FCEUX Movie File format

designed by: Zeromus

FCEUX uses a new movie file format - .fm2.

This differs from the previous FCE Ultra movie format (.fcm) in the following ways:

• It is text based; allowing easy movie editing/splicing
• An imbedded GUID so FCEUX can tell if a savestate belongs to a movie file
• Movies recorded from Start (Power-on) no longer have a redundant savestate
• Contains mouse input for recording the Zapper & Arkanoid Paddle

Format

FM2 is ASCII plain text.  It consists of several key-value pairs followed by an input log section.

The input log section can be identified by its starting with a | (pipe).

The input log section terminates at EOF.

Newlines may be \r\n or \n

Key-value pairs consist of a key identifier, followed by a space separator, followed by the value text.

Value text is always terminated by a newline, which the value text will not include.

The value text is parsed differently depending on the type of the key.

The key-value pairs may be in any order, except that the first key must be version.

Integer keys (also used for booleans, with a 1 or 0) will have a value that is a simple integer not to exceed 32bits

- version (required) - the version of the movie file format; for now it is always 3

- emuVersion (required) - the version of the emulator used to produce the movie

- rerecordCount (optional) - the rerecord count

- palFlag (bool) (optional) - true if the movie uses pal timing

- NewPPU (bool) (optional) - true if the movie uses New PPU

- fourscore (bool) (*note C) - true if a fourscore was used

- FDS (bool) (optional) - true if movie was recorded on a Famicom Disk System (FDS) game

- port0, port1 (*note C) - indicates the types of input devices. Supported values are:

    SI_GAMEPAD = 1,

    SI_ZAPPER = 2

- port2 (required) - indicates the type of the FCExp port device which was attached. Supported values are:

    SIFC_NONE = 0

Header

String keys have values that consist of the remainder of the key-value pair line. As a consequence, string values cannot contain newlines.

- romFilename (required) - the name of the file used to record the movie

- comment (optional) - simply a memo.

• by convention, the first token in the comment value is the subject of the comment.
• by convention, subsequent comments with the same subject will have their ordering preserved and may be used to approximate multi-line comments.
• by convention, the author of the movie should be stored in comment(s) with a subject of: author

Example:

• comment author adelikat

- subtitle (optional) - a message that will be displayed on screen when movie is played back (unless Subtitles are turned off, see Movie options).

• by convention, subtitles will begin with the word "subtitle"
• by convention, an integer value will proceed which will indicate the frame that the subtitle will be displayed
• by convention, a string of text will follow which will be the string displayed

Example:

• subtitle 1000 Level Two

At frame 1000 the words "Level Two" will be displayed on the screen

- guid (required) a unique identifier for a movie, generated when the movie is created, which is used when loading a savestate to make sure it belongs to the current movie.

GUID keys have a value which is in the standard guide format: 452DE2C3-EF43-2FA9-77AC-0677FC51543B

- romChecksum (required) - the MD5 hash of the ROM which was used to record the movie

- savestate (optional) - a fcs savestate blob, in case a movie was recorded from savestate

Hex string keys (used for binary blobs) will have a value that is like 0x0123456789ABCDEF...

Input log

The input log section consists of lines beginning and ending with a | (pipe).

The fields are as follows, except as noted in note C.

|c|port0|port1|port2|

Field c is a variable length decimal integer which is a bit field corresponding to miscellaneous input states which are valid at the start of the frame. Current values for this are:

• 1 = Soft Reset
• 2 = Hard Reset (Power)
• 4 = FDS Disk Insert
• 8 = FDS Disk Select

The format of port0, port1, port2 depends on which types of devices were attached.

SI_GAMEPAD:

• the field consists of eight characters which constitute a bit field.
• any character other than ' ' or '.' means that the button was pressed.
• by convention, the following mnemonics will be used in a column to remind us of which button corresponds to which column: RLDUTSBA (Right, Left, Down, Up, sTart, Select, B, A)

SI_ZAPPER:

• XXX YYY B Q Z

XXX: %03d, the x position of the mouse

YYY: %03d, the y position of the mouse

B: %1d, 1 if the mouse button is pressed; 0 if not

Q: %1d, an internal value used by the emulator's zapper code (this is most unfortunate..)

Z: %d, a variable-length decimal integer; an internal value used by the emulator's zapper code (this is even more unfortunate..)

SIFC_NONE:

• the field must always be empty.

---

Notes:

A. There is no key-value pair that indicates the length of the movie. This must be read by scanning the input log and counting the number of lines.

B. All movies start from power-on, unless a savestate key-value is present.

C.

If a fourscore is used, then port0 and port1 are irrelevant and ignored.

The input types must all be gamepads, and the input log will be in the following format:

• {player1  player2  player3  player4}

|c|RLDUTSBA|RLDUTSBA|RLDUTSBA|RLDUTSBA|port2|

If a fourscore is not used, then port0 and port1 are required.

D. The emulator uses these framerate constants

 - NTSC: 1008307711 /256/65536 = 60.099822938442230224609375

 - PAL : 838977920  /256/65536 = 50.00698089599609375

E. The author of this format is curious about what people think of it. Please let him know!

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