I'm a recent purchaser of a Pinball Browser license and this news is surprising. I expected that since you can export sounds you would be able to export videos. More importantly though I think not having that capability makes a lot of of simple changes that users will want to make impossible.

For example, one of the first things I want to do with my Jurassic Park once video support is added is to swap out the far-too-long video that plays when you start a game for another one (likely just the black Jurassic Park video). Or if not that, simply editing that video down to be much shorter. Finally, I can also imagine a number of other scenarios on my machine (and other Stern games) where people may wish to switch the video that plays when a certain event occurs for a different one that is already a part of the firmware.

Can you reconsider on not offering this feature? All three of the above scenarios I just mentioned aren't possible without export support, yet trivial to do with it. I suppose approximation of some of it could be done by offering re-linking (pointing an event to a different video), but even then that's pretty limiting.

Ah I see what you're saying. Basically manual export of single videos would likely still be possible, but that there would be no bulk export option. That would be completely fine. I don't think people should be able to bulk rip videos out of a game, but it sure would be nice to be able to take a specific video, edit it, and put it back in. Or to replace a video with another video from the same game/firmware.

One other thought I had is that if there is still some concern about being able to export the video artifacts themselves, adding a feature which allows for exporting them in a non-playable, non editable format of some kind would be a useful option. Users wouldn't be able to edit existing videos from the firmware, but we'd at least be able to easily replace one video with another from the same firmware by exporting it and then re-importing it.

Hi Oga83,

Can we get an ETA on a new version that we can use to edit sounds on recent firmwares? It’s been months now since your app was usable for this purpose.

If the video support continues to be an issue obviously people can wait, since that isn’t functionality that we’ve ever had before.

But to not be able to change sounds when you yourself have shown via screenshots in this thread that a simple fix made it work fine is kind of rough.

I get that you are excited about the Video support. I think everyone is! But at the moment the most important current feature of your app, replacing sounds, isn’t available on recent firmwares, and hasn’t been for months.

I paid $20 for a license to modify sounds on my Jurassic Park (and did so successfully on 0.95) but I can’t implement those same changes on any of the last several firmwares.

I’m working on writing up open source tools to modify .spks as a result, but your app would definitely be a whole lot easier.

Please give us an updated app that can do the sound mods as soon as you can! We can wait longer on the video if need be.

Ok. I feel pretty awful at this point. I apologize. Your software is awesome. I think I was just a bit frustrated because pretty much the moment I paid for the license and modified my first firmware with your tool (0.95 JP2) Stern released new firmwares that we couldn't work with.

If there's any way I can help, please let me know. I'm a classically trained software engineer, roughly 8 years as a SWE before I moved into management. It'd be great if there was a way for those of us so excited about being able to make changes to the firmwares could help you somehow. Thank you very much for what you do, I'm sorry Stern is trying to make things so difficult for all of us!

Is there a simple fix for a license issue? I donated $20 on Feb 3 and registered version 6.65 I believe. Today I downloaded 7.03 separately, rather than following the upgrade flow in the 6.65 version, and now neither thinks I am licensed. If I open it and hit register on the 'If you already have a license, just click here' it says 'No license file found on this machine' even though the Pinball Browser .xml file clearly shows my license string in it.

No worries, I thought, I'll just close the dialog box and hit License and put in the information again. Interestingly when that dialog opens the Token Id, License Key and the right Contrubtor Name are all populated, along with my registered email address. But when I hit register it says 'No license found.'

Not sure what I did wrong but some advice would be great. I'm a little bummed that I just donated 2.5 months ago and now can't use either the original version or the new one.

Good advice, I don't know why I didn't just PM him in the first place. He already reached out to me asking for the info he needed to fix it, pretty awesome.

I also had a feature idea for you oga83, curious what you think.

Have you considered adding CLI (command line) support to Pinball Browser? I ask because I think it could be pretty straightforward to do and would allow users to easily distribute something like 'mod packs' for a given firmware without having to redistribute the entire giant SD image file.

Basically the way it would work is that you could tell PB to take a specific modification action against an SD card image file from the command line. For example, replacing a given sound file in a firmware SD image with one that you would provide in the mod pack as a .wav or .mp3 or whatever, like:

>Pinball-Browser replaceSound -f jurassic_park_pro-1_01_0.Release.8G.sdcard.raw -i welcome_to_jp.wav -l 0xA05

You could then as a modder easily make these mod packs as essentially a .bat file with a list of PB CLI commands that you could zip up along with whatever new assets you were using, and then share on MEGA or whatever. And for the modders it would be nice because updating their mods to new firmwares would be as simple as making sure the various script locations were the same, possibly making minor tweaks to their mod script, and redistributing (or letting people know the script continues to work as-is on the new firmware).

You'd specify which version of a given table's firmware the mod pack worked with. Then a pinsider could download the .zip, grab the matching firmware image, and simply unzip the mod pack to a directory, put the firmware in it, and run the batch file to convert the stock firmware into the modified one.

Forgive me if there is a simple way to do this already. I was just thinking of how I would distribute a modified JP2 firmware without it being a huge download, and the best I could come up with was a generic .IPS patcher app and an IPS patch, but then 1) you have to tell people which IPS patcher to d/l since many don't work with huge files and 2) downloaders could use it without being licensed users of PB themselves which I'd view as a negative.