Mp4 videos just spontaneously started working, anyone know what's happened?

[pavlovtiger]

For a long time back when I started this hobby, I couldn't understand why mp4 videos weren't showing for me inside Hyperspin, until I learnt that my particular Intel chipset does not play nice with Hyperspin on this particular issue and that I just have to work with flv, and so it was. Until last night, that is. I had just started on the Super Nintendo section and noticed that the 2020 Super Baseball video played on my fresh SNES wheel. I was understandably surprised, but then I grabbed the big pack of SNES video snaps off Emumovies FTP, and they all work in mp4, as does the mp4 I made to add a Japanese game to my wheel. I haven't tried any other systems, but seriously, what happened?

All I can think of that I did was to install a particular Microsoft runtime software that my PSP emulator was complaining about, to make that work, but is it possible it somehow kicked Hyperspin into playing nice with mp4 on my system? It works all across SNES, maybe that's the only thing it works with? Has anyone else experienced this, or have some input? It's nice, the mp4s look great for SNES, I hope it continues. I'm just really curious.

Cheers.

[pavlovtiger]

I also now have an -irritating- problem with mp4 video clips I encode myself. Some games, like Akumajou Dracula XX, don't have an easily locatable clip for the wheel so I record my own and edit/encode to mp4, fine, easy. Lately though, my editing software refuses to see the video tracks past 6 seconds or so, so it ends up just being audio for the rest. I get around this by importing them as WMV instead, edit, then re-encode to mp4. This plays perfectly fine in Windows, but the moment I bring it to Hyperspin I get the same rubbish.. audio but no video. This was -not- happening early yesterday, as I made a clip for a Japanese Mickey Mouse game and the wheel showed it just fine, in mp4. There must be codec issues I don't understand here. If I stick with flv, the videos work fine, whether I record them myself or just encode from archival clips. I like mp4, it looks nicer, but not if I can't see the videos in the few cases where I record them on my own.

Again, since I have that Intel HD4000 chipset, I'm amazed -any- mp4 works at all, and was resigned to believing it was never going to. That's why this irks me so.

[zerojay]

...install a particular Microsoft runtime software...

If you could be a lot more specific, I'm sure there's a lot of people on this forum that would be very happy.

[Monyet]

I'm skeptical that it will work for me because I don't want to get my hopes up, but yes please, give us the details of what you installed because that would make me a very happy chappy right about now.

Edit: Was it the VC 2013 x86/64 bit runitimes required for pcsspp? Because if so, that is not the answer as I have those runtimes installed and no luck.

[pavlovtiger]

Yes, in fact it was the VC 2013 x64 12.0.21005 Redistributable runtime to make PPSSPP work. No idea why certain mp4 videos work and the rest don't, but I think I'm just going to re-resign to the flv thing apart from whatever weird, unexplained cases like this SNES stuff. Natch.

[Monyet]

Well damn. Can you think of anything else that you had done recently? Like installed anything else at all or updated any 3rd party apps like flash or Java etc?

You said "fresh snes wheel", are you saying you deleted it and set it up from scratch again?

When your video editing program started seeing your clips at 6 seconds long is that when they started to play in HS, what editing software do you use?

Do you encode in your editing program or use a standalone transcoder?

What OS are you running and (if windows) is windows update set to update by itself?

[pavlovtiger]

Let's see. 'Fresh SNES Wheel' means that I only just started doing anything at all with my SNES setup, until then I hadn't touched it whatsoever and I only had the default stuff you get when you download Hyperspin and Hyperlaunch...so, the 2020 Super Baseball mp4 and box art png, and I think the default and system themes for SNES come with the software too.

I use Bandicam for recording emulator footage, Format Factory to encode from avi to mp4 (so Sony Vegas will use the video for editing,) then Vegas encodes to avi, then it's back to mp4 in Format Factory. Probably not as efficient as it could be, but I did it because it works. Well. It works to make flvs that play just fine, and for a little while mp4s that worked too. The flv still works a treat.

As for system changes, the biggest one was that I updated my K-Lite Codec Pack from 7-point-something up to the latest, 10-point-something. I don't remember if I noticed that SNES mp4 worked before or after doing this. I had problems with ffdshow unrelated to Hyperspin, so I refreshed my install of that too. I'm unsure if any of this affected me as that "HD4000=no mp4 for you" law is still king as far as I'm aware. ...apart from SNES, apparently.

I'm on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit.

[Monyet]

So only snes mp4's play and all other videos still show the same garbled video? I wonder if the SNES has been re-encoded by Circo recently.... Have you tried grabbing any other mp4 packs from emumovies? Say something small like Neo Geo pocket Colour, which should only have 40 videos. Give that a go and see if it works.

Are you a supporting member of emumovies - because if not then you would have got the 240p pack right?

[pavlovtiger]

Okay, so I popped on Emumovies' ftp (yes, I'm a supporting member over there) and grabbed all the 480p N64 mp4 videos. They work, as does the one that was in the video folder already, the Goldeneye 007 one. I'm going to assume this applies across the board for the systems I have not touched yet, things like Master System, 32X, and Dreamcast. I never noticed this before as by the time I was aware of the HD4000 issue, I was well into working on my Hyperspin setup as a hobby.

I'm going to grab a piece of software called Gspot later, after sleep and outside business is done tomorrow, it's meant to give detailed information about video files. I'm hoping my untrained eye can compare the Emumovies mp4s that work and the ones I'm encoding which did work and which now don't work and perhaps I can narrow this down. I don't expect any revelations, but it might assuage my curiosity.

[Monyet]

A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.... Good Luck!

Edit: Just updated Klite from 7 to 10 mega pack, using advanced defaults like LAV, then installed ffdshow using normal settings, still no luck. Do you recall if you changed any settings when you installed these packs at your end?

If you can post a side by side screen shot of the info comparing two files, I'll have a look too.

[pavlovtiger]

Right, so. Here's the thing: the mp4 videos that work on the Hyperspin wheel are encoded as H.264 MPEG-4 AVC. GSpot reported this for the dozen or so videos I pointed it to from my SNES media folder, and when I went and did a test recording and encoding of my own video, this time telling Sony Vegas to just make me an mp4 of this exact sort, lo and behold my mp4s work in Hyperspin again. They also work for editing in Sony Vegas, a function which I previously lost for whatever reason. Following is the two GSpot screen shots I took, the first showing the Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts mp4 from Hyperbase, the second showing the untitled mp4 I made recording footage from my emulator of the same game, and rendered in Sony Vegas. Ignore the obnoxious file size, it was just for educational purposes. >.>

So, apparently either the K-Lite codec update sorted me out with H.264 MPEG-4 AVC or something else has happened, and hopefully you can make this work for you somehow as well, all I've done is update K-Lite and install an external FDDShow, which I'm not even sure I needed or not. And the aforementioned VC Redist runtime, but we've established that's immaterial.

[bribbon]

another powerful video tool is handbrake. modern, smart and with profiles to save/load. it is also possible to work with batch jobs.

I'm using that tool to recoding my TV recordings to mp4.

Handbrake

[pavlovtiger]

I like Handbrake for encoding shows and movies with subtitles from mkv to mp4 whilst actually keeping the subtitles. It's the only software I have tried that does it with no problems.

[Monyet]

So it sounds like there could be some setting in klite that is making it work where they didn't have it before, I'm going through different options. nothing so far but thanks for the insight.

[pavlovtiger]

Do your 'stock' mp4 wheel videos work, like when you download from emumovies/hyperspin ftp? I'm far from the definitive expert on this, I'm still baffled as to why any mp4 works for me at all given my video chipset.

[Monyet]

No, which is why I am also following it up, you are the only one who has had mp4s working on the intel chipset so if that's true I want to investigate all possible options. Do you remember any settings that you changed or which which specific pack of K-lite did you get? ie, basic, mega, etc... did you change any decoder from the default ones set when you installed? Which profile did you choose when installing the pack? Also, which intel driver are you running? The latest one from early April? Edit: I Mean March. This one -> 15.​33.​18.​64.​3496

Edit 2: Just a thought here, I could be on to something, the ffdshow that you got, was it this one? http://sourceforge.net/projects/qsdecoder/

I'm probably just grasping at straws, I'll try it when I get home.

[pavlovtiger]

I have actually -never- updated the Intel HD4000 driver, I have an Nvidia GTX 675m video card in this laptop which is much better for emulators like Wii and PS2/PSP so I have generally ignored the HD4000 whenever possible. As for the FFDshow I updated with, I -think- I got it from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow/ The K-Lite was 1045 Mega and I installed it completely default, changing nothing.

[Monyet]

oooohkay, I assumed your system had no discrete chip in it. Now that you tell me it's got a nvidia chip in it, I would assume originally your onboard graphics was doing the job of decoding and now your nvidia chip is doing it which of course has no issue playing mp4s in HS. So that's the most likely reason. Oh well, I guess we could still bank on Intel fixing it....unlikely, but I'll stay optimistic about it.