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dgvoodoo2 Indeo support

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First post, by DCeric

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Was messing around with Panzer Dragoon for PC. I have been messing around like all hell to get this game to work with the indeo 4.1 avi files. I got the game to run fine with out dgvoodoo2 with compatibility windows 98/windows me. But the reason why I am asking for this is cause it would be great to get this game running in a 1920x1080 res with dgvoodoo2 with Indeo support. Of course i'm running Windows 10 x64 1809 and have compatible hardware. Dgvoodoo2 runs fine just no videos.

Reply 3 of 28, by DCeric

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Yeah I don't know if its an issue with dgvoodoo2. I just tested Sega GT it runs fine using dgvoodoo2 at 1920x0180 with windows 98/windows me compatibility. It could be something in the code of the game or an issue with the 4.1 Indeo Codec.

Reply 4 of 28, by xcomcmdr

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Hello 😀

Panzer Dragoon uses Intel Indeo v4. It uses the Video For Windows framework to find a suitable decoder. It doesn't find one (which resylts in a black screen) since it isn"t shipped with Windows since Windows XP/2000.

There isn't any suitable distribution on the Web of it... At least to my knowledge. And I searched for months.

On top of that, it uses GDI to display them. Which results in a black screen when dgVoodoo2 is used.

Your best bet in order to see them on a modern Windows :
- re-compress them with the CniePak format (with ffmpeg for example). The CinePak VFW codec is still available on any Windows installation.
- Disable dgVoodoo2.

Also, if you enable video cutscene scaling in the game's options (the game runs at 640x480, but they use a 320x200 resolution), the game will pause. You'll have to hit F3 (pause/unpause button) in order to see them.
It's a regression hapenning since Windows XP at least.
I which I could fix this part of the program with OllyDbg or something... But I'm not that good.

I fixed the whole game for an abandonware website, but I don't think I can link to it. It needed quite a lot of compatibility options (640x480x16 mode, IgnoreAltTab, Admin Mode in order to access it's ini file in the Windows Directory) and mucking around (video conversions) in order to work !

Reply 5 of 28, by UCyborg

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xcomcmdr wrote:

Panzer Dragoon uses Intel Indeo v4. It uses the Video For Windows framework to find a suitable decoder. It doesn't find one (which resylts in a black screen) since it isn"t shipped with Windows since Windows XP/2000.

The game installer installs the required decoder (it's an older version), so it would only pose the issue if you've copied-paste the game folder without installing it.

Also, what you said is not true. The decoder still ships with modern Windows versions, it just isn't registered since Vista. Ideally, running "regsvr32 ir41_32.ax" on the DLL would setup all registry entries, though that doesn't happen for this particular decoder.

To get videos to play in this game, it's sufficient to add the following registry entry:

32-bit Windows

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\drivers.desc]
"ir41_32.ax"="Indeo® video 4.5"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32]
"vidc.iv41"="ir41_32.ax"

64-bit Windows

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\drivers.desc]
"ir41_32.ax"="Indeo® video 4.5"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32]
"vidc.iv41"="ir41_32.ax"

No matter how the game was installed, this will get it to use the newer version of decoder rather than the one that's shipped with the game.

Firtasik wrote:

Windowed mode may help. dgVoodoo has issues with Indeo.

Windowed mode does help. But AFAIK it doesn't have anything to do with the decoder used, but how videos are rendered.

Last edited by UCyborg on 2019-02-21, 03:16. Edited 2 times in total.
Arthur Schopenhauer wrote:

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Reply 6 of 28, by DCeric

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I don't know if you have to use the registry for it. I used the command to enable Indeo 5.1 how ever it broke for me cause I was doing lots of tests with the game and installing a few codecs. So I had to install K-Lite Basic which gave me the option to have Indeo 5.1. It works for other games however as xcomcmdr mentioned you have to press F3 for the videos to load but you must have the game in the windows 98/windows me compatibility. I tried re-encoding the 4.1 videos into the 5.1 videos with Virtualdub and it still wouldn't play unless I did Windows compatibility. However I did think about using Cinepac but what I'm wondering is the game code forces the 320x200 resolution which means you'll still have the issue regardless.

Reply 7 of 28, by xcomcmdr

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I did try registering all the shipped-but-not-registered Intel Indeo codecs. (I called regsvr32 in syswow64 on everything intel indeo related)

But as with Forsaken (same problem, the intro uses Indeo v4), it doesn't fix it at all. It adds Intel Indeo v5 decoders (good for Resident Evil 2 for example), but that's about it.

I'll try again and report... Avoiding recompression would be ideal, indeed.

Edit : Ah, upon re-reading your post, I get it. For indeo v4, You need to add the registry entries yourself. That's good to know. Thank you. 😀

It will avoid me lossy recompressions in the future !

Of course, Indeo seems to be not registered for security reasons... So recompression might be not that bad ?
I don't know, I don't like the idea of recompressing already compressed-to-hell videos.

Also, the game indeed forces the videos' playback resolution. Meaning, resizing them to 640x480 won't make them larger without selecting the option to make them larger in-game.
Which makes the videos not start by themselves anymore.

Reply 8 of 28, by UCyborg

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About those registry entries, it's not necessary to make them point to *original DLL on Windows 8.x/10. Since Windows 8, there are 2 DLLs for each Indeo codec for some unknown reason, eg. ir41_32.ax | ir41_32original.dll.

The latter is a DLL as made by Intel, but the former is the proxy DLL that forwards most function calls directly to original, except DriverProc. The proxy DriverProc function is there just to return 0 in case if DriverProc isn't exported from original DLL, otherwise the call is forwarded to original.

I only applied very few compatibility options and the game works fine natively or with dgVoodoo in windowed mode, apart from the issue with videos not starting right away if video size is set to large.

QdM7VjK.png

Parameters for CorrectFilePaths shim:

-b "PANZERDG.INI;%USERAPPDATA%\PANZERDG.INI"

-b turns off the usual redirections applied by CorrectFilePaths shim, the 2nd parameter makes the game read/save its settings from/to %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\PANZERDG.INI

BTW, if you force real fullscreen when running natively on Windows 8.x/10, aka. disable maximized windowed mode, you get black screen when videos are supposed to play, just like with dgVoodoo in fullscreen mode.

xcomcmdr wrote:

Of course, Indeo seems to be not registered for security reasons... So recompression might be not that bad ?

You're probably using a newer video player for videos and hopefully not downloading videos from untrusted sources. Windows Media Player will only use vulnerable decoders if nothing better is installed. If you have K-Lite Codec pack installed, WMP won't use old decoders. So that leaves only ancient applications and games that may use them so bad things may happen only if they get to play a video file that has been crafted specifically to exploit vulnerabilities.

Arthur Schopenhauer wrote:

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Reply 11 of 28, by DCeric

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You don't need to use Windows Compatibility Toolkit to get the game running. If you'd like to play it fullscreen all you need to do is add Windows 98/Windows ME compatibility. Then you'll get the videos to play fine. You may need to move the PANZERDG.INI file to the appdata\virtualstore\windows folder. Also if you have issues running the game in 640x480 *16 just edit the PANZERDG.INI file and either remove the 320*200 *16 resolution and replace it with 640*480 *16. If you don't see the line add the following in and save.

[Screen]
AVI=Double
VMode=640*480*16
Detail=High
Speed=Fast
Interlace=Off

Reply 12 of 28, by UCyborg

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I tried Win98 compatibility mode, but the bug with videos remains; the game hangs when the playback is supposed to start until I press F3 2 times. The intro video is the exception.

With Compatibility Administrator, I can redirect reads/writes to PANZERDG.INI wherever I feel like and in the process also remove dependence on Windows' file/registry virtualization feature, which I've seen bug out in the past under certain circumstances.

Arthur Schopenhauer wrote:

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Reply 13 of 28, by Dege

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Panzer Dragon plays its AVI's through the old Windows Multimedia AVI player library which renders the movie through GDI instead of DirectDraw
(I think that API is older than DirectDraw so it's no wonder.)

I activated and revamped my half-baked GDI hooking code in dgVoodoo and now movie playback is working in Panzer Dragon.
I think all games using the AVI player lib should work but, it's a shame, I couldn't remember what games are suffering from this problem.

Reply 14 of 28, by xcomcmdr

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Wow, thank you Dege ! 😀

From memory, games which use WINMM and/or GDI, or whatever results in a black screen with dgVoodoo :

Virtua Cop
Mission Force : Cyberstorm (well this one doesn't even use fullscreen not even directdraw, only GDI and WINMM, so I did not use dgVoodoo. But it uses WINMM to play the introduction video)
Resident Evil 1 and 2 (not too sure about 3)

I could come up with other names if I dig up my archives, if that's useful ?

Last edited by xcomcmdr on 2019-03-07, 10:34. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 15 of 28, by antrad

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Dege wrote:

I activated and revamped my half-baked GDI hooking code in dgVoodoo and now movie playback is working in Panzer Dragon.
I think all games using the AVI player lib should work but, it's a shame, I couldn't remember what games are suffering from this problem.

You could try with Nocturne, it uses .avi file for intro video, it doesn't render on modern systems with or without dgvoodoo; https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Nocturne
Blair Witch games use the same engine and have the same problem, but I don't remember witch one had a video.

There is World League Basketball that I tried recently and it doesn't render intro videos, but the files are .mpg and they render without dgvoodoo; https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/World_League_Basketball

Vietnam 2: Special Assignment doesn't render videos with dgvoodoo, but renders them without it, don't remember the format; https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Vietnam_2:_Special_Assignment

https://antonior-software.blogspot.com

Reply 16 of 28, by xcomcmdr

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Nocturne 's intro works once you reactivate the VFW Intel indeo v5 codec.

I don't recall whether the intro worked with dgVoodoo2, however.

It's main problem is that the in-game menus lag a lot, natively or not.

Reply 17 of 28, by antrad

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xcomcmdr wrote:

Nocturne 's intro works once you reactivate the VFW Intel indeo v5 codec.

I don't recall whether the intro worked with dgVoodoo2, however.

It's main problem is that the in-game menus lag a lot, natively or not.

For some reason the menus didn't lag for me when I had DFX Audio Enhancer active. I use this program to increase sound volume, my sound card has low sound volume for some reason by default. I don't know what this program could do to the game, but it fixed it for me, tried several times with and without it to confirm it.

https://antonior-software.blogspot.com

Reply 19 of 28, by DCeric

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Yeah so as I said without DGvoodoo2 the game will run fine with Indeo as long as you have the game running in Windows 98/Me. But of course like everyone else it would be fantastic just to get the game running in higher resolutions.