Emperor Video Sound Issue

[mechadragon]

I looked through the forums here and didn't see anything on this specifically. I looked at the *.bik files with the RAD Video Tools to make sure that it was jus something about Emperor. I can view them that way fine. When Emperor starts, the EA/WW splash has no sound at all. When any of the Bink videos are called from within Emperor, video playback is fine and smooth, but sound cuts in an out.

I thought this may have had something to do with the read buffer on the DVD-ROM drive, but I cannot find a place to configue this down in any version of Windows 2000. Then I noticed that the opening movies are stored in the <emperor path>/data/movies/ directory.

Since you normally ask for a DxDiag.txt, you may find mine here:

http://www.ixai.org/~mdx/dxdiag.txt

[Nyarlathotep]

What you might want to try is to lower down the screen resolution to 1024x768 and put the refresh rate to default.

Do you experience any of these problems with other games/programs ?

[mechadragon]

I tried lowering the resolution all the way from 1600x1200 to 640x480 and all allowed points in between. Emperor is the only game that does this whatsoever.

[number6]

I looked through the forums here and didn't see anything on this specifically. I looked at the *.bik files with the RAD Video Tools to make sure that it was jus something about Emperor. I can view them that way fine. When Emperor starts, the EA/WW splash has no sound at all. When any of the Bink videos are called from within Emperor, video playback is fine and smooth, but sound cuts in an out.

I thought this may have had something to do with the read buffer on the DVD-ROM drive, but I cannot find a place to configue this down in any version of Windows 2000. Then I noticed that the opening movies are stored in the <emperor path>/data/movies/ directory.

Since you normally ask for a DxDiag.txt, you may find mine here:

http://www.ixai.org/~mdx/dxdiag.txt

I don't know if you have checked the westwood website for help, but your problem sounds similar to this problem listed on Westwood:

Question

Why is the Emperor video slow or choppy? Why doesn't the sound match the video?

Answer

We have implimented a feature that solves most video synchronization problems. Symptoms of these problems include choppy video at any time in the movies or game play or sound either ahead or behind the video.

You can do this by right clicking on the shortcut, and then selecting the properties option. You'll then see a text field that has a directory listing, something like "C:westwoodemperoremperor.exe". You'll need to place a +w at the end of this line, resulting in "C:westwoodemperoremperor.exe +W". This should remedy your video choppyness during movies. If not simply reply and we'll further diagnose your situation.

If this did not solve your problem, please ensure that your video drivers, as well as DirectX is up to date.

Video Drivers can be found at:

http://westwood.ea.com/html/techsupp/hware.html

DirectX update Drivers can be found at:

http://www.microsoft.com/directx

If you are unsure about what kind of video card your computer has, you can download and run the following program, and then reply to us with the Text file it creates. This will give us information about your computer specifications, and allow us to determine what kind of video card you are using.

ftp://ftp.westwood.com/pub/support

Our apologies for any problem this issue may have caused you.

Your problem does not exactly fit the one mentioned above, but it is worth a try. Looked at DxDiag and nothing jumps out just yet.

[Nyarlathotep]

Maybe even an update for the bink player may help.

[mechadragon]

Maybe even an update for the bink player may help.

The Bink player I have installed is the most recent one, as this computer is just over a week old now. This allow me to view some of the movies externally. Westwood decided to make a few changes to the BIK format which appear to be related mostly to the way it loads files. It uses a pair of files, one that conatins the names of the movies (RFH file) and maybe the starting offsets (still studing this one), the other (a huge file, RFD File) contains all of the movies sequentially and uncompressed. If forced to load this file, the Bink player will show the first movie in the sequence, but quit at the end of the first one. Hopefully this weekend, I will try and extract the binary data from one of the other BIK sequences and see if it will run. If so, I can watch all the movies outside, but there are sometimes more than one BIK file in a single movie so knowing which pairs go together, if any, will be the big problem.

number6:

I looked at westwoods site, the only problem I found close to it was with C&C Red Alert 2, in which case lowering the resolution is the suggested fix. I will try the +w switch, but I have discoverd that for some reason, the game has ceased loading movies at all, which requires investigation now. I will throw this in, I tried the switch with a -w (opposed to +w) for experimentation purposes and discovered that it maks emperor run in a windowed mode! Did anyone know that already?

[Gobalopper]

Mecha there are programs already created that allow you to extract the files from any of the rfh/rfd files.

[number6]

I will throw this in, I tried the switch with a -w (opposed to +w) for experimentation purposes and discovered that it maks emperor run in a windowed mode! Did anyone know that already?

No I was not aware of that fact. Nice to see that you are willing to experiment :) .

[mechadragon]

Mecha there are programs already created that allow you to extract the files from any of the rfh/rfd files.

I figured that there might be since several programs used Bink/Smacker video. It was 4am and I couldn't sleep. Now you went and spoiled my fun...

Does anyone have a way to encode them for playback...?

[mechadragon]

UPDATE:

I just fixed this problem. I had to lower my audio hardware acceleration down 1 notch to 2 of 4, default is 3. Appearantly, my sound card is not properly supporting DirectSound features. Now all things that use the Bink format are working perfectly!

Now I can play the games, _and_ get the story!

[MooreR]

Yes!! Thank you so much for posting that about your audio acceleration.

I also have a SoundBlaster ( Audigy XGamer 5.1 ) and I was experiencing the exact same problems. Turned it down to 2 out of 4 and it works great now!

Thanks again!

[Nyarlathotep]

Isn't the world of tech support great ;D