Sorry your browser is not supported!

You are using an outdated browser that does not support modern web technologies, in order to use this site please update to a new browser.

Browsers supported include Chrome, FireFox, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer 10+ or Microsoft Edge.

Author
Message
Lost in Thought
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 4th Feb 2004
Location: U.S.A. : Douglas, Georgia
Posted: 19th Jul 2009 07:23
Well this certainly looks interesting. I may buy this later, but don't need it now. However as far as the price goes I say it's OK and you should set it how you want. People are just comparing this price to the usual DBP add-on price.

I think what Kaedroho is trying to say here is that he would like to make "some" money from his work, but his real reward is the more people using it. There is more to life than money. We get paid in lots of ways. Sometimes even with just a smile. There is no big picture really. Only a bunch of small ones. Everyone has their own "big picture". Like me. If I make any software it is given away free and open source unless I have a set dollar goal I want from it. I am gonna make a 1 shot totally customizable engine that I want to get my money back from buying software. I set this price at $1000. So as long as I make that much it doesn't matter. I would rather sell 1000 @ $1 than 10 @ $100. Because all I'm after is the goal of $1000 money wise. You have to guess at how many you can sell. It's more reasonable to think I could only sell 50 copies so I'll set it at $20 profit from each sell. After that it'll prolly be free too. I think that is kaedroho's point kinda.

HowDo
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 28th Nov 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 19th Jul 2009 15:20
Deep Cove Software, update 1.0.2 work fine no .net errors.

Dark Physics makes any hot drink go cold.
kaedroho
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 21st Aug 2007
Location: Oxford,UK
Posted: 19th Jul 2009 17:27
feiting shadow
17
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 12th Sep 2006
Location:
Posted: 19th Jul 2009 19:45
Ah, I thought Kaedroho was referring to the profit vs price parabolic equation.

Although calculus is required for Morcilla's more advanced version. Just derivatives though, nothing real tough.

Perhaps TrialPay would be a good option for DCS? That way they can still sell and the price won't be too far affected. But Kaedroho, as mentioned above, nobody wants to buy a cheap item and have it be cheap... People pay what they feel something is worth, for those who have money.

For example, I used to charge a small amount for my services as a PC Repair person. I was timid and kind and got a couple jobs. But now I post confidence, and charge half a hundred an hour, which is still cheap but it's because I don't use vehicles. I practically walk 10 miles a day even when I can ride the bus (have a pass). Now guess what? I have more customers, and they're better-class.

I believe money shouldn't be looked at as evil or limited. It represents our life-supply. I am happy to give it as I have received, knowing there is plenty of it. I believe this add-on is worth what it sells, if not more, as it is very powerful even though us indi folks don't normally use video in games. Maybe this will change now. I've noticed availability can easily direct everything, from dating to technological advance.

shadow

Signed
------
Deep Cove Software
14
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Jul 2009
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 20th Jul 2009 10:53 Edited at: 20th Jul 2009 23:42
@HowDo - Glad it's working for you now . I don't understand what you mean about .net errors though??? The encoder is written in C++ and wxWidgets. Unless you mean the startup debugger problem you were having?

Just as a refresh for everyone, the following issues have been resolved since the version that's hosted on The Game Creators:

1.0.1

1) Slow audio extraction. This is has been massively sped up.
2) No real idea of audio extraction progress. There is now feedback so you can see how it's progressing.
3) Couldn't terminate the encode whilst in the audio extraction stage. This is now handled correctly.
4) Various problems with these free codec packs. They all seem to behave differently to one another. We still recommend using uncompressed audio and video in an avi and to not use codec packs if at all possible. In our tests, extracting frames from an avi containing x264 is quite a bit slower than uncompressed.

1.0.2

1) Unable to handle mono audio streams. This is now resolved.
2) Protection lowered a bit. This should help for people who are seeing the SoftICE debugger protection message at startup.

Until The Game Creators change the hosted version, you can get 1.0.2 from:

http://www.deepcovesoftware.com/darkvideo/setup-1.0.2-beta.exe
Deep Cove Software
14
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Jul 2009
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 21st Jul 2009 12:38
Just a note that the version on the Dark Video page is now the most up to date 1.0.2 version.

We're currently looking into video capture, playing from a webcam into a texture and http streaming for the next release. We don't have a timeframe in mind at the current time though.
Van B
Moderator
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th Oct 2002
Location: Sunnyvale
Posted: 21st Jul 2009 13:22
LiT, Kaed, that's all well and good when you don't care about making money, just friends.

You are saying that you'd rather sell 1000 copies at £10 than 10 copies at £100?

What if you only sell 5 copies?
If they only sell 5 copies then that's £250, as opposed to £50. Pricings most important element is potential sales, which is also the most difficult to project, and seems to be the aspect you both are arguing with me over. This product probably wont sell 1000 copies here for quite a while, people have to eat, people have to make money from this stuff or they just disappear - unrealistic sales expectations won't put food on the table.

Quote: "
I think what Kaedroho is trying to say here is that he would like to make "some" money from his work, but his real reward is the more people using it. There is more to life than money. We get paid in lots of ways. Sometimes even with just a smile. There is no big picture really.
"


It's not Kaedroho's work we're talking about, it stems from him complaining about the price of someone elses work. The real reward is making a living, and facilitating the need to fund development. If you only want to make friends then go release your software for free, just don't expect everyone to do the same. This is not a freeware love-in it's a thread about a plugin for sale so buy it or don't buy it, but shut the hell up about the price. The big picture is what you make of it, your goals, and I imagine that DCS' goal is to make some money for his hard work - who are you to question that!


Health, Ammo, and bacon and eggs!
Diggsey
18
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 24th Apr 2006
Location: On this web page.
Posted: 21st Jul 2009 13:26
I really don't understand why people are complaining about this
The only people who have a duty to you is TGC, (assuming you own one of their products) because you are a customer, so if TGC had spent time and money making plugins instead of upgrades, then they wouldn't be treating their existing customers particularly well.

Dark Cove Software doesn't have any obligation to you until you have bought their software. You can't complain just because they have made something and are selling it, it's not as if they are forcing you to buy it.

Before this was released, you had two choices:
1) Use DBPro's inbuild video capabilities
2) Make your own plugin

Now, you have three options:
1) Use DBPro's inbuild video capabilities
2) Make your own plugin
3) Buy DarkVideo

If you can't afford it/don't want to pay for it, then you are no worse off than before!

Mobiius
Valued Member
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 27th Feb 2003
Location: The Cold North
Posted: 21st Jul 2009 14:34
Quote: "If you can't afford it/don't want to pay for it, then you are no worse off than before!"

True.

Your signature has been erased by a mod because it is way too awesome!
Lost in Thought
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 4th Feb 2004
Location: U.S.A. : Douglas, Georgia
Posted: 21st Jul 2009 22:36
I don't think kaedroho actually complained about the price as much as he just said what he would do. I don't think he said he wouldn't pay that. He just said "he thinks" it would do better to sell it cheaper.

And I am assuming I can sell 50 copies. If I only sell 5 then I'll only make $100 and I'll make another program to sell to try to get the other $900. I was planning on making a level editor and a couple of business oriented softwares later. As well as a FPS for my bro. If I need to make up the other money I'll sell them until I get it too. Since I've pretty much already bought everything and it's paid for there is no time frame pushing to get it back.

And like I said if I need this I'll pay whatever price it is then. I don't need it now. If it was half that price I would prolly buy it just because I may use it like I did all the other TGC plugins. Which is also why kaedroho is saying it may do better to be cheaper. People buy cheaper stuff just because they might one day need it even ... and higher priced stuff because they actually do "need" it.

But a little back on target I do think this plugin is handy and well put together. Great work there

Blobby 101
17
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 17th Jun 2006
Location: England, UK
Posted: 21st Jul 2009 22:47
well, definitely going to buy when it has vid capture and streaming capabilities! I mean, it looks really good as it is but when those features are added this will be SO worth the money

www..homestead.com
kaedroho
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 21st Aug 2007
Location: Oxford,UK
Posted: 21st Jul 2009 23:36
VanB. You still don't get it, I think that we should forget about it as this argument will go on for pages and pages, and its off topic. Thanks LiT for understanding my point.

tschwarz
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Feb 2005
Location: 127.0.0.1
Posted: 23rd Jul 2009 22:56
As soon as video capture is in, I will get this for sure. FPSCX10 has this feature so, it can be done. Plus with your compression it will be awesome.
Daniel TGC
Retired Moderator
17
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 19th Feb 2007
Location: TGC
Posted: 24th Jul 2009 17:19 Edited at: 24th Jul 2009 17:20
Ok enough is enough guys. The price is set, the author is happy with it. Try discussing it's benefits rather than complaining about this point all the time.

I've been using it for a few days, these are the positive features I've found.

It's compression ratio is good.
The video quality is great.
It's fast.
It's easy to use.
It can be applied in multiple ways, in 2D space, across a 3D surface.
The format is harder to rip, and impossible to play for anyone who doesn't have DarkVIDEO
It works just a well in GDK as it does DarkBASIC Professional
No need to install codecs on the users machine.
It's own custom encoder is easy as pie to use.
It's encoding speed is good, I've already encoded over 7 hours of video with it for another project.
It uses less system resources making your games faster.

All in all, it's efficient, small, 1.0.2 is perfectly stable, if you plan to use a lot of cut scenes and in game video painted to 3D surfaces. Then it's a great product.

Alfa x
17
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 1st Jul 2006
Location: Colombia
Posted: 24th Jul 2009 18:08 Edited at: 24th Jul 2009 18:08
Quote: "Ok enough is enough guys. The price is set, the author is happy with it. Try discussing it's benefits rather than complaining about this point all the time.

I've been using it for a few days, these are the positive features I've found.

It's compression ratio is good.
The video quality is great.
It's fast.
It's easy to use.
It can be applied in multiple ways, in 2D space, across a 3D surface.
The format is harder to rip, and impossible to play for anyone who doesn't have DarkVIDEO
It works just a well in GDK as it does DarkBASIC Professional
No need to install codecs on the users machine.
It's own custom encoder is easy as pie to use.
It's encoding speed is good, I've already encoded over 7 hours of video with it for another project.
It uses less system resources making your games faster.

All in all, it's efficient, small, 1.0.2 is perfectly stable, if you plan to use a lot of cut scenes and in game video painted to 3D surfaces. Then it's a great product."


If you add video recording to this it will be awesome. Good video recording is a feature all people in this forum has been searching.
With such good video compression just imagine how many people will upload videos of TGC games
KISTech
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th Feb 2008
Location: Aloha, Oregon
Posted: 24th Jul 2009 20:51
Quote: "With such good video compression just imagine how many people will upload videos of TGC games "


Except that it would only be playable inside a DarkBASIC or DarkGDK program that uses DarkVideo. It's a proprietary codec/compression system that wont play in Media Player, it's meant for your in game videos and cut-scenes.

I personally haven't got a use for it yet. My project that will need it is a little ways off. When it's ready though, I'll be picking this up.

Alfa x
17
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 1st Jul 2006
Location: Colombia
Posted: 25th Jul 2009 00:03
Quote: "Except that it would only be playable inside a DarkBASIC or DarkGDK program that uses DarkVideo. It's a proprietary codec/compression system that wont play in Media Player, it's meant for your in game videos and cut-scenes."
Deep Cove Software
14
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Jul 2009
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 25th Jul 2009 11:45
Just a note that the video capture will save as an AVI. We could save as a DVF but then it'd only be of use in Dark Video, as mentioned by KISTech. If you needed it as a DVF, you can always use the Encoder to convert it.

@Daniel TGC - Thank you for your endorsement of Dark Video. We're glad it's pulling its weight for you.

We just wanted to say too, that you're not just getting a plugin with Dark Video. You're getting the Encoder too. It's a complete package, meant to speed up the process of getting fast movies into your games.

Not only will the next release feature video capture to AVI, but also, http streaming and a faster Encoder. We've found ways to extract the frames even faster for some video types so we're looking forward to releasing Dark Video 1.1 into the wild!

There's no timeframe for this yet though as we're working on other stuff too.
HowDo
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 28th Nov 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 25th Jul 2009 12:28 Edited at: 25th Jul 2009 12:29
Just like to add.

It converted HD video with no problems first time compared with other video packages.

polite request
would it be possible in the next release to have these commands control do the following in darkbasic.

paused
forward
backward
fast forward
fast backward

If not that's Ok.

Dark Physics makes any hot drink go cold.
Deep Cove Software
14
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Jul 2009
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 25th Jul 2009 13:26 Edited at: 25th Jul 2009 13:39
@HowDo - We'll definitely try and get some or all of those commands in for the next release. Off the top of my head, I'd say fast forward and fast backward would be quite difficult to implement. Also, great to hear your HD video is working fine . There is a limit on the frame size though, in the horizontal anyway, and that's 2048 wide. This restriction is to do with us being able to eke out more optimisation in the decoder core.

Edit:

We meant to say too, there's been requests for encrypting the movie, getting the framerate and getting the length of the movie in frames. These three things will also be going into 1.1.
Van B
Moderator
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th Oct 2002
Location: Sunnyvale
Posted: 25th Jul 2009 15:02 Edited at: 25th Jul 2009 15:07
AVI recording should be perfect, it loads into practically every editing system. One thing that would make it very useful for me is some good control over recording AVI's, like the ability to record frame by frame. Also resolution can be a pain to get right, so if we could render at whatever resolution we like then that would be ideal.

Thing is, FRAPS affects frame rate and there's no good way to take control, if we can call a command to add a frame then we can keep the video frame rate real. If I record a fraps video, it's never at the same speed as what I'm recording - I can live without sound when recording frame by frame. Making videos for youtube with FRAPS just seems to detract from quality, taking high res footage and converting that should give nicer results, and at the frame rate we want would be great.

For example, having a looping video on the menu screen, then showing a demo when there's no activity for a certain time. The sound could be replaced with a music track and it would make for a pretty cool front end. This is one use I can see for it that would make it worthwhile purchase for me personally, especially as it will remove the need to buy FRAPS. Furnish it with as many options as you can and you'll be surprised at what people here come up with. DBPro is so easy to get animated characters up and running that it might just attract folk from the machima scene.


Health, Ammo, and bacon and eggs!
Phjon
18
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 28th Nov 2005
Location:
Posted: 25th Jul 2009 15:33 Edited at: 25th Jul 2009 15:34
Van B,

Quote: "DBPro is so easy to get animated characters up and running that it might just attract folk from the machima scene."


It would be very interesting to see what such people could come with using DBPro. Along with things like Dark Voices, Enhanced Animations and now Dark Video, I think that there is more potential for such work to be produced using DBPro than ever. With access to shaders and with a good storyline, DBPro-based films could really wipe the floor with other films created using other machinima-orientated software.

I have in the past done some machinima work using DBPro. It wasn't too bad at all, except for the hand-made character models, which weren't so good. I suspect others could do better than me at this time.

I'm interested to see where this all leads to. Could we see a machinima community spin-off?
Daniel TGC
Retired Moderator
17
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 19th Feb 2007
Location: TGC
Posted: 25th Jul 2009 15:37 Edited at: 25th Jul 2009 15:40
Video encryption would be a massive boon to my project.

Fast forward, and rewind would be useful. But perhaps a command to set the playback frame rate of a movie would be more logical. Something like:

darkvideo set play speed vidID, framerate

If you could simply set the framerate between -500 to +500 it would do the same job.

But as this isn't a standard codec, and I have no idea how it stores and accesses it's frames. Or even if it stores data as frames at all.

The video streaming would be ideal for anyone looking to make internet based games, whether mmo, or just something with interactive online content. I'm sure many users will love that!

The only commands I'd request for myself would be:

Integer = darkvideo get total frames()
Integer = darkvideo current frame playing()
darkvideo play from frame vidID, frame number

darkvideo get total frames() would simply return the total number of frames in a loaded movie. I've seen that the encoder counts the number of frames while it's writing so hopefully that's not too hard.

darkvideo current frame playing() would return the number of the frame that is currently playing.

darkvideo play from frame would simply set the video a position to play back from.

These commands would allow me to place a slider bar under my video's so users can jump to different sections.

They are not demands however, I know it's designed to be a cutscene plugin and encoder package, and you're getting loads of these requests!

Van B
Moderator
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th Oct 2002
Location: Sunnyvale
Posted: 25th Jul 2009 15:54
Well it's certainly geared up for it these days Phjon, it's something I've considered in the past, something like 'The Movies' but with actual control over what goes on. With the TGC Store having all sorts of characters and media, I think it's fairly likely that we'll see machima projects crop up. Cut scenes need to look like gameplay footage, and be recorded directly from the game, and to facilitate this people need to control characters and camera angles etc. There's definately the market for a machima movie editor for DBPro now, for cut-scenes, intro movies, machima kinda sticks right in there too.

I wonder if FPSC is modular enough to support DarkVideo... those guys would kill for a system that easily allows cut-scenes.


Health, Ammo, and bacon and eggs!
Deep Cove Software
14
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Jul 2009
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 25th Jul 2009 16:47
Thanks everyone for your thoughts and feedback! Very helpful indeed.

I had to look up what machima was as I've never heard of it before. I understand now though. Very cool.

@Daniel TGC - Encryption will definitely be in there for 1.1. We're deciding how to do it but we'll probably do simple xor encryption or have it so you specify some key in the Encoder. The Encoder will generate a cipher from this key and then you'd have to pass this same key through to the DarkBASIC/DarkGDK commands. We've already added the get total frames and get current frame commands but play from frame will take longer.

@VanB - For 1.1, we're wondering whether to bother with sound capture. We would've thought that most people will just require the video capture. We could do it frame by frame like you mentioned. Could you elaborate just a touch more on what you'd expect with frame by frame though? Just so we're on the same wavelength with this stuff. The way we're thinking at the moment is to capture the front-buffer at a user specified framerate. Again, we're undecided at the moment. Without experimentation, I doubt we'll be able to capture at 60fps with AVI but it's probably possible to capture at that speed with the Dark Video Encoder. The resolution point is a good one. As mentioned above, there's currently a limit on the frame width, that's 2048. I guess not many people are using above 1920 x 1200 at the moment though. Currently, we'll be encoding the resolution the app is at. Whilst we can offer user specified resolutions (different to what that app is running at), it'd introduce a scale step that would probably hammer the capture performance. Just better to capture at something like 1024x768.

We're wondering whether it might be useful to have a merge wav with avi video in the Encoder? Just a thought. In all reality, we have more than enough stuff requested for a 1.1 release.

As mentioned above though, there's no timeframe for any of this.
Alfa x
17
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 1st Jul 2006
Location: Colombia
Posted: 25th Jul 2009 16:56 Edited at: 25th Jul 2009 16:57
I'm happy to see how this community improves every day.
This request to improve darkvideo are the result of a well formed community and will come in welfare to all.
Van B
Moderator
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th Oct 2002
Location: Sunnyvale
Posted: 25th Jul 2009 17:03
Ideally what I'd like to do is setup a video output, like call a command and specify the filename, resolution, and frame rate. Then have a direct record that automatically records the avi, but what would be cool is to have a single frame record, like we could render the scene, with extra detail and maybe some post processing, then record that single frame, then we'd do that in sub-realtime for whatever sequence we wanted. It may also be usefull to be able to record audio seperately, I would run the scene and record the video, then run it again and record the sound, without updating the screen. So the video would be at the perfect speed with as much extras as we could do to it (anti-aliasing for instance), and the audio track could be added right onto it at the perfect speed. It's always a pain to record video and sound while playing a game at full speed, even if we have to keep a frame by frame timeline of sound effects then repeat it, it's still worth it IMO, it gives us control and features that simply can't be easily got by other means.


Health, Ammo, and bacon and eggs!
gamerboots
15
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th Dec 2008
Location: USA
Posted: 25th Jul 2009 18:16
We're also now seriously considering adding video capture to the next release of Dark Video as this was a really cool idea by whoever mentioned it
that would make it worth $55

Regards
Emperor Gamerboots~
kaedroho
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 21st Aug 2007
Location: Oxford,UK
Posted: 26th Jul 2009 15:38
I would buy it if you add that

KISTech
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th Feb 2008
Location: Aloha, Oregon
Posted: 27th Jul 2009 00:09
Output to AVI? Sweeeeeeet...

Deep Cove Software
14
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Jul 2009
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 27th Jul 2009 13:57 Edited at: 27th Jul 2009 13:58
@gamer boots, kaedroho, KISTech et al - It seems most people are desperate for video capture to AVI and so, this is something we really want to get into Dark Video 1.1.

Just a note that our initial experiments with video capture have shown that we're able to intercept IDirect3DDevice9:: Present and also, the swap chain stuff so this is looking like it's really possible at the moment.

Still no timeframe yet though .

(Edit: :p made an emoticon show)
Mobiius
Valued Member
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 27th Feb 2003
Location: The Cold North
Posted: 27th Jul 2009 14:14
As long as I can record in game activity at a resolution I specify I'll be a very happy guy! this functionality is essential to my game.

Your signature has been erased by a mod because it is way too awesome!
gamerboots
15
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th Dec 2008
Location: USA
Posted: 27th Jul 2009 22:11
Quote: "Still no timeframe yet though "

please continue to keep us all updated on your progress as I am sure that plenty will be watching this thread closely

Regards
Emperor Gamerboots~
trogdor
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 15th Apr 2003
Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
Posted: 29th Jul 2009 23:11
Maybe I missed it, but how do you detect end of video?
so when a cut scene is over I'll know to move on with the game.
thanks.

Last night I lay in bed looking up at the stars in the sky and I thought to myself, where the heck is the ceiling.
BatVink
Moderator
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 4th Apr 2003
Location: Gods own County, UK
Posted: 29th Jul 2009 23:53
I ran some tests so I could do a write-up for the newlsetter. You'll see the simple video on a spinning cube in a couple of days, but what I will say now is...damn, it's efficient! I couldn't spot the frame rate change when starting the video.

Right...now to add a DarkCLOUDS cube map to the video cube

gamerboots
15
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th Dec 2008
Location: USA
Posted: 30th Jul 2009 01:26
Quote: "but how do you detect end of video?"

thats a good question. I know that with dbp you would use
animation playing() but not sure about what you would use for darkvideo.

Regards
Gamerboots~
Deep Cove Software
14
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Jul 2009
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 30th Jul 2009 10:41
@trogdor - You're right in that there's currently no way to detect whether a video has finished playing. This is an oversight on our part. We're hoping to release a beta of 1.1 within the next 2-3 weeks and we'll make sure this contains a new command called 'darkvideo is movie playing' or something along those lines.
Mobiius
Valued Member
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 27th Feb 2003
Location: The Cold North
Posted: 30th Jul 2009 13:13
Quote: "This is an oversight on our part."

D'Oh! lol

Your signature has been erased by a mod because it is way too awesome!
gamerboots
15
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th Dec 2008
Location: USA
Posted: 30th Jul 2009 15:30
according to bats testing, the plug-in is awsome, so I'm gonna wait for the updates (patiently ofcourse)

Regards
Gamerboots~
Deep Cove Software
14
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Jul 2009
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 31st Jul 2009 21:57 Edited at: 3rd Aug 2009 10:18
We've posted a new beta release at: http://www.deepcovesoftware.com/darkvideo/darkvideo_31_07_09.rar. First off, this DOES NOT have video capture in it. There's a lot of new code in there regarding video capture (hence the size of the dll growing) but most of it is turned off for the time being as it's not ready and needs lots of testing. We wanted to release a version so that you've all got a way to tell if the movie has stopped playing as not having that is a serious oversight on our part.

Ok, please remember that this is all still in flux so you may find errors. This is not meant to be a final release. if you do find errors, just let us know!

New commands added:

DARKVIDEO IS MOVIE LOOPING( movieId ) - returns '0' if the movie doesn't loop or '1' for if it does.

DARKVIDEO IS MOVIE FINISHED( movieId ) - returns '0' if the movie hasn't reached the end or '1' if it has. Note: currently, there's no way to rewind the movie. That's for 1.1.

DARKVIDEO GET MOVIE CURRENT FRAME( movieId ) - returns the current displayed frame (likely different to the current buffered frame which you're probably not interested in).

DARKVIDEO GET MOVIE FRAMERATE( movieId ) - returns the framerate of the movie.

DARKVIDEO GET MOVIE NUMBER OF FRAMES( movieId ) - returns the total number of frames in the movie.

These commands will return '0' if a movie can't be matched internally to movieId.

The Dark GDK functions are called (they have the same returns and params as the DBPro functions because they're the one and the same):

int DarkVideoIsLooping( int movieId );
int DarkVideoIsFinished( int movieId );
int DarkVideoGetCurrentFrame( int movieId );
int DarkVideoGetFrameRate( int movieId );
int DarkVideoGetNumberOfFrames( int movieId );

We're trying to find the time to get the video capture done but we had other projects to work on this week. Hopefully, we'll be able to get a big chunk done next week.

Lastly, the rar contains the latest headers, libs and dll for DBPro and Dark GDK.

Thanks!
BatVink
Moderator
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 4th Apr 2003
Location: Gods own County, UK
Posted: 1st Aug 2009 00:30
Looks like it's becoming more usable very quickly.

DARKVIDEO SET MOVIE CURRENT FRAME() would be even more useful

Mnemonix
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 2nd Dec 2002
Location: Skaro
Posted: 1st Aug 2009 01:09
When discussing price of software I always work it like this.
I figure out that I would charge myself a cheap $5 an hour and ask myself the question "Would I be able to create equivalent software for the same price?" i.e. in this case over the space of 10 hours. If the answer is no then the software is probably good value for money.

Mnemonix
BatVink
Moderator
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 4th Apr 2003
Location: Gods own County, UK
Posted: 1st Aug 2009 03:36
Mnem, did you read my newsletter editorial before it was published?

trogdor
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 15th Apr 2003
Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
Posted: 1st Aug 2009 04:38
Quote: "you've all got a way to tell if the movie has stopped playing"

excellent, I just placed my order

Last night I lay in bed looking up at the stars in the sky and I thought to myself, where the heck is the ceiling.
Deep Cove Software
14
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Jul 2009
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 1st Aug 2009 12:00
@BatVink - that's a great command suggestion although it's not as trivial as it sounds internally. This will leverage new upcoming rewind/forwarding capability.

@trogdor - the new command is really beta but it should be ok until the official 1.1 release is out.
Mnemonix
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 2nd Dec 2002
Location: Skaro
Posted: 1st Aug 2009 15:26
Which newsletter editorial!?

Mnemonix
Todd Riggins
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 29th Oct 2004
Location: Texas, USA
Posted: 3rd Aug 2009 04:43
Just curious, is there any possible plans at least to capture sound with the video down the road?

Deep Cove Software
14
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Jul 2009
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 3rd Aug 2009 10:06
@Todd Riggins - Yeah, the official 1.1 release will feature capture of video and sound. The first beta of the capture will probably be video only to start with though.
Todd Riggins
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 29th Oct 2004
Location: Texas, USA
Posted: 3rd Aug 2009 10:15
Sweet! THAT is awsome!

Daniel TGC
Retired Moderator
17
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 19th Feb 2007
Location: TGC
Posted: 5th Aug 2009 05:55
These new features are very welcome, thank you.

Login to post a reply

Server time is: 2024-05-26 15:14:16
Your offset time is: 2024-05-26 15:14:16