HD video packs - Tech Support

ODVS

ODVS

Captain
Hello all,

I have to say I'm immensely gratified with how the community has taken to the HD video packs - thank you so much for all the support!

That said, their popularity over the last year has lead to lots of people asking for help getting them working - especially for Prophecy, which can be a bit more tricky to set up. So I'm appealing for help from the community - please post to this thread any issues you've had with the HD packs and, if you can, any solutions you found to those issues. Ultimately, I'd like to use this information to compile an FAQ/troubleshooting guide for the HD packs that I can point people to in the future if they have any issues getting things working.

Even if you didn't find a solution to your issue, please post it here anyway. It will help me diagnose problems and potentially find solutions.

Thanks, all!

Owen
 
Please, folks - I know we have the knowledge out there. It would be really helpful to other wingnuts if we could squash these bugs 😝

Here are a few examples of common issues reported by users of the Prophecy HD pack - please post if you know which combination of patches and fixes will deal with them:
  • Video appears squished in top left quarter of screen
  • Top left quarter of video fills the entire screen
  • Mouse cursor stuck in middle of screen when videos play
  • Audio plays, but black screen when video should be playing
  • Black screen and no audio when video should be playing
  • Dropping back to Windows desktop after video completes and have to click Prophecy in the taskbar to get back to the game
There may be others I'm forgetting. Please post if you've experienced any of these issues and especially if you've found solutions to them.
 
I just wonder if people are posting to your video thread directly and are not aware of what you're trying to do here. For my part, I most recently (2020) played in Wine and was not able to get movie play-back even with the original DVD videos - in the end I resorted to manually watching videos via VLC as a work-around. Was good enough at the time even if not ideal.
 
Wedge009 said:
I just wonder if people are posting to your video thread directly and are not aware of what you're trying to do here. For my part, I most recently (2020) played in Wine and was not able to get movie play-back even with the original DVD videos - in the end I resorted to manually watching videos via VLC as a work-around. Was good enough at the time even if not ideal.
Click to expand...

Thanks @Wedge009 - I'm afraid I can't really comment on Wine, as I have precisely zero experience with Linux 😝
 
ODVS said:
  • Video appears squished in top left quarter of screen
  • Top left quarter of video fills the entire screen
  • Mouse cursor stuck in middle of screen when videos play
  • Audio plays, but black screen when video should be playing
  • Black screen and no audio when video should be playing
  • Dropping back to Windows desktop after video completes and have to click Prophecy in the taskbar to get back to the game
Click to expand...


There's a couple things to make sure of when installing the upgrades for prophecy. First is to make sure everything runs at each point in the installation process so that you can pinpoint exactly when the game breaks. That said, the obvious first step is to install the actual game with no upgrades. If the game doesn't work without them, chances are it's not going to solve anything installing them either....

As far as black screens or no sound, a lot of issues are related to not having the right codecs installed. Starting a few versions back windows stopped shipping with even the most basic codecs pre-installed. Chances are that you probably need to install at least an Mpeg2 decoder and probably and AC3 encoder for the regular videos... the HD packs are in H264 IIRC so they'll need an appropriate decoder as well.

Other issues with black screens can sometimes also still be related to codec issues. Some PCs get confused with the up-rezed videos and have significantly long load times. If you get a black screen and are sure you've installed the appropriate codecs, let the PC sit for a while once the video should be playing. It could take up to a minute or more at times for the PC to figure it out. Thankfully there's probably a fix for that problem (though I don't remember the details at the moment).

If the game's video and audio plays but you have other scaling issues, I don't know the specifc solutions but a lot of the resizing errors are related to not setting up the enhancement pack to recognize your monitor's resolution properly. There's also issues related to running the game on ultrawide monitors. If you have these issues after setting up the display in the installer,copy the updated video dll into your install directory: https://www.wcnews.com/chatzone/attachments/gl_00007-zip.12178/ and see if that helps.
 
I mentioned it in the other post but some of those issues should be resolved by the new dll, it'd be great to update the enhacement pack to use it.
 
Pedro said:
I mentioned it in the other post but some of those issues should be resolved by the new dll, it'd be great to update the enhacement pack to use it.
Click to expand...
So I can, in theory, use @ODVS upscales of the DVDs (with the new dll), but not the enhancement pack? Do I have to download the DVD movies first and then the upscales or just go straight to the upscales? Planned installation is as follows:

  1. WCP installed
  2. opengl patch installed
  3. new dll installed
  4. DVD movies and/or ODVS upscales installed
 
Thanks @Wedge009, @AD, @Pedro and @YCDTD for chiming in and getting the ball rolling :)

@YCDTD - I recently rebuilt my system, so I don't currently have Prophecy installed, enhanced or otherwise. As such, I'm going to experiment from square one and make extensive notes of the order in which I install things. Hopefully I'll be able to collate a step-by-step guide I can point Wingnuts to in order to go from Vanilla Prophecy up to Bells-And-Whistles Prophecy using the the OpenGL patch, Model Upgrade Pack and the HD Video Pack.

I'm sorry to say it may not be soon - I was planning to do it today, but I got my first shot yesterday and I'm pretty wiped out with side effect symptoms today - and next weekend I have the in-laws coming over, so that's a washout. But I will get around to it as soon as I can and let you all know the results.

@AD, thank you for pointing me in the right direction for the video DLL - that will be very helpful as I was previously missing that information.

@Pedro - that's a great idea. I'm more than happy to collaborate with all you authors of the various Prophecy patches and upgrades to maybe collate everything into a single upgrade pack. I think other Wingnuts would find that really helpful :)
 
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@ODVS I replied because you seemed worried that no-one was responding... I also mentioned Wine by way of saying that what issues I did discover were not related to your videos because the original videos did not work with Wine (at least with the default set-up). ;) Anyway, seems you're getting the attention you desired now.
 
ODVS said:
@YCDTD - I recently rebuilt my system, so I don't currently have Prophecy installed, enhanced or otherwise. As such, I'm going to exteriment from square one and make extensive notes of the order in which I install things. Hopefully I'll be able to collate a step-by-step guide I can point Wingnuts to in order to go from Vanilla Prophecy up to Bells-And-Whistles Prophecy using the the OpenGL patch, Model Upgrade Pack and the HD Video Pack.
Click to expand...
Fuckin' A! 👍👍
 
Wedge009 said:
@ODVS I replied because you seemed worried that no-one was responding... I also mentioned Wine by way of saying that what issues I did discover were not related to your videos because the original videos did not work with Wine (at least with the default set-up). ;) Anyway, seems you're getting the attention you desired now.
Click to expand...
Much appreciated, @Wedge009 - thank you :)
 
Hi,

i´m playing around with Wing Commander IV (GOG-DVD-Release mainly) and the various patches floating around.

There is one thing that bugs me:
- If using the WC4CDtoDVD Patch on the GOG Version the movies are played with 4:3 aspect ratio like the game
- If using the GOG wc4dvd.exe (or the patched one from HCIs gog-patch) the movies are played in 16:9 BUT are cropped quite a bit at the edges. I played around several hours now with LAVFilter settings and dxmci.dll-Versions and DirectDraw-Wrappers without any success. I managed to get different font / GUI sizes, but in-game movie playback was always cropped (except for the 4:3 exe from the WC4CDtoDVDPatch).

1) My best guess that it´s hardcoded in the game-exe in which aspect ratio the movies are played.
Any more information on that?

2) I guess the 16:9 cropped in-game playback is a known issue? Is there a solution?

If those issues were discussed already I am sorry. I looked but didn´t find anything.

Thanks!

EDIT: Changed crapped -> cropped (sorry ^^)
 
Last edited:
-KRRU-Dominus said:
Hi,

i´m playing around with Wing Commander IV (GOG-DVD-Release mainly) and the various patches floating around.

There is one thing that bugs me:
- If using the WC4CDtoDVD Patch on the GOG Version the movies are played with 4:3 aspect ratio like the game
- If using the GOG wc4dvd.exe (or the patched one from HCIs gog-patch) the movies are played in 16:9 BUT are crapped quite a bit at the edges. I played around several hours now with LAVFilter settings and dxmci.dll-Versions and DirectDraw-Wrappers without any success. I managed to get different font / GUI sizes, but in-game movie playback was always crapped (except for the 4:3 exe from the WC4CDtoDVDPatch).

1) My best guess that it´s hardcoded in the game-exe in which aspect ratio the movies are played.
Any more information on that?

2) I guess the 16:9 crapped in-game playback is a known issue? Is there a solution?

If those issues were discussed already I am sorry. I looked but didn´t find anything.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
I assume you mean 'cropped' rather than 'crapped'... anyway Do you mean it's cropping on the sides? Can you provide an example to show how much is actually being cut off on the the sides?

Also, is this an issue you are having with the HD videos? or just with the GOG DVD version? IF it's the latter it doesn't really belong in this thread. If you are actually using the HD videos, is this happening with the regular DVD videos as well?
 
-KRRU-Dominus said:
Hi,

i´m playing around with Wing Commander IV (GOG-DVD-Release mainly) and the various patches floating around.

There is one thing that bugs me:
- If using the WC4CDtoDVD Patch on the GOG Version the movies are played with 4:3 aspect ratio like the game
- If using the GOG wc4dvd.exe (or the patched one from HCIs gog-patch) the movies are played in 16:9 BUT are cropped quite a bit at the edges. I played around several hours now with LAVFilter settings and dxmci.dll-Versions and DirectDraw-Wrappers without any success. I managed to get different font / GUI sizes, but in-game movie playback was always cropped (except for the 4:3 exe from the WC4CDtoDVDPatch).

1) My best guess that it´s hardcoded in the game-exe in which aspect ratio the movies are played.
Any more information on that?

2) I guess the 16:9 cropped in-game playback is a known issue? Is there a solution?

If those issues were discussed already I am sorry. I looked but didn´t find anything.

Thanks!

EDIT: Changed crapped -> cropped (sorry ^^)
Click to expand...

I'm afraid I can't comment on the CDtoDVD patch as I've never used it.

I believe the GOG DVD version of the game is hard-coded scale the videos to "touch the edge from outside". By that I mean it will fill the vertical or horizontal space - whichever greater - and the rest will overspill the screen. I believe they made this decision on purpose, since it makes the 4:3-with-baked-in-letterbox DVD VOB videos fill a 16:9 screen, rather than having the video appear in a 16:9 aspect ratio inside a black box.

By any chance, are you using a 16:10, 3:2, super-wide or other non-16:9 aspect ratio monitor? That would certainly explain it.
 
AD said:
I assume you mean 'cropped' rather than 'crapped'... anyway Do you mean it's cropping on the sides? Can you provide an example to show how much is actually being cut off on the the sides?

Also, is this an issue you are having with the HD videos? or just with the GOG DVD version? IF it's the latter it doesn't really belong in this thread. If you are actually using the HD videos, is this happening with the regular DVD videos as well?
Click to expand...

Sorry for the delay. Quite busy at the moment and I wanted to play around for myself before getting back to you and ODVS.

So here is a screenshot mashup to clarify what I mean:
- Ingame the videos play borderless, but it looks like they are "zoomed in" (bottom right image).
- This happens on my 4K display as well as on my FullHD display (both are standard 16:9)

- This happens also with the original videos ingame BUT since they have big black borders at the top and bottom only the borders get reduced about 2/3 - so nothing from the actual image is missing (if necessary I could take another screenshot)
- As far as I can tell the video only gets stretched up and down (not left and right) - so its not an "actual" zoom-in;
Is this what you described above @ODVS?



WC4VideoProblems.JPG


Thanks!
 
-KRRU-Dominus said:
Sorry for the delay. Quite busy at the moment and I wanted to play around for myself before getting back to you and ODVS.

So here is a screenshot mashup to clarify what I mean:
- Ingame the videos play borderless, but it looks like they are "zoomed in" (bottom right image).
- This happens on my 4K display as well as on my FullHD display (both are standard 16:9)

- This happens also with the original videos ingame BUT since they have big black borders at the top and bottom only the borders get reduced about 2/3 - so nothing from the actual image is missing (if necessary I could take another screenshot)
- As far as I can tell the video only gets stretched up and down (not left and right) - so its not an "actual" zoom-in;
Is this what you described above @ODVS?



Thanks!
Click to expand...

Something is causing the videos to be stretched vertically... Like the videos are filling an actual 4:3 aspect virtual screen by increasing the video height. Just to clarify, the actual in-flight gameplay is not stretched or zoomed?

Probably not really a thread that will lead anywhere but what kind of video card are you running? What happens if you turn on 'virtual super resolution' -or whatever NVidia's equivalent of that is - before running the game?
 
AD said:
Something is causing the videos to be stretched vertically... Like the videos are filling an actual 4:3 aspect virtual screen by increasing the video height. Just to clarify, the actual in-flight gameplay is not stretched or zoomed?

Probably not really a thread that will lead anywhere but what kind of video card are you running? What happens if you turn on 'virtual super resolution' -or whatever NVidia's equivalent of that is - before running the game?
Click to expand...
If i remember well, WCIV DVD has this stupid issue with dgvoodoo2 where the videos and the game screen arent fit with each other and the videos becomes low res even using aspect ratio fix, something that could be worked out to fix at vogons forums.

the DOS to Win version has no issues with it like WC3 outside the flickering Menus due to GDI rendering calls, but WCIV DVD version suffers from it
Also the DOS/Win version uses AVI format paired with DDRAW rendering, GoG version is all over the place
 
@AD: In-flight is 4:3 - game works normaly as far as I can tell.
@ShadowArm: I played around with dgVoodoo2 (GOG-Version); it´s not working too well - I had to stick to HCIs GOG patch

@AD:
I have a Win10 21H1 PC with AMD RX6900XT @ 2160p.
I tried it on several machines today:
- Win10 20H2 Intel Laptop with NVidia 980M @ 1080p
- Win10 21H1 Intel Laptop with NVidia 3070 @ 1080p
- Win10 1809 (LTSC 2019) Intel Laptop with Intel iGPU @1366x768

What did I do?
- Installed WC4 DVD GOG Version 3.0.1
- Copied Movie Upgrade Pack 5.0 (vob-folder)
- Installed K-Lite Basic (latest Version)
- Installed HCIs GOG Patch (but also tried without the patch)

I had the "stretched" video playback on all machines - reproducible.

The good news is:
At least for my PC I found a solution (I will test it tomorrow on the other machines).

I looked into the source code of HCIs GOG Patch and found the settings for renderer.cfg and videoRenderer.cfg


Code: 
Renderer.cfg:
opengl (default)
ddraw
direct3d
legacy

VideoRenderer.cfg:
vmr7
ivideowindow
vmr7offscreen (default)
evr

audioRenderer.cfg
dsound (default)
waveout


Changing the VideoRenderer to evr solved my stretched video problem, but then I had the "long video-load-time bug" (I read about in the Readme / Forum).

Changing the VideoRenderer to ivideowindow solved the problem for me so far. I can´t tell if it has any side effects, but it doesn´t seem so.
Playing around with the Codec Tweak Tool (changing decoders, etc) didn´t do anything for me.

On a side note: wc4dvdgog-win2k-patched.exe (HCIs GOG patch) seems to be working better on 4K displays. With the normal wc4dvd.exe the fonts are really small.

Update 11.06.2021:
I tried it on an old NVidia GT710 (latest drivers; Windows 10 1809 LTSC 2019 fully patched):
VideoRenderer.cfg:
vmr7 - stretched videos
ivideowindow - black screen, only sound is playing
vmr7offscreen (default) - stretched videos
evr - working, but "long video-load-time bug"

More information/documentation about the implemented technologies:
docs.microsoft.com

Choosing the Right Video Renderer - Win32 apps

Choosing the Right Video Renderer
docs.microsoft.com

ivideowindow documentation:
docs.microsoft.com

IVideoWindow (control.h) - Win32 apps

The IVideoWindow interface sets properties on the video window.
docs.microsoft.com
ivideowindow seems to be the most recent of the implemented video rendering technology, but HCI noted in the source, that vmr7 was the most testet implementation.
 
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Nice one figuring out a fix, @-KRRU-Dominus!

My only note would be, I recommend getting the K-Lite Full or Mega packs, rather than basic. Last time I checked, basic doesn't come with the Codec Tweak Tool, which can go a long way towards fixing some bugs with the HD packs
 
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