Civ IV Movies

[bfriel]

moehrensteiner
Thanks for the file, that did the trick. But now I have another issue. Circa 1600 AD on a huge map, my screen closes and goes to my desk top. When I try to load my save, it immediately goes back to my desktop. I saw on thread dealing with the catalyst ATI file, but still having issues. So, will go surf the threads here see if there is a solution. Thanks for your help though with the movies.

[moehrensteiner]

Get Python 2.4.2 here , install and copy python24.dll from WINDOWS/System32/ to your CIV4 main directory.

I did also the ATI Catalyst 4.12 trick, game runs now smoother, got a better performance.

[mrs_c]

Installing the new binkw32.dll file really helps run the game. I can now watch several wonder movies before it crashes.

About the 3rd wonder movie will crash the game and get a message: psapi.dll failed to load

Anyone know what causes this problem?

[nathanebht]

Woohoo, replacing the file below with moehrensteiner's attachment did the trick. The intro's are nice but I only needed to see them once or twice.

C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Assets\Python\Screens\CvIntroMovieScreen.py

This thread should be stickied and have a little bit more descriptive title.

[Lucapolo]

Hi Im a bit new to this site but could you tell me if I have to install all of those things to make the movies not stutter anymore? And could you please provide me with the MSS.dll and the newer codecs, please.

Thank you,
Luca

[Gikkuriman]

I can view the intro movies, but none of the wonder movies have ever even played during my game when I build wonders.
I am using moehrensteiner's recommended files.

[nathanebht]

Using moehrensteiner's other attachment to update the bink dll version did nice things for when my movies play. There is still a tiny bit of stutter sometimes but it is bare noticeable. Nothing like the horrible way the movies were playing before.

[Gikkuriman]

I figured out my problem. I had set no movies to 1 in the INI file. I thought it only affected the intro movies, but it affects the wonder movies.

[Weiß Wurst]

My problem with the movies may be a bit more involved. I do get stutter in some of the movies for both sound and video. Now heres the trick, and I am surprised no one else has mentioned it yet...I think there may be a memory leak involved with the playback of said videos. My game runs smoothly until I start seeing wonder and diplomatic screen videos. Sometimes it takes a video or two, or maybe even 4 before this starts to happen, but it has happened after the second time as well.

I'll be marching along fine then a movie starts, then the game drops frames to an unplayable level and nothing but a game restart will fix it, this is why I think it's a memory leak.

ANyone else have this issue?

P4 3.6
Geforce6800
3Gb ram
Sb Audigy2

[Mordrul]

Not like that. I just have a skipping problem in my wonder videos that will not go away, period. I applied all of the above-mentioned updates. It seemed to make the skipping slightly faster, like maybe .5 milliseconds faster. And that's it. I've never had a problem with the opening video, nor any other aspect of the game, never any crashes, aside from a strange one in the very first game I tried to play, where it would always crash as soon as I built my first aquaduct. I've also applied the most recent updates to my motherboard, video card and sound card. No dice.

Win XP Pro SP2
Asus A8N-E motherboard (nForce4-based)
MSI GeForce 6600GT
SB Audigy 2 ZS

[Chayton]

That the movie stutter, i only had this problem once (have it also in Civ4) before and that was by Spellforce, where severals shared the same. Unfortantly there was nothing you could do to fix it, only with the latest add on which was released this issues has been fixed. So i fear that this problem Firaxis has to solve.

[crimsonmage]

Per Firaxis

apparently there is a patch in the works. Firaxis says they have given the patch to K2, for them to approve - so that it may be released. Lets hope its soon

[moehrensteiner]

Well the leaked 1.08 Patch does it. No more stutterings, but framerate of the wonder movies is sometimes very low.

[crimsonmage]

Installed the 1.09 patch... and the wonder movies still skip - actually it seems a little worse... grrr what a frustration

[moehrensteiner]

@crimsonmage

did you play with the new options in the civilizationIV.ini ?

; Don't skip frames if falling behind
BinkNoSkip = 0

; Use Miles sound system
BinkSoundUseMiles = 0

; Disable PAK memory mapping (May affect performance)
DisablePAKMemoryMapping = 0

; Copy entire image each frame, not just dirty pixels
BinkCopyAll = 1

; Show movies using hi-color, not true-color (may be faster)
Bink16Bit = 0

; Copy ever other scanline during movie playback (faster)
BinkInterlace = 0

This are the common values. Maybe changing some values might increase the performance?