FFVII Movies not playing off CDs

[timobkg]

This is the strangest problem I've encountered yet with FFVII.  The movies will not play off of the CDs in game.  If I manually open the movies on the CDs, they play just fine.  If I copy the movies to my hard drive and change the path in the registry, they play just fine.  I can still play the game by having the movies on the hard drive, but that rather defeats the point of having CDs.

The movies used to play, but that was several months ago, and I've changed my system a lot since then, but I can't think of anything that would cause such a strange problem.

My system is as follows:
Windows XP SP2
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
AthlonXP 2600+
ATI Radeon 9800XT
(This Radeon plus the Cat 4.9s have the most beautiful FSAA I've seen in FFVII with the Riva 128 setting checked)
NEC 3500AG DVD Burner

If anyone has any ideas or advice, I would certainly appeciate it.  Hard to believe that after spending months a year ago struggling with upside-down movies, getting FSAA working properly, and using the original music from the PSX version, I get stuck on such a bizzare bug.

[Aaron]

You have tried installing the upside-down movie patch, right?  It fixes lots of problems with movie playback besides the movies being upside down.
However, since the movies play fine off the hard drive, I'm not sure if this will fix anything.

[timobkg]

I installed it several months ago, when I first started tinkering with FF7, as at that time my movies were indeed playing upside down.  Since the movies play fine in off the hard drive and off the CDs in media player (though I remember them playing upside down in media player way back when) I don't know that it would help much, but I would be glad to try installing it again.  

The only link I've found, http://ftp.eidos.com/pub/patches/final_fantasy7/ff7betap1.exe, no longer works.  I was stupid not to have kept a copy of it, like I did with all the other patch files.  If you could point me to a link, I would be glad to give it a try.

Btw, Aaron, thanks for all your help.  I can't tell you how many of my questions you've already answered through all your previous posts in this forum.

[EmperorSteele]

http://www.ff7-universe.com/Downloads/ff7moviepatch.zip

The exe is in the zip.. for some reason, my webhost wouldnt let me uplaod exes, hahaha =P

I think there may be a conflicting codec on your system. You may have to uninstall something else to get ff7 working properly again.

[Zack]

Can i ask what setting ur using to achieve a good standard of FSAA. Are you encountering much corruption?

[Aaron]

My FF7 FAQ has this link to the FF7 upside down movie patch, which still works.
http://support.eidosinteractive.com/GI/CustomerSupport/patches/PC/final_fantasy7/ff7betap1.exe

[timobkg]

Thank you both, I'll let you know if it helps after I try it.  

I used to have to use the RivaTuner FSAA hack or old Nvidia drivers to get FSAA working without gridlines.  Now I just downloaded the ATI Catalyst 4.9 drivers for my 9800XT and went into the driver settings and did a custom D3D setting of 6xAA and 16xAnsi and all the other settings set to high (leaving Temporal AA off).  I also downloaded the new FF7 exe which lets you choose hardware rendering even if you fail the 8-bit test.  I checked Nvidia for my ATI card (is it just me, or is that hillarious?) and then selected the Riva 128 setting.  It was that simple.  

The only corruption is a tiny chunk missing from the window border in the upper left corner of each window.  Using the TNT setting puts the missing chunk in, but that results in text corruption (getting little artifacts below the text).  I'd much rather have a tiny piece of the border missing (as you don't notice it after the first 5 minutes) and have perfect text clarity.  It's how FF7 was supposed to look.