Civ IV Movies

[Lithrim]

Me too still have the problem with stuttering wonder movies after the 1.09 patch. The patch fixed the stuttering on the intro movie but actually made the wonder movies worse.
Im gonna try the options mentioned above tonight after work to see if that helps. Have tried EVERYTHING else.

Maybe you can imagine how I felt after installing the patch. First the ultimate joy when noticing that the intro movie now plays great and then then terrible dissapointment when seeing that the wonder movie now was even worse than before. *sigh*

[crimsonmage]

Ok, I think i found out why the movies skip

Alrighty - I think i figured out why the movies skip for me.

No its not the config files - what it is, is the Anti-Alias. The game looks beautiful and plays well when I have the Anti-Alias set to 4 or 2, but when the wonders movie plays it skips.

But if I have the Anti-Alias set to 0 the movie doesnt skip at all. - NOTE: If you change your Anti-Alias to 0 you must restart CIV.

I tested this out by saving before the Stonehenge wonder was about to be built. I had uninstalled Civ and the patch, Reinstalled everything and let the game play at its default settings. The Stonehenge movie ran FINE - so then I set it to my old settings and the movie skipped. So it took me a step by step process of starting from the games default settings and it all boiled down to the Anti-Alias for me.

If this also works for you, please let us know.

Now I wonder if this can be fixed. I imagine the movie is also trying to Anti-Alias and that is why it is hanging. Maybe they could have it where the game can be Anti-Aliased but the wonder movies dont have to be.

Hmmmmmmm.

[Lithrim]

Interesting.
Only sad thing is I've had anti-aliasing on 0 the whole time... So for me its not that... :-(

[Xerxes712]

Re: Ok, I think i found out why the movies skip

Originally posted by crimsonmage
Alrighty - I think i figured out why the movies skip for me.

No its not the config files - what it is, is the Anti-Alias. The game looks beautiful and plays well when I have the Anti-Alias set to 4 or 2, but when the wonders movie plays it skips.

But if I have the Anti-Alias set to 0 the movie doesnt skip at all. - NOTE: If you change your Anti-Alias to 0 you must restart CIV.

I tested this out by saving before the Stonehenge wonder was about to be built. I had uninstalled Civ and the patch, Reinstalled everything and let the game play at its default settings. The Stonehenge movie ran FINE - so then I set it to my old settings and the movie skipped. So it took me a step by step process of starting from the games default settings and it all boiled down to the Anti-Alias for me.

If this also works for you, please let us know.

Now I wonder if this can be fixed. I imagine the movie is also trying to Anti-Alias and that is why it is hanging. Maybe they could have it where the game can be Anti-Aliased but the wonder movies dont have to be.

Hmmmmmmm.

Well I'll be a....Graham Bell I found this EXACT same fix also by myself independently!

I just made a new thread and post. YES the same thing fixed it for me, after I spent the last 12 hours working on it. See my recent post also.

It tells simply how to have your cards AA working in game without screwing up your BINK Wonder Movie playback.

http://apolyton.net/forums//showthread.php?s=&threadid=144257

[Xerxes712]

Originally posted by Lithrim
Interesting.
Only sad thing is I've had anti-aliasing on 0 the whole time... So for me its not that... :-(

Read above post. You must also clear out the cache crap by restart/boot of game holding down the 'shift' upon start up (make sure you see it cleared) the whole time until it is done loading.

The setting will stay forever in there even if it says you set it back to zero. Please see the above thread.

Chances are yours is set wrong in internal store cache even if you think/ it shows a zero in the options screen.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Originally posted by moehrensteiner
1. Try to install a new version of binkw32.dll to the CIV4 main directory. (I've taken binkw32.dll V1.8d from the AOE3 Demo - CIV4 came with V1.6), so no more stuttering will be in the movies and the thing with the intro movie is, i've just disabled the 2 vids (they will be skipped during loading CIV4 - look at attachment, credit to www.civforum.de)

Just for anybody who's trying this, it appears the 1.09 patch takes care of this for you. Post-patch, binkw32.dll reports version 1.8.6 (the version posted in this thread was 1.8.4, I believe.)

[Xerxes712]

I confirm that, the new patch does replace the BINKY with the latest greatest version 1.8.6 as he stated.

I find it does not make a difference, tried the original too.

[crimsonmage]

Your absolutely right

Xerxes712 you found the second piece to the puzzle. Thanks so much!

So I went into my graphics card set up program, and set the anti-aliasing setting through there... and now the game looks wonderful and the movies run crisp and clear!

Thanks so much for the help! Thats what forums are for. It sux that 2K and Firaxis couldnt be of any help, but at least we are there for everyone else!

YAY! now to lose more hours of my life into Civ!

CrimsonMage

[crimsonmage]

UPDATE

OK, so I thought that my movie problem was fixed. It was... partly - Previously, I was testing with the Stonehenge wonder - so of course it was the first wonder and it went well.

Well now I tried it with the Pantheon - and of course more or the map was discovered and I had more cities. Well, guess what... the movie ran faster - which was good... but the skipping is back. No longer do I have to wait 5 minutes for the movie to finish running before I can see the benefit of my wonder... but I still have sound starting and stopping and now the movies start and stop too. Actually its like its trying to catch up - and yes I have set the configuration of

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

to 1 and 0 with no results

So I dont know yet what the fix is. I will be trying everything I can and will let you know if anything new comes up.

Grrrrr... how frustrating

[Xerxes712]

I tried larger maps, and I still have no skipping. Lucky me.

Have you set your virtual memory larger? I changed mine from 768-1533 to something like 2000-4000.

It is hard to believe this got through QA.

I know your BINK player will play the movies fine, correct? You can get that from Rad Tools to play.

I set my computer in XP to a setting to allow back ground applications to use CPU also. As long as nothing is running in the background, this does not affect performance. But it does allow for the BINK player (the external application) to run at full speed.

If it does come down to resource hogging, the tools allow for the Bink player movie to be altered. The movie are set for a rather high 30 frames per second at high resolution. Now my medium video card and CPU pays this with no problem, but it may help to change "to convert" the movies into a less demanding resolution and speed. And repack to a less ratio than 10:1. !

Before I do that, try to set your CPU via the windows system manager to allow background application to use system resources also. And set your virtual memory higher; the movies are 688 Meg unpacked ( about 9 meg to start, that is 10:1 pack ratio) and this size unpacked will overload your RAM. I have a minumum of 1 Gig of DDR 3200 RAM. I had to increase the virtual memory size on the HD, or the movies would not 'load' into real memory at all!

I think the designers never really took into account how these third party programs such as BINK Player uses system RAM and CPU resources while the game is running. It was not really put together correctly.

[crimsonmage]

Ok, I am back to no skipping

Alirght - there has to be something else that is doing it.

I again, dont have any skipping on my videos - But I had to uninstall Civ, and then Reinstall it. I tested my saved games... and the wonder movies dont skip now. I played for about 4 hours, and every wonder that I made, did not skip.

So everything is cool so far... if it starts skipping again, I will note what I did to make it do that.

CrimsonMage

[Chayton]

The patch didnt do it for me, the anti alias. setting to 0 done it for me.

[astrocool]

Get the latest binkw32.dll file version 1.86 (the links quoted here in this posting are for 1.83) from the Civ 4 1.09 Fix pack

Originally posted by moehrensteiner
1. Try to install a new version of binkw32.dll to the CIV4 main directory. (I've taken binkw32.dll V1.8d from the AOE3 Demo - CIV4 came with V1.6), so no more stuttering will be in the movies and the thing with the intro movie is, i've just disabled the 2 vids (they will be skipped during loading CIV4 - look at attachment, credit to www.civforum.de)
2. Update the Miles Sound Driver Files http://www.radgametools.com/down/Mil...s/MSSDemo.exe. Install and copy theses newer codecs (V7.0d - CIV4 came with V7.0c) to CIV4/Miles/Win32/ and don't forget to copy MSS.dll in the CIV4 main directory.
3. I've updated the python24.dll from V2.4 to 2.4.2. in CIV4 main directory. Get it from www.python.org/ , may increase performance a litte bit.

That is my way

[Kazimo-000]

guys i really need your help... every time i try to open civilization IV i get this message :

"the procedure entry point _binksetvolume@12 could not be located in the dynamic link library binkw32.dll."

i tried changing the Binkw32.dll file with the latest version and i still get the same error message...

[new]

I'm not much of a computer wizard but, can anybody help.
Every time I run civ 4 the computerr says "The procedure entery point_BinkSetVolume@21 could not be located in the dynamic libary bink32.dll
I do have bink32.dll but where to place what to do whit it.
Before bink problem I had a d3dx9 problem who sudenly desepered .
I'm asking for quick answers, I've just got to try out civ 4.