VIDEOS!

[CoreyBlaze]

Hi everyone.

I've been working on a simfile pack for a while and I'm planning to add videos to some of the songs; however, I'd like to know what software do you use to convert videos to the most appropriated stepmania settings. Also, how people add IIDX videos to their simfiles? The size of IIDX vids is rather unconventional, do stepmania automatically "stretches" them to fit the screen or what? I have Sony Vegas 8.0 but I don't really like that program, it's hard to use and overall I don't like it .

[LK4D4]

I have been referred to "VirtualDub" (not to be confused with "VirtualDubMod") and it works very well. You may have trouble converting into the program, so... I'll refer to this link as typing all this is rather long.

[Juub005]

I would recommend VirtualDubMPEG2 over VirtualDub because it can open more file formats. It's downloadable here. If you need help using it just ask me. By the way I have no idea what people do about IIDX videos so that part I can't help you on. Xythar, among others, should be able to

[CoreyBlaze]

Ok, I tried both Virtual Dub and Virtual Dub MPEG2 versions, and none did anything when I tried to upload a few videos I've ripped from youtube (the program will not even "see" the videos when I'm browsing through my files to open a video). I'm running windows vista if that means something. Do you recommend any codec pack or something else I should install before working with Virtual Dub? Thanks for the help guys.

[jammitch!]

It helps to know what format the videos are in now. Are the YouTube videos FLV files? I've never worked with those so I don't know what would work.

If you have something more conventional - AVI, WMV, ASX, OGM, RM, MKV, perhaps - try these:

AVIDemux is another program somewhat similar to VirtualDub, but it can handle more non-AVI formats in my experience.

I've also had good luck with SUPER. The interface is a bit unwieldy, and it doesn't cut, just converts, but you can get it to take almost anything if you try hard enough.

[CoreyBlaze]

My bad, I have .avi and .mp4 videos. I'll try those other programs and see if that works.

[CoreyBlaze]

Ok, jammitch's program seem to work pretty fine so far. However, I can't figure out how to resize the video and saving the the finished file to use it in stepmania.

[BLueSS]

Are you using SUPER? You can resize it easily in that program...

[CoreyBlaze]

Wow, that SUPER program DOES makes resizing quite easy. The only problem I have left is that after realizing that my video and song don't sync in Stepmania, I proceeded to cut a bit of the beginning of the video (in avidemux) to make everything on sync; however, the file that avidemux outputs won't play in stepmania. Any ideas?

You're all being incredibly helpful!

[will-i-am]

Try Virtual Dub MPEG2 again? I don't know why it wouldn't read the file this time, since I'm assuming it's in proper .avi format with a 4:3 or other recognizable ratio now.

[Juub005]

Wow, that SUPER program DOES makes resizing quite easy. The only problem I have left is that after realizing that my video and song don't sync in Stepmania, I proceeded to cut a bit of the beginning of the video (in avidemux) to make everything on sync; however, the file that avidemux outputs won't play in stepmania. Any ideas?

You're all being incredibly helpful!

Recutting the video isn't necessary for this problem. Open up Stepmania, and add the video at the beat where it's supposed to come in. Then, with stepmania open in windowed mode, open up the .sm file and adjust this part of it until everything matches up:

#BGCHANGES:-1.067=video.avi=1.000=0=0=0

I'm pretty sure the units of the number I bolded are quarter beat of the song, with the start of measure 1 being beat 0.000 (so the start of measure 2 will be beat 4, measure 3 starts at beat 8 etc.). Hence, the video I have here starts at the quarter beat just before measure 1 (note that my value here is negative; the negative sign isn't bolding very well), except a little bit before that to adjust for an offset on the video. That little adjustment is basically what you need to do.

Now, if the cut of the video were imprecise in that the video started going off halfway through the file, that's when you'd need to do the cut over. As for VirtualDubMPEG2 not working, well, that happened with the last video I cut, but that was only on my desktop computer. When I installed the program on my laptop it read the video just fine. So unfortunately I don't really know why it didn't work

[CoreyBlaze]

THAT'S EXACTLY what I was looking for Juub005, I knew there had to be a way to play around with the video's "gap", but I had no idea where to start =/.

I finally managed to get my video to play correctly along with my simfile, THANKS A LOT EVERYONE I LOVE YOU ALL.

[BLueSS]

That's awesome, CoreyBlaze. With more practice with the tools, it'll get a lot easier and quicker and then you might even feel like your files *need* videos...

or maybe that's just me.