Please explain how to configure a codec pack for h.264 .mp4 playback in sfall

[gustarballs1983]

Howdy
Would someone be kind and explain to me how to set up some codeck pack in order to make fallout2 engine ( even with fallout 1 behaviour set) use .mp4 h264 videos, i mean I sacrificed combined comunity codeck pack and installed k-lite instead. Theres tons of options there however no matter what, whenever the playback is sepose to begin, the game pauses itself on black screen until I click mouse.

Just to be clear i changed the file's extension to .avi and changed the playback video extesion in sfall to .avi as well along with the correct name, and still nothing, can anybody help on this topic?

[NovaRain]

I might have talked out of my arse a bit in that issue, at least on "renaming file extension" part.
This is what I did to play this intro remake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgHViQpQW4g (720p AVC mp4 with audio embedded)

1. Install K-Lite (I use it for general playback, didn't tweak any special settings).
2. I run ffmpeg to convert mp4 to avi:
   ffmpeg -i intro.mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec copy intro.avi (simply copy video/audio streams to avi container, no reencoding)
3. Set AllowDShowMovies=1 and play the game in sfall's DX9 windowed mode in 1280x720.

[gustarballs1983]

Yeah so i still have a coupe of questions, since i uninstalled k- lite completely ( IO-bit uninstaller) and reinstalled it agin with default options not touching anything, converted my Topaz Labs AI tweaked video, the way You described, put the converted video i the CUTS folder opend up ddraw.ini changed the name of the first playback file to mine AllowDShowPlayback=1, set graphic mode=6 set res to 1920x1080 and still black screen with pause ( runs next video in line after mouse click). Am I doing somethig wrong? please direct me further ( more details) perhaps nnot all codecs are compatible mine is specifically h.264 as this is topaz labs main output it's either this or quck time or hq picture files from frames and no audio.. Please direct me I even tried to change f2-res.ini graphic modes from 2 to 0 back and forth and nothing. I'm using K-lite 17.2.0 Basic is there anything I could've done wrong?

anyways about that video from you tube how did you download it? jDownloader or something else?

[NovaRain]

I have no idea what your video is so I can't give you any suggestion on codec stuff.
I download the video for testing with youtube-dl (pick format 22).

[gustarballs1983]

well I downloaded the file You provided with tools You linked with -f 22 parameter then converted it to .avi the same way You explained, and still nothing, black screen when entered the game and it doesn't start the next video until i click with mouse. Same deal as with my files, nothing is different. The flie plays normally in any given video player, so I don't think it's codec issue, perhaps running them in fallout2 engine requires some specific settings, i use win10 x64, k-lite codec pack, Fallout EtTu with sfall 4.3.6 ( that's where i tried to launch the files), I have totally no clue why it works for You and doesn't for me.. Perhaps I'm missing something here, some extra dowload/ install or something.

Crap I really want this feature to work as intended, there's so much that could be done to all of those videos..

[NovaRain]

You should check if the game can play Xvid avi movies correctly on your system first, worry about "video quality/size" or other fancy codec stuff later.

[gustarballs1983]

Yesss.. finally some progress..
it turns out I had "d" class old post apo sci fi movie sitting around and it was in Xvid .avi and it does play within fallout 2 engine. so that's a success. now how about those h.264 it would take literally ages to setup everything in topaz labs AI, and convert to xvid after that, and tossing around that bitrate etc, would make things harder than nessecary, though i could try.
the video itself is 720x544 dvd-rip at 25FPS and around 2Mb/s bitrate but it works, So what's next to check?