DagVid V1.01
What Is It?
A Daggerfall and Skynet video file player for Win 9X/NT, with
source code.
Who Wrote It?
Me – Corroded Coder. Long time Daggerfall fan, loved Morrowind too,
purchased but never played Battlespire for longer than 10 minutes.
Enjoyed "The Terminator: Skynet" also!
Why Did I Do It?
Err… good question (my fiancé asks me that too)! Well – it started as
I didn't think anyone else had decoded the .VID format and I fancied a
challenge (I've since found out that others had been working in that space).
I got pretty much all of it sussed in a couple of evenings, and a day more
to add a busted MFC UI, then a further day to rewrite the UI with WTL (man
- it's been a while since I did GUI dev). Then the real work began sorting
out the audio ;)
How Do I Contact You?
Mail to CorrodedCoder@hotmail.com.
I'll respond providing you don't
really upset me ;o) Feel free to email bugs, suggestions and anything else
you feel like.
What Else Might Happen to it One Day?
(in order of decreasing likeliness that it'll happen)
- Write out to AVI (as per DFVid2Avi).
- Save image.
- Support printing. (Must sort out palette stuff first!)
- Code a Linux front end.
- Write a Media Player codec (hardly fair for non MS users).
Known Bugs
- Perhaps the occasional palette issue?
- I should also paste a palette onto the clipboard, but I don't see
why it's necessary (PSP crashes on resolution change though).
Who Does the Author Want to Thank?
- Well – as it's the first time I've contributed something
back to the Daggerfall/Morrowind community I'd like to thank all
others who've gone before – most noticably anyone whose
contributed to the UESP at any point.
I'd like to thank those who've already decoded a fair few Daggerfall
formats.
- Specifically – I'd like to thank Andux for filling in a
couple of blanks about the Daggerfall .VID file format –
most noticably that it contains audio as well as video! :o) Doh! Also
for producing some test videos which helped test my error handling!
- Thanks to Svatopluk for being the official host for DagVid
(and now DFVid2Avi)!
- I'd also like to send my regards to anyone who worked on the
Daggerfall Revisited project – I watched with interest and
was saddened by its demise.
- In a similar but more optimistic spirit – I watch the
Daggerfall GL project in a hopeful light! Good luck guys!
- Interkarma's workshop is full of great stuff – and a great
place for DF devs to meet and exchange ideas. Thanks IK!
- Finally I commend Bethesda past and present on coming out with
some truly creative and inspiring huge projects – with the
courage and vision to see them through. Kudos!
Change Log
- 1.01 First bugfix ;o)
- In generating a utility to convert .vid files to .avi files I discovered
that my generation of my audio playback buffer represented gaps as 0. This
meant that the speakers would switch off/on making pop noises. The change
means a silence in audio form is generated in the buffer now.
There may also have been a minor audio cut-off on the final frame of some
movies – this also is fixed.
- 1.0 (Release with source)
- Sorted out the palette stuff (certainly for the clipboard) and for 256 colour
display modes. I'm not convinced it is perfect – but I don't care enough to
play with it any longer. The clipboard image will now be a 256 colour bitmap
(rather than a screen depth bitmap).
- 0.98b
- Added support for Skynet videos (really just involved correcting my code
:) )
- Another rework of the source so that someone other than me could read it/use
it. Nearly ready to release.
- Sound support works properly… audio/video synchronisation should work now
regardless of machine speed.
- Changed pixel drawing to a new technique of modifying the memory directly,
rather than SetPixelV. It is safe though! This reduces CPU dramatically on
slow machines (e.g. P2-266 runs under 20% CPU, providing you don't double
the display size!)
- 0.96b
- Allows re-synchronisation of audio/video by pausing/playing.
Should remove any threading bugs I'd introduced previously.
- 0.95b
- Plays sound! It's not perfectly sync'd, but it'll pass for a first attempt.
Dag2.Vid is fine till the last little bit. That'll be tricky!
Some bugs due to the above (sniff – thread woes) – I saw one on Win95! You
can disable sound if it causes issues (menu opt).
A bit more UI sugar, buttons/menus grayed when you can't use them, Play
button looks depressed :o( whilst playing, and then cheers up if you pause
it :o)
- 0.91b
- You can copy current image to clipboard (it won't be 256 colours depth yet
though – probably screen depth)
Command line arguments will now be parsed (i.e. you can set up a file
association for .vid files)
File parsing now correctly displays filter (.vid files only).
Correctly versioned this time! (0.9b was still displaying 0.84b)
- 0.9b
- Mostly internal re-organisation of codebase – and removal
of some CRT dependencies to shrink the exe size.
- 0.84b
- Fixed some stupid mistakes :o/
- 0.8b
- Original Version
Download DagVid 1.01
([an error occurred while processing this directive]B)
DagVid 1.1 RC1
This is the release candidate one for V1.1. It is hosted alongside
the V1.0 for now, as it'd be better to get some feedback on issues from
this one first before final release. Then the source code will be
released with it.
New Features
- Export as AVI is now built into DagVid. Select File/Export as avi.
- Step back a frame.
- File is now memory mapped - but frankly it made little difference.
- Some code re-organisation.
- Maybe some bugs ;o) - please let me know!
Last modified 2004-11-10