A few ZMV questions

[casualsax3]

Already searched and tried the doc's to no avail. Here we go.
I work a lot and I need stuff going in the background to keep me going, so lately I've turned to SPC's which are sweet. I'm looking at going with some ZMV's though. I think I would like to listen to a complete walkthrough of Crono Trigger for example, to try and peg what's going on with just my ears. A few questions.
1. The movie is obviously MASSIVE, do I need to worry about it getting out of sync?
2. How can I save my progress in watching it. I'd like to be able to stop, save my progress, and pick up the next day. Is that possible, and if it is, how would I go about loading it the next day?
3. If that's possible, could saving progress regularly help prevent sync issues?
4. Can you fast foward? I would suspect this is out of the question but I figured I'd ask
Thanks in advance

[grinvader]

1. The movie is obviously MASSIVE, do I need to worry about it getting out of sync?

I bet this will be the biggest issue.

2. How can I save my progress in watching it. I'd like to be able to stop, save my progress, and pick up the next day. Is that possible, and if it is, how would I go about loading it the next day?

You can't do that. You're looking at a movie, without any saving feature in it.
You can, however, start looking at it, then pause it for a while by pressing Escape (even though it's not recommended - can cause timing issues...)
Or, once you're done for the day, stop playing it, then reload another day, and use Turbo to go quickly to where you left. In turbo, 1 hour is spent in ~6 minutes.

3. If that's possible, could saving progress regularly help prevent sync issues?

As said above, not possible.

4. Can you fast foward? I would suspect this is out of the question but I figured I'd ask

As mentionned above, you can fast forward during replay without breaking sync.

[jdratlif]

edit: my entire reply was based on the fact I thought you were creating a movie, so don't listen to me, listen to grinvader. (sorry, my bad).

Already searched and tried the doc's to no avail. Here we go.
I work a lot and I need stuff going in the background to keep me going, so lately I've turned to SPC's which are sweet. I'm looking at going with some ZMV's though. I think I would like to listen to a complete walkthrough of Crono Trigger for example, to try and peg what's going on with just my ears. A few questions.
1. The movie is obviously MASSIVE, do I need to worry about it getting out of sync?

I've only had sync issues when using a different version of ZSNES with the movie (e.g. timing issues in the different ZSNES cores).

But I've never watched a REALLY long movie like an entire CT walkthru would be. The longest was 1:20+ Super Metroid speed run. But even these were split-up.

2. How can I save my progress in watching it. I'd like to be able to stop, save my progress, and pick up the next day. Is that possible, and if it is, how would I go about loading it the next day?

Do you mean recording it, or saving your progress from a movie that's playing?

In the former, you can use the in-game save. Or stop the movie record (going to the menu I believe will do this, or just go there and hit stop). Then you can use savestates, too. I think savestates will cancel record, but I'm no 100% on that.

In the latter, once you stop playing the movie, the game is just like normal. ZSNES movies are just key presses and timing. So it's playing the game, just like a player piano plays music. It's not really a movie. So you can stop the playback and save any way you choose.

3. If that's possible, could saving progress regularly help prevent sync issues?

I would make regular saves and use different movie slots, but that's just because if you want to see a particular part, it's a long way to watch, and because it's not a movie, you can't FF very effectively. But see more below on that.

I don't know if sync issues will happen with a large movie. My feeling is no, but I don't know how big of a movie anyone has ever made.

4. Can you fast foward? I would suspect this is out of the question but I figured I'd ask

I have always been able to successfully FF in Super Metroid speed runs, but it's not a great method. Obviously, there is no rewind, and other people have mentioned sync issues with FF. So FF may work, and it may not.

I've had success with it. You might not. That's why I would break up the movies into multiple parts. At LEAST 10 (the most you can have without doing file renaming), but maybe more for such a large game like ct.

[Kagerato]

I recommend breaking the walkthrough into multiple ZMVs, preferably a bunch of them. Very few people are willing to sit through several hours of gameplay at a time. If you break the ZMV into parts, the viewer can comfortably display them one at a time (one per hour, one per day, whatever). In the case of a single enormous ZMV, he/she is essentially forced to use the fast forward function.

[grinvader]

Am I the only one who understood he just want to LISTEN to movies ?
He's not gonna make one ! He's not even gonna watch it !

... -_-

[jdratlif]

Am I the only one who understood he just want to LISTEN to movies ?
He's not gonna make one ! He's not even gonna watch it !

... -_-

Yep. I totally missed that. I knew he wanted bg stuff, but I thought he was going to create the CT movie himself. I didn't notice that "listen" word..

[casualsax3]

Thanks for the feedback. It doesn't look like I'll be doing CT, though that would have been sweet. In addition to the fact that I wouldn't be able to save my progress, it was done with version .9xx, which is pre window mode so I couldn't even run it in the background.

[frankbrodie]

That Chrono Trigger movie that you refer to does work in the latest ZSNES (I've got the latest WIP)

I don't know if it goes out of synch or not. But it definitely starts ok, and plays fine for the few minutes I was watching it.

Is there any way of checking how long the movie is?
It was created as said with ZSNES 0.9 something, and it's 83+ Mb

I might get round to watching a bit more of it tomorrow.
But I thought I had read on here that the latest versions of ZSNES were getting better at coping with old(er) ZMV files?

[Nach]

FYI, what grinvader said mostly applies for old ZMVs.

The new ZMV format is much more flexable. You're able to add a chapter as you're watching a movie, and you can seek to chapters when watching a movie.