Navigation

================================

* Index [Index.txt]

* Readme [Readme.txt]

* GUI [GUI.txt]

* Netplay [Netplay.txt]

* Advanced Usage [Advanced.txt]

1. Movie Dumping

2. Configuration Files

3. Debugger

4. KitchenSync

5. Command-Line

* Games [Games.txt]

* FAQ [FAQ.txt]

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* Getting Support [Support.txt]

* History [History.txt]
 * About [About.txt]

* License [License.txt]

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* NSRT Guide: [http://zsnes-docs.sf.net/nsrt]

* ZSNES Home Page: [ZSNES.com]

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~ Advanced Usage

================================================================================

This page documents the advanced features of ZSNES, probably not useful for most

end users.

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1. Movie Dumping

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Please note that ZSNES does not support real-time video encoding. ZSNES only

encodes existing ZMV (ZSNES movie) files. Refer to the GUI page [GUI.txt] for

instructions on recording movies.

All instructions in this section assume that you are using the default settings

of the zmovie.cfg file. If you are smart enough to edit zmovie.cfg, you had
better be smart enough to dump movies with whatever new settings you've created.

You can dump video output alone, audio output alone, both at the same time (to

separate files), or both to the same file (merged). If you choose to dump audio

output, you can choose to dump that audio output uncompressed or compressed to

MP3. Both uncompressed and compressed audio can be merged with the video.

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About Video Encoding

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Video encoding requires MEncoder [http://www.mplayerhq.hu].

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About Audio Encoding

------------

Audio encoding requires LAME [http://lame.sourceforge.net]. Currently, Windows

users *must* use this fixed LAME build [http://nsrt.edgeemu.com/lame.zip] due to

a bug in the official versions.

You have a choice of dumping audio either in uncompressed PCM format with WAV

header, or compressed as MP3. ZSNES uses LAME [http://lame.sourceforge.net] for

MP3, so you can expect high-quality audio, given the bit rate.

When dumping audio to a separate file (not merged with video), audio compressed

to MP3 will be about 6% of the size of the same uncompressed PCM audio.

---------
Dumping a Movie

---------

1. Place your MEncoder (mencoder.exe) and LAME (lame.exe) binaries in the same

directory as ZSNES. Alternatively, configure your PATH environment variable

to include the directories where MEncoder and LAME are installed.

2. Start ZSNES and load a game.

3. Open the Movie Options dialog. (Misc Menu->Movie Opt).

4. Make sure to select the correct movie slot, depending on which movie slot

you used to record a ZMV.

5. Select the Dumping tab, and configure the Video Options and Audio Options

to your liking [GUI.txt].

6. Hit the Start button.

7. ZSNES will then exit the GUI and start playing back the previously recorded

movie. If you chose to encode the video and/or audio output, you will see a

console window appear, showing the progress of encoding. Don't worry if

ZSNES slows down while playing back the movie; it needs to do this because

the encoding process takes a lot of processor time.

8. ZSNES will indicate when the movie has finished playback (and encoding).

You can now look in your ZSNES directory for the newly created file(s).

Note: ZSNES does not create an uncompressed temporary file and then encode it.

Instead, the output stream is directly encoded. The only output files will be

the finished, compressed files. Because ZSNES must encode the output stream as

it is generated, ZSNES may delay the output of new frames of video/audio to

give more time to MEncoder/LAME to compress the current frame. This means that

you should *not* worry if you see the playback of your movie slow down while

ZSNES is dumping it. The dumped file(s) will play back at full speed!