You should be using Chad's ROM version for your recordings. He changed some values, for instance 25M is displayed on chopper rescue screens for successful hit instead of 20M, so if you happen to be using that part of the frame for masking a keyframe it would affect the hash value I assume. Probably others as well. I also know he made some screens display that previously did not, so you probably would miss them for colorizing.

My display version is A4.00.

That's weird. Mine is 4.01

That's the CPU ROM Version. Look at the display version during bootup.

Duh. I'm dumb.

I don't have a "Start Recording" anywhere - I have a "Signal Enhancer" and "Create Dumpfile" checkbox in the lower left corner. The "Create Dumpfile" words are red-highlighted when I check that box, which I assume means it is recording, but I don't get any resultant txt file anywhere. The instructions say that you should be able to change the palette colors and see the result on the DMD, but it does not change when I do this so I evidently do not have communication between the PC and the controller board established. I am using version 2.53 of Pin2DMD.exe which is the latest version (at least when I was messing around with this a week or 2 ago) - maybe I need a different version for the XL?. I've tried it several times with no success. The only thing that you said that I do not understand is "unblocked the .dll files". I copied all the files to the PC - is there something I need to do to unblock them?

Hey Rappel, I sent you a message on Facebook, PayPal, and pinside. I can't call international numbers without cost. Can you reply on any of those platforms?

I think if you reply to my Facebook message I can call on there. I'm simply asking for the status of my order.

OK, I'll give it another shot tomorrow. Something came up I need to take care of right now. I'm running Windows 7 Professional.

It works! It was a driver problem. I had to use the Zadig utility to install the winusb driver. That tidbit of information would have saved me a lot of grief if it had been mentioned anywhere in the http://pin2dmd.com/tool/ page instructions. The github depository states that the PIN2DMD is registered automatically in windows as a winusb device - which wasn't true, at least not in my case. Anyway, thanks for the missing clue and this should help others avoid frustration in the future.

Lucky1 - I will make you a recording of what you are asking for above. Can I upload the dumpfile to the google drive or how shall we proceed?

UPDATE: Dumpfile is complete. Looks like I need permissions set to upload in to the google link?

Thanks. Already read the instructions from rappelbox and made a recording on my JP which I can open in pin2dmd editor. Now the hard part ......

Will do. I also have a question, and this is meant as constructive criticism. Don't you think the art editing window should be as big as possible in the editor? Maybe something like pictured below (before and after). It sure would make it a lot easier to colorize frames. Seems like so much wasted space in the current GUI. I know there is the zoom feature, but it is obviously better to see the whole picture as large as possible. Seems like this would be a very easy change to make to the editor. Am I missing something?

Better 2 (resized).jpg
Better1 (resized).jpg

I didn't see improvement on any of the scenes.

I PM'd steve45 so we'll see what he says with regard to the editor re-sizing suggestion.

EDIT: Wow - quick response from @steve45:
"Of course this could be done. Not sure when I will have time though. I'll give you an update when I improve the layout."

I tried my hand at colorizing a couple of frames. They turned out OK I guess. Now I want to share these scenes and palettes with you so you can key them into the master source files. Would I just "Save single Animation" and "Save Palette" for each of them, then send the resulting files to you for import and keyframe assignment - is that how the process works?

pasted_image (resized).png

pasted_image (resized).png

Enhanced the editor layout, so that preview makes use of all remaining space. Hope it fits on everybodys screen.

Find the new version here: bintray.com/sker65/pin2dmd/Editor2/latest#files

Thx Steve

Pin2dmd_Editor-new-layout (resized).jpg

Some things look better now.
1. Chopper Rescue does not seem to be bothered by a ball save anymore - I would say it is fixed.
2. Tidal Wave intro appears to be working correctly now! There are some minor coloring issues during the scene but they have been there all along and you can see them in previous videos - notice the coloring for the girl on the jet ski is slightly out of sync sometimes. Also, the little guy running in front of the wave - his shorts are not colored sometimes.
3. CPR still goes in and out of mono blue, but it doesn't seem to do it as much as it used to.

These are the same:
4. Ball locks 1 and 2 still go to mono blue at the end.
5. Diver Trapped colors are still affected by ball save screen.

The correct way to merge is what really I'm really trying to figure out because in a community project like this, it would great if people could create and upload their own colorized scenes (including palettes and keyframes) to an online storage location where other people could view them, and if they like them, download them and merge them into their own project. So people can share, trade, pick and choose, and personalize their own machine to their liking. I thought this was kind of the whole purpose of the open source format. So, I thought maybe someone had already created a process for how to do this, but I can't find it documented anywhere. I have been told, in general, that it should be possible to do but I haven't actually seen it done yet. I tried to do it myself, but the scene mode changed (from color mask to replace) when I merged it and when I tried to import a new palette, it ended up replacing (deleting) an existing palette. So, I was hoping that you could do it and then tell us how to do it correctly. I didn't do a keyframe on these because I couldn't find anything in the menu for "exporting" or "saving" a keyframe.

I hope it fits everyone's screen, too. It fits mine perfectly! Thank you for the quick response Steve. Now I don't have to squint anymore!

pasted_image (resized).png

Wow. Some great progress with the editor tonight. It has helped me compelete my colorization to what I am able to do. I still haven't figured out how to do the scenes with dynamic scoring or masking. I also, could use some help with making keyframes and finally uploading it back into my DMD.
This new editor sure helped colorize faster and find missed or skipped areas!!

Original colorizing effort (which I think looked pretty poor)
pasted_image (resized).png
New pasting of actual graphic (which I think look pretty great)
pasted_image (resized).png

Thanks for all the great work.

Here is a video of the CPR mode, and I will email you the Pin2DMD recording of the same session. The blue mono mode doesn't trigger off the ball saver now, it just comes on/off during the scene for some reason. Anyway, the entire scene is recorded here. Hopefully an easy fix.

There are many transition frames between scenes that need to be colored to give it a polished look. Also, don't forget the match sequence - the temp is ok, but it needs the colorized version to make it pop.

CPR works. Diver trapped still changing colors.

Here's the video. Sending corresponding pinball recording to your email.

Verified!

I saw various upgrade and firmware topics but did not see anything about how to actually do it. I just bought a Baywatch with the a colorDMD (looks too be mid 2017). The files did not work for me, is there a place to get eh most up to date firmware for the Sega Pin2DMD?

Thanks

John

https://github.com/lucky01/PIN2DMD/blob/master/firmware/latest/CUSTOM/pin2dmd_XL.bin

Thanks! One last question. Can I flash the firmware with everything connected to dmd or should I unplug some of the connections from the pinball machine? Looks like it needs to be powered at least. Sorry for the slight derail, excited to take a look at the colorization.

John

You can flash with everything hooked up.

You are aware that this is a project based on pin2dmd and that these files don’t work on colordmd?

Did I miss the unveiling of this feature?

Nice work on the scenes you did sudsy7. Is anybody currently working on the remaining uncolored scenes? Or able to get said scenes over to Malenko?

I'll be taking a look at the scenes this weekend, hopefully get them all done.

Very nice work. I donated for the effort. I did notice some color change during transitions (it might actually be intentional). I can take some video tonight.

Chad H ROM + Pin2DMD really take this machine up a notch and it wasn't too bad to begin with.

John

Thanks to Rappelbox sudsy7 and lucky1 I've got mine in and working. Just wanting to confirm files on the Google drive in the first post are the most up to date colorization. Also...bump!