Video and FF7Music Issues

[OXMMadman]

Hey guys, I recently was lended a copy of Final Fantasy VII from a friend, and I'm having some trouble with it.

The good news? Well the main game works with no glitches. The bad? Well...

Firstly, the videos. They appear very pixelated (could be a problem with FF7 PC in the first place) and also the videos have very strange colourization issues (like it looks purple, the transition from cutscene to game isn't seemless, etc). I have no idea why.

Also, I have been trying a lot to get FFVIIMusic working with it, but I simply can't. I heard a while back that replacing the character models can sometimes make it unusable (which I did as the first thing when I got it and didn't back up char.lgp ), so could that be it? And pretty much what happens with it is that either 1) The custom music is simply not placed into the game (with the older versions) or 2) It comes up with an error when I exit saying "Could not save to FF7MUSIC.INI" (with the latest version).

Also, for the FF7Music issues, I'm not dumb: I've selected the directories for it to search for music files, and I have also replaced only the prelude to check that it does replace it. What happens when I disable MIDI? No music at all.

[Aurenasek116]

First thing about videos:
They are pixelated because they are so small. Remember it's a game from 1997, the videos are in 320x240 resolution which on big, modern screens simply looks very crap.
About the weird transition and purple color, never encountered that before, could you provide a screenshot maybe?

[OXMMadman]

Yeah, I thought that might be the problem.

And also the second issue of decolourization. I think it's just me overreacting, I expected it to have a very smooth transition.

Now, any fix for the FF7Music problem? That's my main issue, as I really want to try and enjoy FF7 but because of the technology gap (I grew up with the likes of FFX) I'm finding it really difficulty to do so with the crappy MIDI.

[Aurenasek116]

Uhm, I'm using replaced models and music works just fine for me. First of all did you setup FF7music correctly? You need to make a seperate folder for the music, psf if you're using psf files from PSX and name them all correctly, or mp3 and place all mp3s there also named correctly. You also need to turn midi music completly off ingame. If you did all that I suggest first running FF7, alt-tab out of game and run FF7Music (That's what I always do because of Aali's driver)

Edit:
One last thing, for me the music doesn't kick when Cloud jumps out of the train untill the moment after beating them, only then the music starts working, thought you might wanna know that.

[OXMMadman]

I did make a separate folder for the music (called it Music and put it in the Ficedula directory to make it easier), and also I did name them correctly (well I only replaced a couple of songs to check that it actually works). I'll try again, though.

And as I said the earlier versions of FF7Music work, but I try to run the latest version of FF7Music it says "cannot write to MUSIC.INI". Know the reason for it?

Edit: I just gave it a try and waited until after the first battle. Still nothing (this is with the midi.lgp file removed from the data folder).

[Grimmy]

What OS are you running.

Vista can have issues.

[OXMMadman]

I am using Windows XP.

[Aurenasek116]

You said you named the folder music. Did you chose proper "Profile" for the music though? It's under "Files" tab in FF7Music. Another thing, did you add path to your "music" folder in "Paths to search for music files" also under "Files" tab in FF7Music? Those two are crucial.

[OXMMadman]

Yes and yes.

And before you guys probably ask, it has located the Ficedula library and FF7 fine.

Also, I just tried to run the game with a profile with almost the entirety of the music replaced (except for maybe 5 tracks), and FF7Music was installed correctly with the correct directories selected for looking for the music. The problem?

Doesn't work. Again.

[OXMMadman]

My friend gave me a copy of the game again so I could reinstall it, and afterwards I found it working fine. I reinstalled the NPC Reconstruction mod and it works fine, and the videos had a more seemless transition to game world this time around. FF7Music also worked fine.

But a new problem has arisen.

Whenever I start up the game, the minute the train stops, Jessy jumps out and kicks the guard the game crashes with an abrupt music stop. I'm assuming this has something to do with FF7Music.

Fixes?

[OXMMadman]

Well I got FF7Music working...

But ANOTHER problem has popped up. The game now randomly crashes on me.

Any fixes?

Edit: Got it working myself (again). All I did was set ff7.exe's priority to High in Task Manager for about 30 seconds, then put it back to normal (was making FF7Music stutter and lag a lot). It didn't crash after that.

Thanks for offering to help, guys.