Movie Cart

[+bent_pin]

On 8/15/2024 at 3:31 PM, rbairos said:

Okay, for anyone interested, I'm all setup again.
I'll be putting some more up for sale tonight  7:00 EDT
https://www.tindie.com/products/lodefmode/moviecart-atari-2600/

They always go too fast. Very disheartening. Even with Tindie notification, they are always gone before I can get there.

[+rbairos]

3 minutes ago, bent_pin said:

They always go too fast. Very disheartening. Even with Tindie notification, they are always gone before I can get there.

Im hoping to put some out in a week or so, but will announce the specific time here again a couple days before.
 

[+bent_pin]

2 minutes ago, rbairos said:

Im hoping to put some out in a week or so, but will announce the specific time here again a couple days before.
 

Cool!

[+Atari_Warlord]

20 hours ago, rbairos said:

Playing multiple files on one card:

Many of you have asked for this, so I've made a patch that should give you that functionality.
After this update, press SELECT on the console to cycle between files.

The update process is very untested, but here goes.
Worst case, it can always be un-installed.
Worst worst case, contact me!

IMPORTANT: If you have one of the very early betas please do not install it. (3 or 4 of you, who were early testers).
This patch should work on anything sold from the Tindie store.
If unsure PM me.

Thanks very much!


INSTALLING A NEW PATCH:

Note: Installing a patch will replace any existing patches, so make sure you have the latest.
Select the update.frm file you require and place it on an sd-card by itself with no other files.
Insert it into the Moviecart, and insert the MovieCart into the Atari console.
Power up the Atari.
It should only take a few seconds  to update.
If successfully updated, the LED will flash 22..22..22..
If unsuccessful it will flash 33..33..33..
Turn off the Atari and remove the MovieCart PCB.

FACTORY RESET (Remove any patches) :

If a patch needs to be removed, use a thin wire with both ends exposed.
A metallic sandwich twist tie, with the paper removed from each end works well.

Remove any SD cards from the MovieCart PCB.
Insert one end through the hole labelled 'PGD' and the other through the hole labelled 'GND'.
These are holes 2 and 3 of a five hole section in the upper left hand side of the MovieCart PCB.
Verify they are labelled 'PGD' and 'GND'.
Verify the ends of the wire aren't making contact with any other points on the PCB.

Insert the MovieCart PCB (with the wire in place) into the Atari, and power up the Atari.
After factory reset, it will flash 44..44..44..
Turn off the Atari and remove the wire.
It should now power up as originally delivered.

update.frm 1.16 kB · 6 downloads

 Thanks for this additional functionality, I was able to do the update this morning.  My cart is in a case where the lights aren't visible and after a few seconds there were 4 bars that appeared on the right side of the screen.

 

The first movies I tested were the original Star War trilogy. I was able to select each movie although I couldn't detect a method of what order they were selected in.  It did not appear to be by name, file date, or copy order.  I had to cycle through 3 times before episode 4 played for the first time. 

 

Not sure what is possible, but would love a couple enhancements.  Select movies in Alphabetical order, this would allow putting numbers in the names to create the playlist .  Maybe the difficulty switches could be used to indicate play one file vs multiple and play once vs looping.

 

Future dystopian movies are one of my favorites and I was telling a friend last week a fun idea would be that after most technology was destroyed the only way in the future to watch movies or listen to music would be on the 2600. 

 

 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

18 hours ago, rbairos said:

Yah that will be fine.
The ones I'm worried about were the first 3 or 4 I shipped out individually for testing before April 7th, that didn't yet work with 7800's and PAL Ataris. (video looked scrambled, audio kinda worked).


 

Pretty sure I'm one of those earlier test units but I think you sent me one of the more final versions too as the official test before selling them? Problem is, I recall they look the same so I don't really know which is which at this point since they both contained FW on them that works.

 

[+rbairos]

4 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

Pretty sure I'm one of those earlier test units but I think you sent me one of the more final versions too as the official test before selling them? Problem is, I recall they look the same so I don't really know which is which at this point since they both contained FW on them that works.

 

Your right, one is the release candidate, and one is an earlier beta.
Does one have a little white sticker on it with "11" or "1-"  that one you can upgrade.
If you do the wrong one, you can reset the patch updates with the little wire trick.
I think I may make that a tactile button next version, if its cheap enough.
 

[+rbairos]

5 hours ago, Atari_Warlord said:

 Thanks for this additional functionality, I was able to do the update this morning.  My cart is in a case where the lights aren't visible and after a few seconds there were 4 bars that appeared on the right side of the screen.

 

The first movies I tested were the original Star War trilogy. I was able to select each movie although I couldn't detect a method of what order they were selected in.  It did not appear to be by name, file date, or copy order.  I had to cycle through 3 times before episode 4 played for the first time. 

 

Not sure what is possible, but would love a couple enhancements.  Select movies in Alphabetical order, this would allow putting numbers in the names to create the playlist .  Maybe the difficulty switches could be used to indicate play one file vs multiple and play once vs looping.

 

Future dystopian movies are one of my favorites and I was telling a friend last week a fun idea would be that after most technology was destroyed the only way in the future to watch movies or listen to music would be on the 2600. 

 

 

Awesome. Glad its working as intended.
The actual output on the screen during firmware update is just random unfortunately.
Are you sure movie order is not by copy order?
Can you start by doing a quick format of the sd-card, then copying them over one at a time?
Thats what I do in my testing, and it always seems to work.

Your saying the order it went through wasn't consistent?
It took several attempts to get episode 4 the first time?
Arg. That sounds like a bug.
I've just been testing with short clips.
Can you confirm?

Ultimately I'd like to make it an on-screen menu, but that will take some more work.

I like your dystopian vision! I'll be ready.
 

[+rbairos]

11 hours ago, Atari_Warlord said:

The first movies I tested were the original Star War trilogy. I was able to select each movie although I couldn't detect a method of what order they were selected in.  It did not appear to be by name, file date, or copy order.  I had to cycle through 3 times before episode 4 played for the first time. 

So I just tried myself with 8 full length movies on a 16GB and it all worked as expected.
I did format the card first, and copied them over one by one.
Can you confirm you're seeing something different?
I wonder if your Select button is double/triple triggering?  (Im testing on modded FB2, so maybe the switch response is cleaner?)

Thanks!

[+Atari_Warlord]

9 hours ago, rbairos said:

So I just tried myself with 8 full length movies on a 16GB and it all worked as expected.
I did format the card first, and copied them over one by one.
Can you confirm you're seeing something different?
I wonder if your Select button is double/triple triggering?  (Im testing on modded FB2, so maybe the switch response is cleaner?)

Thanks!

I did some more testing this morning and I believe it was the way I copied the files.

 

I tried to select all 3 movies and drag them to the card.  It only took Return of the Jedi and Star Wars.  It finished Return of the Jedi first and then Star Wars.  I then proceeded to copy The Empire Strikes Back.  At boot up it started ROTJ.  When I pressed Select it then started TESB.  The next several selects where ROTJ, TESB, ROTJ, then finally Star Wars.  Before redoing the card this morning I tested to see if it would repeat this.  It sort of did, instead of taking multiple times to play Star Wars, this time it was TESB that required 3 times through.  Anyway, the lesson learned is to copy one file at a time.

 

For my new test I chose 5 Disney movies and copied them 1 at a time.  I made sure names were out of order as well as file dates.  On boot up, every movie was selectable in the order they were copied.

 

Are there any limitations for number of movies / size of movies / card size?  Trying to figure out how much I can fit on one card.

[Bomberman94]

Documentation says:

 

„Making your own content

The movie is just a specially encoded file on the SD card, so you can encode your own using free software with a plugin I wrote. You'll need a Mac or PC to encode the files, and an SD card reader to drag them back onto the SD card. (Make sure the SD card is formatted in FAT32 format and the MVC file is no larger than 4GB.This should give you about 4-5 hour play length.)“

 

If it must be FAT32 then „normal“ formatting a SD card is with 32GB - so you can do max. 8 files with max. 4GB each and 32GB total. Correct @rbairos ?

Edited September 7 by Bomberman94

[+rbairos]

2 hours ago, Bomberman94 said:

If it must be FAT32 then „normal“ formatting a SD card is with 32GB - so you can do max. 8 files with max. 4GB each and 32GB total. Correct @rbairos ?

That's correct.
In practise, Ive found movies are less than half that max size, so you could probably get 20 or more on there:

1.7GB Jaws
1.4GB Kramer vs Kramer
1.3GB Night of the Living Dead
1.3GB Oh God
1.6GB Star Wars
1.3GB The Jerk
1.2GB West World
1.3GB What's up Doc?
 

[+rbairos]

6 hours ago, Atari_Warlord said:

I tried to select all 3 movies and drag them to the card [...] Anyway, the lesson learned is to copy one file at a time.

 

For my new test I chose 5 Disney movies and copied them 1 at a time.  I made sure names were out of order as well as file dates.  On boot up, every movie was selectable in the order they were copied.

 

Oh interesting.
I'll try copying all the movies at once next and see what happens.

SD Card:  See previous post for max files description.

EDIT:
Okay, this time I copied all 8 movies at once.
Not sure the chosen order, but it is definitely consistent.  SELECT goes through them each the same way each time.

Think it might be the switch on your console?
I'll try on my heavy sixer.

EDIT:
Heavy Sixer, Jr and 7800 all work well as expected. (Had to switch the power supply, and press the right button on the console! doh  )
 

[+Stephen]

I'm exhibiting at VCFMW19, and someone bought over their movie cart.  I finally got to see a demo of it, and now I want one more than ever.  Coincidentally, another machine I had was demoing the video player for the 8-bit Atari computers, so I got to show them that.  So cool watching colour movies on 1977 and 1979 hardware!

[+rbairos]

Worked with Atari_Warlord.

We confirmed this version now works with consoles with noisy select switches.
No more skipping 1 or 2 files when advancing to next video.


 

update.frm

[Bee]

I'm ready when more are available.

 

Thank you 

[+rbairos]

@Bee @bent_pin @Stephen

For anyone interested, I'll be putting up another batch of MovieCarts on Tindie this Saturday morning at 10am ET.
If you're looking for one, I'd be on the site around then as they tend to go pretty quickly once I put them up.

This one will have the previous patch already implemented (SELECT button to cycle between video files).
Applying the patch will have no noticeable effect either way.

Thanks for all the support!
Rob

 

[Bee]

I'll be there

[+Atari_Warlord]

A few questions about creating the files:

 

Is TouchDesigner the only program that can create the movie files? 

 

Is the MVC file actually some standard video file format with the extension changed? 

 

I was wanting to experiment to see if the audio buzzing could be reduced using Vegas Pro to create a file.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

3 hours ago, Atari_Warlord said:

A few questions about creating the files:

 

Is TouchDesigner the only program that can create the movie files? 

 

Is the MVC file actually some standard video file format with the extension changed? 

 

I was wanting to experiment to see if the audio buzzing could be reduced using Vegas Pro to create a file.

I already tested this and I'm pretty sure it is a proprietary format that @rbairos developed for this. The buzzing is largely due to the low bit rate that has to be used since we are talking about 1979 tech here and is just a compromise that is needed.  But I do find that the best option for me on the movies I've encoded was to use the audio diffusion set to 0 vs the 1 I think it defaults too?

 

[+rbairos]

3 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

I already tested this and I'm pretty sure it is a proprietary format that @rbairos developed for this. The buzzing is largely due to the low bit rate that has to be used since we are talking about 1979 tech here and is just a compromise that is needed.  But I do find that the best option for me on the movies I've encoded was to use the audio diffusion set to 0 vs the 1 I think it defaults too?

 

Yup thats right.  The format is all available in the github so technically you could make different encoders.
The problem is, picking the optimal colors is very compute intensive, so its done in parallel on the GPU.

In terms of audio, as CrossBow said, you can now set the Diffusion to zero (which trades noise for resolution basically), as well as other parameters on the Audio setting page.

Cheers.

PS. I'm all set to put the next batch up this Saturday at 10AM EDT on tindie if anyone wants to put themselves on the email waitlist, though I recommend being on the site at that time, as they disappear pretty quickly:
https://www.tindie.com/products/lodefmode/moviecart-atari-2600/

 

[+sfish]

The PDMCMP has been updated so all movies are (finally) available in NTSC and PAL. I'm hoping to get a few more movies uploaded this weekend. 🤞If anyone has a PD movie they want included, just let me know.

 

https://archive.org/details/@pdmcmp

[+Atari_Warlord]

The multi file capability has really made this cart even more fun to play with.  I've started a Bond-a-thon using the Movie Cart and was able to fit the first 18 films on a 32GB card (Dr. No through Goldeneye).  It would be nice to have some way to have it advance to the next movie using the joystick.  My preference would be a couple settings like the following:

 

1. Play one file - Default

2. Play all files - auto advance

3. Play one file on repeat

4. Play all files then repeat

 

The last two items are useful for music videos or demoing the cart.

[Bee]

Done!  - I'm in the club now.  I just need to wait for it to arrive.  I got one for my Son, I'm going to encode one of his childhood favorite movies as a birthday gift.  He is 30 now.

 

Thx

[+rbairos]

Half gone. 30 left if anyone sees this in time.
 

[JCroniger]

Update works great, thank you!!