Make GZDoom play a production video when started? (MP4 file)

[Graaicko]

Hello. I was wondering if it would be possible to make a GZDoom mod play a MP4 video when my pk3 is launched. Its a production video. Would make it feel cinematic in a way. Would it also be possible to make it when any button or mouse click is pressed it skips it?

[wildweasel]

Not at present. This had come up several times in the past, but has never been completely implemented due to a lack of interest by some of GZDoom's maintainers, and active opposition by others.

[Rachael]

and active opposition by others.

And opposition from me is quite fierce. I doubt I could actually stop the feature from being implemented if Graf really wanted it (not speaking for him, but he doesn't seem to be interested in it), but I would loudly voice my opinion against having it all the same.

[Enjay]

There was something like it sort-of in ZDoom many years ago but it was eventually taken out for the reasons alluded to in this thread (and the fact that it basically never worked properly anyway).

I think it's highly unlikely ever to appear as a feature (and I also agree that it's not a good feature to have - it just comes with too many problems). However, I did suggest a video-like feature a while back that already exists in a fork of GZDoom. There doesn't seem to be much interest there either but presumably the code already exists - but how good/portable it is, I have no idea.

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=63160

[Nash]

I have no strong feelings about the feature (I don't really care - in fact, in almost all commercial games I play, the first thing I do is look for a -nointro switch ;)) but I can somewhat see why videos would be better than, say, playing an overly-long ANIMDEF + audio, or fully scripting some animation in ACS... and that has to do with audio synchronization.

Depending on the user's hardware, it seems almost impossible to get a fully 1:1 sync between audio and visuals with the scripting tools in ZDoom. On really bad hardware, there is even noticable stuttering as the audio file is loaded into memory when played for the first time. This will create a disconnect between the audio and visuals, they'll no longer be in sync.

As has been discussed between me and dpJudas quite recently, there seems to be some jitter in ZDoom, and recent testing for a certain smooth weapons mod seems to confirm this jitter.

A pre-rendered video would at least ensure the picture and audio are completely in-sync. That's about the only benefit of having video player support in ZDoom I can think of.

Again, I'm not for or against. This feature is irrelevant to my modding needs. :P

[StroggVorbis]

@Nash

I think one of the reasons for the above mentioned problem is Doom's 35Hz tic rate. Since there are no half tics unlike ECWolf, you can't have something play exactly half a second (17.5 tics), either 17 or 18. The closest you could go without remainder would be 7 tics or 1/5th of a second. If the rate was just one tic higher, you could have half and quarter seconds.

[Nash]

Sometimes I'd get mini-stutter as the audio file is loaded into memory to be played for the first time, so there's also that. That is enough to desynchronize what you see on-screen VS what you hear.

[22alpha22]

I was once tried experimenting with videos through single frames animated through ANIMDEFS. I could get it looking reasonably good and the audio sync wasn't terribly hard but just a 30 second video added 30 megs to my project's size which for a single 30 sec video was completely unacceptable. Converted into the bink format, I could reduce the filesize to 6 megs or less audio included. I considered learning C or a variant so I could add bink video playback to my own build of GZDoom, but when I considered licensing costs for distributing bink, that plan kinda went kaput.

[Enjay]

when I considered licensing costs for distributing bink, that plan kinda went kaput.

You're touching on one of the other main obstacles to introducing video playback there too: which codecs?, must be license compatible, work on all platforms...

[Rachael]

You're touching on one of the other main obstacles to introducing video playback there too: which codecs?, must be license compatible, work on all platforms...

This problem is even worse than that. There's about 200 million different codecs, and once you introduce one, someone will want their favourite codec introduced for "convenience purposes"... then someone else will see that codec was included, so they'll want their convenient codec... 1 becomes 2... 2 becomes 10... 10 becomes 100... 100 quickly becomes 500... next thing you know GZDoom's distribution size is 200 megs. All for what? A feature that some people (like me) absolutely despise when they see it in other games anyhow? One that will see very little use no matter what?

Totally not worth it. Slippery slope problem is real here. Fuck dat shit - simple as that.

Also, distribution bloat of GZDoom due to a pointless feature like this is a great way to ensure that the archive gets removed, too. No fucking way I am putting that crap on the server with as limited space as it has.

[Chris]

To clarify, the most typically used decoder libs are from FFmpeg (libavcodec, libavformat, etc), which handle almost any audio and video format under the sun. As of this writing, the total size for all its shared libs is about 25 to 30MB (which could be shrunk down some if you static link and/or disable the really obscure formats). Currently, GZDoom's download size is roughly 10MB, so even in a really good case, you can expect that to be doubled.

On top of GZDoom itself, mods that make use of video can expect to see a large explosion in size. ~3 minutes of 720p 30fps webm (VP9) video is at least 17MB (more if you want cleaner quality than this file I have on hand). ~2 minutes of 1080p 30fps mp4 is about 53MB. Just for the video file. For comparison, KDiZD 1.2 is about 24MB, so a mega-mod like that would easily get doubled for a relatively small amount of video. A smaller-in-scope mod would be even worse.

I do recall there being a bit more discussion regarding a relatively simple format (ROQ or something?) intended for really short clips that could be added with little code bloat. I'm not sure where that discussion ended up. But I remember the general consensus being that you really should try to script any such sequence in real-time (using moving cameras, actor pawns, sound triggers, etc, like TITLEMAPs are usually done) instead of using prerendered video. That's not only much smaller in size, it also doesn't get locked to a fixed frame rate or screen size, and the visual and audio fidelity better matches what the player gets in-game.

[Rachael]

On top of GZDoom itself, mods that make use of video can expect to see a large explosion in size. ~3 minutes of 720p 30fps webm (VP9) video is at least 17MB (more if you want cleaner quality than this file I have on hand). ~2 minutes of 1080p 30fps mp4 is about 53MB. Just for the video file. For comparison, KDiZD 1.2 is about 24MB, so a mega-mod like that would easily get doubled for a relatively small amount of video. A smaller-in-scope mod would be even worse.

This is the real deal killer, right here. The problems I listed above were miniscule compared to this.

I don't want to download a 200 mb wad that turns out to be a long ass video with a short barely interesting map and then another long ass video after that.

It's bad enough that digital waveform music (ie mp3/ogg) takes as much space as it does - but the trade-off is you get to enjoy it while your hands are on the keyboard and actually doing something...

If I wanted to watch videos on my computer, there's Youtube and Netflix for that. (And - if you're clever - you'll make good use of Youtube to promote your mod and show those pre-rendered storylines!)

[Graf Zahl]

And let's better not consider the patent minefield in that area...

Regarding file size, I could imagine that /idgames would implement a rule saying "no videos" to keep file sizes down to something reasonable.

[Apeirogon]

Most of a game which avoid/dont want/etc using videos, using pictures with applied to it scale/roll/shader/etc. for replacing it.
Max payne for example use comics like "video" screens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmvaWRXj8ns

Or bunch of pictures which are juggles before player screen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpqtoLyNG-E
Not sure about this one...

[Enjay]

Heh, I wonder how many people even realise that Strife has it's own little intro video?

The full version of Chex Quest has quite a lengthy intro, and an outro IIRC.

Not saying these should be supported, just remembering they exist.