Problem with FFXII FMV's (stuttering, black screen flickering every few secs)

[ArcticZero]

I doubt this is a hardware problem, as it seems to be happening to others as well. Whenever an FMV plays (including the title screen one), it flickers (sound pauses and everything) into a black screen every few seconds, then resumes playback. It always does this, and I have no idea how to fix it. My specs:

Q6600 @ 3.2ghz
8800GTS G92 512mb @ 775/1970/1100
2gb DDR2-800 RAM

My config:
PCSX2 0.9.4
GSDX9 SSE2 0.11.0
P.E.Op.S SPU2 1.9.0
SSSPSX PAD Pressure Mod 1.6.0
Linuzappz Iso CDVD 0.7.0
DEV9null Driver 0.3.0

Hope you guys can help me out here. Sorry if it seems a bit noobish, as I'm relatively new to PS2 emulation..

Thanks in advance!

[cottonvibes]

it does it to me too, i don't think theres a way to fix it.
i think its a pcsx2 problem, and not a GS problem as both graphics plugins do the same thing.

but the only FMV videos that it does it in, are the ones in the beginning of the game (the title screen, and the first couple when selecting new game). Once you get into the real game it stops doing it.

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[PCXL-Fan]

Yeah its been said on the pcsx2 blogs that the code that deals with how pcsx2 displays the video needs work.

idk but you could try using a much new version of gsdx instead of that old gsdx9 0.11 version

also try the latest beta build on pcsx2.net i believe it is svn307

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[cottonvibes]

the latest versions still have the same problem (i'm using them )
but ArcticZero u should still upgrade since it might fix other problems. (check my sig for link on how to set PCSX2 correctly)

and they still have 302 up on the beta downloads, but i'm using 307 and its awsome (with the speed hacks option, i get a couple fps boost)

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"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein
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[millhouse13]

I don't have any problem with the FVMs, I'm using the PAL version of the game, maybe there's another regioin compatibility issue...
anyways, what I wanted to ask was: I guess the fact that it's not available on the downloads page makes it pretty obvious, but the svn307 is not open to public, is it?
but I do have a different problem:
in the cutscenes, as you may know, the game uses depth of field, which means blurring distant objects (or at least somehting similar). during cutscenes, everything that is not focused on is really blocky, like the old SNES blur (as seen in a link to the past). even changing plugins and upping internal resolution didn't help...

[cottonvibes]

millhouse13,
can you post a pic, i don't really know what you're talking about

and the svn307 version isn't on the downloads site, i compiled the code from the SVN myself.

__________________

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein
check out my blog

[millhouse13]

oh, so I guess that belongs to the kind of "far too difficult and complex for me to understand"... anyways, is there a lot of difference form the svn302? apart from the famous "speed hacks"??

anyways, I don't really have a pic of it, and I'm too lazy to play until a cutscene comes...
well, it basically looks like what distant objects look like in most games when you turn the internal rendering resolution way down to the minimum... but I was using a funky unofficial build of the graphics plugins when I saw it, it's not that annoying, I was just curious about what could cause it... never mind

and while I'm at it, is it normal that the emu keeps telling me that rom2 and erom are not found? is this critical? did I do some error while dumping the bios?

[cottonvibes]

i think the only difference is the speedhacks options; if you don't know how to compile code its best to wait till they release it on the downloads page.

anyways, about ffxii. there are a few places i've noticed that gsdx dosn't upscale the graphics, like in parts where video is mixed with real-time rendering.
gsdx can't upscale movies and 2d images. the best it can do with 2d images apply a texture filtering algorithm that smooths the image.

and i believe i also get some errors in the console window, but i play in fullscreen so i don't usually check. as long as the game works, you shouldn't really pay attention to whats in the console window. most of that is for the developers.

__________________

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein
check out my blog

[millhouse13]

yeah, ok, but it has just drawn my attention, because the messages telling me that rom2 and erom are missing are quite big...like:
*********
ROM2 NOT FOUND
*********
or something like that, and since some games just won't work, no matter what I do, like okami (pal), even when I enable the right patch... well, I just thought that might be the reason of those crashes, but anyhow, thanks for the fast answer!

and do the speed hack options work? I mean, is there a significant, or even noticeable increase in speed? and does the dual core mode include quad cores (4 simultaneous threads), or is it really just dual core?

[Mkilbride2588]

It's just Dual Core, and in some games, I've noticed a Speedup with the speed hacks, but some others have no increase at all.

Quad core, no, more than two core support is a maybe, and if it DOES happen, it will happen far into the future they've said, the said it didn't help that much, only a small 1-2FPS and broke compatibility.

[RPGW1ZaRD]

Errm, the speed hacks helps a lot for me, 10 ~ 100% depending on game and average boost out of all games I've tried is probably around 30~40%. But out of ~40 games I've tried 10% has been the absolutely smallest change in performance I've seen but also up to 100% boosts have been discovered. If you see no speedboost at all you're most likely GPU limited in that case as this only helps for CPU bottlenecked situations. I would have a graph to show you of some comparisions but I'll get back to this once svn307 reaches public beta section. Just gotta bug refraction some more about it. ;p

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[Mkilbride2588]

No, I'm not GPU or CPU limited. I'm just saying, it helps in some(DQVIII went from 30 to 60)

But Persona 3 is still the same, pretty much, no increase, at all, but that game is mega intensive as it is, so we'll just see in future versions.

[RPGW1ZaRD]

It's either your CPU or GPU that limits the FPS you get (provided you haven't got fullspeed or limited mode is selected). I'm not talking about if you can run it at full speed or not but what limits the FPS first, GPU or CPU, be it 50 or 200 FPS.

If GSdx for example says 99 % CPU in titlebar it most likely means you're GPU limited and if it's below 99% your CPU is limiting.

I have Persona 3 as well and will do a quick comparision now and report back.

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Last edited by RPGW1ZaRD; March 8th, 2008 at 19:20..

[Mkilbride2588]

Q6600 @ 3.4GHZ
GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB GDDR3, Super-clocked.
4 GB PC8000 1000MHZ RAM.
Windows XP SP2(32) DX9 mode.

I tried setting it to default internal resolution, no speed increase, I set it to 1600 x 1200(My max resolution) in the internal, I lost no FPS either, and it was much crisper.

Normally, just walking around, I get perfect FPS, but be it in the classroom, I get 35FPS, an assembly, I get like 27FPS, and a boss battle(A BIG BOSS) I get about 31-33.

In normal fights with 5-6 enemies, I get 33-39 FPS.

Walking around I get 47-55FPS(With 4 characters, with two, I get perfect 60FPS)

GSdx(1.7) Windowed(Currently, just to tell you stats)

Internal resolution 1280 x 1024(Like I said, resolution didnt' affect speed, so it's not GPU limited)

the thing up top was about 60-70%, shot up to 99% in the biggest of boss battles.

ZeroSPU2 with Time-scaling(HAVE to with 30FPS at times)

[RPGW1ZaRD]

Yea this game belongs to the ones that doesn't get that much speedboost from the hacks but it was still ~12% for me. I tried loading the save state several times and without the tweaks it was a solid 93 FPS everytime and with the tweaks it was depending on time I ran it 103-105 FPS. So I'm still going to say it helps minimum 10% until I discover something else.

It's just you won't notice a 12% boost so easily at speeds like 35 FPS. 35 x 1.12 = 39.2 FPS. Yes this game is far from being GPU demanding either as I was using 1920 x 1440 here and CPU usage (in GSdx titlebar) was below 20% in this spot.

Attached Images

	p3-normal.jpg (126.2 KB, 27 views)
	p3-tweaked.jpg (126.2 KB, 27 views)

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[Mkilbride2588]

Yeah...So, it's just something we have to wait for to be fixed in the future, I suppose. FPS is easy in those areas, I get those speeds if I turn "LIMIT" off, but go out to Tartarus and fight a battle, or fight a boss / see a homeroom, you'll notice how bad the FPS is :P

[RPGW1ZaRD]

Originally Posted by Mkilbride2588

Yeah...So, it's just something we have to wait for to be fixed in the future, I suppose. FPS is easy in those areas, I get those speeds if I turn "LIMIT" off, but go out to Tartarus and fight a battle, or fight a boss / see a homeroom, you'll notice how bad the FPS is :P

Yea but that wasn't the point here for me how this game runs, you said the speed hacks helped nothing and I proved it helps ~12% for me in this game. I haven't found any game that doesn't benefit less than 10% but often these hacks helps a lot more than that too...

Anyways I think we're getting horrible offtopic looking at the topic of this thread to the point I start feeling ashamed of myself being a mod for this section but I thought it was worth pointing out.

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Last edited by RPGW1ZaRD; March 8th, 2008 at 19:48..

[Mkilbride2588]

Yes, I understand we are very off topic, and I meant "Little to nothing" because 12% didn't seem like much, cause my FPS didn't got notice worthily up, for me. I can get those speeds you get at the same area's...but others, yeah, ugh. I'll just mutually agree that we should stop talking about this :P

[millhouse13]

thanks for the input on my questions!
but, to get back to the original topic, could it be that his problem with the FMVs is that he has UV skip enabled, because that happens to all my games when I enable it, and not only ion the FMVs. or maybe it's because he's playing from the DVD, and the emulator is not preloading the video? maybe the wrong DVD plugin setting?

[cottonvibes]

nah, the problem is that PCSX2 has problems playing the fmvs.

i don't use UV skip, and still get it.

__________________

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein
check out my blog