I tried to look for free H.264 editors that could do such forementioned tasks, but i couldn't find any suitable results (probably due to my incorrect(?) search terms).
Basically, i have quite a few 20 to 40 second looping movie files (rendered with Adobe Premiere), and i would like to multiply an individual movie to about ten or twenty fold, and then save it again, preferably without the need to re-render (or re-encode?). Is this possible?
Hopefully i managed to make myself understood, thanks :)
After a whole bunch of searching and testing, i ended up with Avidemux and it did the task perfectly, this time around. I'm sure there would've been a way to automatize the appending / "multiplying" of the file, but with a tablet pen (main click set as double click) and specific folder it truly went by like a breeze.
I was also interested of Smart Cutter (i quite enjoyed the interface after getting used to it), but since it was trialware the choice was clear. Still, if i would have to do these kind of tasks more often, i might consider purchasing it.
Related
Is it possible to create an automatically generated Rhythm game for Flash Action Script 3 ?
But not just randomly generated, generated from the notes of a song. Or is that something I have to do manually?
How would I go about doing either of these?
I am currently following this tutorial: http://www.flashgametuts.com/tutorials/as3/how-to-make-a-rhythm-game-in-as3-part-4/ so perhaps it can be made to fit around this? (Go to the final part and View Source to see the full thing)
Thanks!
Depending on what you mean by rhythm game, check out the computeSpectrum() function of the SoundMixer class: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/media/SoundMixer.html#computeSpectrum()
There's an example of it working in the link, but basically what it does is take a snapshot of the current sound wave and puts normalised (-1 to 1) values in a ByteArray. What you do with those values is up to you - e.g. you might use them as a height field to generate terrain for example.
Repeat this every frame, and you get the gist
Welcome to SO!
First off, there is nothing already built in, to my knowledge. There may be something lurking around Google that someone else wrote, but you'd need to dig around for that (though I assume you already did.)
Generated from the notes of a song. Hmm, this will take some serious ingenuity and coding on your part. I'll point you in the right direction, but it is up to you to write the code. No one here will do it for you, but we'll happily help with specific problems in your code.
The crazy (yet potentially more fun) approach MAY BE to derive the data in a similar manner that an audio visualizer does...but I can't guarantee that will work. This would work best with MIDI-generated, single instrument songs. Here is a tutorial on visualizers.
A second approach may be to actually convert MIDI files directly. Again, I can't guarantee it will work, but it would theoretically be possible, seeing how MIDI files store data to begin with. Here's an answer on playing MIDI files, to get you started. Consider looking through their class.
However, the "easiest" approach would be to come up with some sort of system by which you store the note values for a song. You can manually enter the values in an array, or in a data file (such as XML) that you can load.
I put "easiest" in quotes because you'd have to account for a LOT of information - not just note values, but note duration, rhythm, and rests.
Anyway, those are just a few ideas to get you started. Good luck!
I have an old SWF project file which is a series of png sequence to produce a 3D tour of numerous stadiums (If you can get it to load http://tinyurl.com/7h2zpcb). When I initially created it I never intended it to be published on the web (it was a university project) however I now would quite like to show it on the internet. The structure is of a main timeline with 4 stadiums each with a png sequence, then, when clicking on one of the stadiums, 4 more png sequences. The only problem is that it is all in one file and is over 12mb, plus has no pre-loader.
It is written in AS3 and is rather complicated as I used movie names and trimming to have reusable functions. It does however have global variables already set-up if this could help.
I have 2 questions. First, is there an easy method of separating out the project movies to 5 individual swf files. i.e main timeline, and each individual png sequence? Or will I need to copy and paste and copy assets over to each FLA file?
Secondly, would it just be easier to try using a preloaded and hoping that users wait for the project to download?
If you have any thoughts on this please give them. Is there a way to optimise the project in another way I am unaware of? As a side note there are a lot of pngs and total over 300mb when combined so I think XML is out of the question?
Thank you for your time. Any suggestions are welcome
For completeness' sake.
I did some research and tests and realised the time it would take to change the project to use any other technology would be too great for my needs. I simply just added a pre-loader to the site and saved myself a lot of extra time. When linking to the site I affix a message explaining that is for an offline installation and there may be a long load-time.
Hopefully this will help others in the future.
Thank you to Marty Wallace, shaunhusain and grapefrukt for their time and advice on this.
(The story is relevant...mostly)
So I'm over at my buddy's house playing some RE5 Gold Edition, beat the game, unlock a bunch of stuff, and then I copy the save file to my memory stick so I can take it home with me.
Of course, the save is locked to his profile so I can't play it on my PS3, even though I was there beating everything with him. Lame.
So, I've got this save file sitting on my memory stick, I want to see if I can hack it to work with my profile.
I figure if I just create 2 new saves on different profiles and do nothing else, they should be identical except for the profile information. Then I just have to replace my friend's profile info with mine, and it should work, right?
So I need a tool for diff-ing these 2 binary files so I can quickly locate the parts of the file that are different. I know there are plenty of tools for text, but what about for binary?
(Actually, there are 3 files, DATA0.DAT, PARAM.PFD, and PARAM.SFO... not sure if anyone knows anything about PS3 save files, specifically for Resident Evil 5 Gold)
Don't think it's going to be possible. Apparently the save file is "protected". All it would take to prevent me from tampering with it is if they hash the contents of the data using some unknown algorithm, and then verify the hash matches up upon load. Not sure if they're doing that, but... guess it would be kind of dumb if they weren't doing something similar.
Hex Workshop is one of the premier hex manipulation applications and it has a file compare function.
But be aware that the game may not use a straight foward data saving mechanism, you may be dealing with a custom database structure, or the data may be encrypted. Game developers typically don't make it easy to hack save files, for obvious reasons...
I thought most of compare tools can do that (like Beyond Compare which I love). For example, there is FC.exe in Windows 7 in System folder. Compares ASCII and binaries. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/159214 for some details.
check out hex workshop. most other hex editors out there should have this feature as well.
I am building a Flash AS3 application that allows users to modify images, (drag and drop, select, scale, alter saturation, etc) and then submit-save them to a server.
The user will then have the ability to log in and access these saved images via a separate admin tool in a thumbnail gallery. They can either delete an image or click a thumbnail to view it at original size.
I am architecting and building the front end only and will have design ready assets supplied.
Since I have been burned in working to fixed quote before, would appreciate ANY feedback advice on quoting this project!
Thanks in advance!
I've done a lot of estimating, and I've found that the only way I can get a reliable estimate is to break down all of the tasks and subtasks to as granular a level as I can, estimate all of those elements, and then add it up. This usually takes me several passes, and a couple of times waking up in the middle of the night.
It's time-intensive, but works out really well in at least three ways.
Obviously, the first way is that you end up with a pretty reliable estimate.
You also think of all kinds of things that you wouldn't have thought of if you hadn't sat down and wrote everything out (which is a big part of why estimates turn out to be wrong, in the first place). You also give yourself the chance to really think through your overall approach, and you end up making better decisions on things like which framework to use.
Writing everything out to the detail level helps a lot in sequencing the work you're doing with the work of other teammates. Makes it easy to see that at a given point you'll be roadblocked if you don't have an API from the server team, etc. Also helps you realize how you will potentially roadblock your teammates, and gives you the ability to deal with that.
Hope that's helpful. Making myself work hard at the estimation end of a project has really helped me be successful in the actual development aspect.
I'm building a game such as Same Game, when I have to create a new level I've just run an algorithm to fill the board with N colors, this algorithm fills the board at random, but obviously the levels generated this way are not all has a solution.
I have to make a function to resolve this problem, so the game can be played by a perfect player for ever.
I have a maximum of 6 color and a minimum of 2 and the board has a reasonable size (14x12) but can be modified.
The language is irrelevant.
EDIT: I don't need to solve the puzzle, I need to create levels that has at least one solution.
I've just check out about five different versions of the game on Ubuntu and I've found an answer you can pillage from!
Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection
I play about five of his games incessantly but preferred Same GNOME. I just loaded up his Same Game and it has the option to ensure solubility when creating custom games. Even has a customisable scoring system. It's all awfully advanced.
An exe and source code is available from the above link.
And the license is MIT (meaning you can use it freely in commercial games - but please donate something to him if you can afford it)
One method, which, I'll add, is rarely the most efficient, is to build the level in reverse.
It's fairly simple to do in this case though. You just start with nothing and add clickable groups with some randomness... I say some randomness, as you may need to add extra blocks to make sure all columns are filled.
But thinking about it, even then there's a possibility two clickable groups you add will touch each other and cause an unforeseen collapse, resulting in an unfinishable game. So this method wouldn't guarantee a solvable game.
You could have a look at the source for an open source version like Same GNOME and see how they do it (if they do it at all!)
create a "solved" board, and then change it using N valid but random backwards moves. After adding each backward move, you could run the moves forward (on a temp board) to verify a solvable puzzle.
If you can't run a verification algorithm, because of time constraints, perhaps what you need to work with is a library of puzzles. You can have a background thread generating new random puzzles all the time, and running a verification algorithm on them to check if they are valid. When a valid puzzle is found, it is added to your library of puzzles (assuming the same puzzle doesn't already exist).
Then your game just loads randomly from the library. This allows you to ensure you always have valid puzzles, but still allows you to randomly generate them and verify them without slowing down the puzzle-loading.
I think the best way is, if you generate a level randomly, I mean add 1 or more blocks at the same time to the same column, so you're gonna have some connecting blocks. Then you write a simple solving algorithm, which just solves the board till there is no more possible moves. Then you just simply try to complete the remaining part, just pushing some blocks from the top so that you have some more blocks to vanish. You continue till you finish the board.
You store the pieces you added in another matrix.
After that you just have to add the 2nd matrix to the 1st from the top. If the board is not full, you simply complete the board with blocks to start with(connecting blocks).