Black Cinematics

Drayman

Hi there,
after 20 years I decided its time to start Freelancer again ^^

Installation was flawless but sadly after the start the cinematics are black. I can hear the sound but thats all.

I installed the Freelancer HD Edition and apllied all the fixes there.
Bad news: Same result (except its no longer black but i see my desktop and can hear the sounds. )
After the cinematics are over or I skip them, I enter the game and i can see everything again. The storyparts in the gameengine work fine. It seems just happen for the WMVs.

Help would be appreciated

Bolte

That doesn’t sound right, the cinematics ingame (except for the ones before the main menu) aren’t WMV, they are in-game animation scripts.

From where did you source the game?

Drayman

Hi,
I have the original. But maybe you misread it. The ingame ones work fine.

Bolte

Do you happen to be on Windows that is an N version?

Drayman

Its Windows 7 64bit

Bolte

@Drayman said in Black Cinematics:

Its Windows 7 64bit

There are different versions of Windows 7 64-bit, for example, home, pro, N etc. Windows N doesn’t have the Windows Media Player installed along with the needed codecs.

Based on what you’ve said the intro video files do not play video but play sound, this is tell tale signs your Windows do not have the correct video decoders to playback the video.

Bolte

You can look at your system information either through system in control panel, or by doing Win key + R and type msinfo32 and press OK.

Drayman

Its Win 7 64 bit pro.
But I dont think its connected to my Windows-Version because I use this PC for playing older games for my channel all the time. And the cutscenes usually work. It seems to be a special problem between my PC and Freelancer

Bolte

Any situation in which audo plays but video doesn’t is a missing decoder for the type of video.

But, with default Windows Home/Pro etc these videos will play if the game is installed from CD. So infact this IS something with your Windows install otherwise nobody would have been able to play the videos without extra steps back in the day.

Freelancer uses WMV2 which is a Windows Media Video decoder, which is what is making me think you are on an N edition of Windows.

Try installing this.
https://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/Media-Feature-Pack-for-Windows-7-N-and-Windows-7-KN.shtml

Drayman

When I try to install this:
This update is not suitable for this computer

And I am pretty sure I have the pro version.

But what can be (because I mainly play old games on this PC) that a workaround for another game in the past changed something in the standard codecs or installed alternative ones. So I need to find proper ones that make these work.

Bolte

If that doesn’t work, try the basic only version of this:

https://www.codecguide.com/download_k-lite_codec_pack_standard.htm

It has an option during install to fix broken codecs also.

Drayman

Finally i got it working.
At first it didnt change anything. But in the Tweak Tool I used “Reset Media Foundation” and after that it worked.
Thank you very much for your help

Bolte

No problem