Movies Aren't Working

Hi, I've been lurking here for a long time and never registered because whenever I need help, I've always been able to find the answer somewhere on here.

When I had Arcanum installed on a Windows XP desktop, everything has worked fine. Since I no longer have that computer, I installed Arcanum onto a Windows7 64bit laptop. Here's my problem: the movies aren't working. It actually doesn't bother me much, since I can easily just watch them on youtube, but I really want to see the slideshow at the end of the game that tells you what happened in Arcanum.

I've updated my video driver and have the patches installed. Does anyone know what I should do now to get the movies to work? Does the slideshow at the end even count as a movie? If it is not a movie, then problem solved, but if it is, I'd like to be able to see it.

 

The ending slideshow isn't a movie. Why would it be one?

Anyway, the game uses Bink Video for movies. It should be compatible with pretty much any system. Never heard of such an issue before.

 

Okay that's good. Good thing there's youtube.

 

You can also try downloading RAD Video Tools and watching the movies outside of the game. They're stored in \modules\Arcanum\movies.

But I'm really curious as to the origin of this bug. Do other games with the Bink clips also have this problem? It's a very common format.

 

I just fired up Knights of the Old Republic 2 and the movies worked fine, so I don't know what's wrong.

I've uninstalled and re-installed Arcanum a few times with and without the patches and the movies still didn't play right. The audio works fine, but the picture will freeze within the first frame.

It's weird. I just did a ctrl+PrntScrn of the intro movie with the magic warrior and the knight with a revolver, and when I pasted it into Paint, the knight's image showed up instead of the what actually appears, which is a grayish picture of the red magical guy.

 

Does replacing binkw32.dll with the one included in KOTOR2 fix the problem?

 

Replacing old binkw32.dll with a new one won't help, or even worse, it may cause the game won't start at all, because of missing functions (or different size of function's parameter list). So backup the original .dll before replacing it.

You can also try using BikMod library:
http://tools.game-alive.com/forums/view ... p?f=4&t=10

It (also) allows you to use newer bink libraries in older games, and it also have a debug log, so you can see if something went wrong.

 

Replacing it did cause the game not to start like Crypton said.

I tried the BikMod, but that didn't seem to fix the movies either.

Thanks for both of your help though.

 

Well, and can you at least post the debug log file? it should be called binkw32.log, or something like that.

I might be able to find out what is wrong with the movies from it :thumbup:

Also, don't forget to restore the original binkw32.dll, and try to change a screen resolution to 800x600 (or 1024x768, or any 4:3), it might also help.

 

I can't find any .log files. The only files in the zip were a .cfg, a .dll, and two .txt files.

And the game has always been set to 800x600.

 

There should be file binkw32.log, in Arcanum game directory, where you installed it, as it's generated after you launch the game. Do you run the game with admin rights?

I don't mean game, I mean your screen resolution on your laptop. Does it have a widescreen display? :thumbup:

 

I changed the resolution of my laptop to 800x600 and it didn't help.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/sph2er2dw ... inklog.txt
Here's the log I think

 

Thanks for the log file. The problem is not in bink library, as it loads and plays the movies correctly.

Problem is in the game, or drivers. Try to reinstall (or install again to different location) the game, but don't install any patches, and run it. If the videos are still not working, try to install official 1.0.7.4 patch, and run it again.

If it doesn't help, then you could try to run the game in VirtualPC, VirtualBox or something similar.

Nothing else I could think of... :???: