd, which you can do in the wheel UI via the Game Setup menu.

[jaharr01]

Thank u MJR, I thought that might be the case. I love pinbally. Such an easy stable front end. It looks good and is very customizable.
Jay

[jaharr01]

Hey MJR, Another option I think would be good, is an option to only disable playfield videos. Those seem like they drag my system down more than the backglass and dmd. It also seems like the solenoids firing seem to drag the system down if I flip to fast. I thought about disabling the flippers and maybe using flashers in DOF but not sure if that is workable. It does fine If I dont flip to fast or disable dof. Anyway just an Idea. My computer has some age so I’m sure that might be part of it.
Jay

[mjr]

Hey MJR, Another option I think would be good, is an option to only disable playfield videos.

 

A kind of brute force way of doing that is just renaming all of the video files so that they don't look like video files - change .mp4 to .mp4_old or something like that.

 

 

It also seems like the solenoids firing seem to drag the system down if I flip to fast. I thought about disabling the flippers and maybe using flashers in DOF but not sure if that is workable. It does fine If I dont flip to fast or disable dof.

 

It's pretty easy to edit your DOF configuration in the online OF config tool to swap whatever effects you want there.  See the help under DOF Events.  I'm not sure why solenoids would slow things down, though, since DOF events are fired asynchronously; PinballY doesn't stop and wait for your solenoids to do their thing, it just sends the command and keeps going.  But if your system is on the slower side it could be that the extra background work is slowing things down noticeably.

[miguelcerca]

 

Hey MJR, I was wondering is there an easier way to put instruction cards in pinball y, like drag and drip, instead of doing them manually 1 at a time

 

If you open up the instruction card window, and drop files onto that, it should install them as the cards for the current game.

 

 

Is it possible to change the location and size of the DMD on a per game basis? I've got my Sega large DMD games in a different location via dmddevice.dll, but in pinbally, the DMD is in the same location as everything else. This makes the recorded DMD get cut off...

 

There isn't a built-in way to do that, but you could do it with a little Javascript.  Javascript can change window positions, so you could write a gameselect event handler that checks the current game to see if it's one of the special Sega games, and change the layout accordingly (or change it back to normal if it's not one of those games).  These help sections should be relevant:

 

Javascript scripting > Events > Event Types > GameSelectEvent

Javascript scripting > System Classes > GameInfo

Javascript scripting > System Objects > Window Objects

 

Something along these lines (not tested):

const SEGA_DMD_WIDTH = <set to the desired pixel size>;
const NORMAL_DMD_WIDTH = <set to the desired pixel size>;
gameList.on("gameselect", ev => {
    let width = ev.game.categories.indexOf("sega-large-dmd") < 0 ? NORMAL_DMD_WIDTH : SEGA_DMD_WIDTH;
    dmdWindow.setWindowPos(null, -1, -1, width, -1, SWP_NOMOVE | SWP_NOACTIVATE | SWP_NOZORDER);
});

Note that this assumes that you're going to tag the Sega games with a category named sega-large-dmd, which you can do in the wheel UI via the Game Setup menu.

 

 

Thanks for the help,

I was able to get it working as I wanted with this:

const SEGA_DMD_HEIGHT = 341;
const NORMAL_DMD_HEIGHT = 256;
const SEGA_DMD_YPOS = 354;
const NORMAL_DMD_YPOS = 439
gameList.on("gameselect", ev => {
    let height = ev.game.categories.indexOf("sega-large-dmd") < 0 ? NORMAL_DMD_HEIGHT :SEGA_DMD_HEIGHT;
    let ypos = ev.game.categories.indexOf("sega-large-dmd") < 0 ? NORMAL_DMD_YPOS :SEGA_DMD_YPOS;
    dmdWindow.setWindowPos(null, 3200, ypos, 1024, height, null | SWP_NOACTIVATE | SWP_NOZORDER);
});

const SEGA_TOPPER_HEIGHT = 354;
const NORMAL_TOPPER_HEIGHT = 439;
gameList.on("gameselect", ev => {
    let height = ev.game.categories.indexOf("sega-large-dmd") < 0 ? NORMAL_TOPPER_HEIGHT : SEGA_TOPPER_HEIGHT;
    topperWindow.setWindowPos(null, 3200, 0, 1024, height, null | SWP_NOACTIVATE | SWP_NOZORDER);
});

now the DMD will resize & reposition and the Topper will resize with all my games marked with "sega-large-dmd"!!

[JLPicard001]

Apologies if this has been asked and answered, but how do you scroll through tables if you just want let's say, the ones that start with 'S'?  I think I saw this addressed somewhere but cannot find it.  Is it some sort of added button press or something on the keyboard?

You can scroll through your tables by alaphabetic listing by using the magnasave buttons if I recall. A's to B's to C's....   I don't have my magna's hooked up to test but I seem to recall that.

[apophis]

I have my VPX set up so that soundfx are turned off for items I have contactors for (flippers, slingshots, etc). In Night Mode, I'd like to automatically switch back to using soundfx, and then back to using DOF in "Day Mode". Is this possible?

[Thalamus]

If you are talking about Zeb's day/night - then I'm having a hard time seeing that you can.

[apophis]

I’m just talking about the replacing the contactors with the associated sound effects when the Pinscape is in night mode. I thought there might be some way for PinballY to manage that.

Edited by dmassie, 10 May 2020 - 04:11 PM.