BGChanges?

Hi,

First off. I love the program and plan to make a paypal donation as soon as I can. I used to be in the PIU and SM scene a long time ago. So I'm back trying to play catch up and learn how to do this again.

My issues is with trying to alter when a video starts for one of my songs. I did some research and found that altering #BGCHANGES:0.000 is supposed to start the video either earlier or later depending on what number you use. However I tried many iterations and even a minus sign (#BGCHANGES:-4.600) and it didn't seem to make a difference. The video seems to start at the same time everytime. GRRRR

I downloaded SM 5 beta 4. Any ideas. Once again love the program!

So here's what I've figured out about the bg changes string from reading the code. I might be wrong on some points. I'll have to look into things a bit, but I suspect that the second file and color string values are only used by certain effects and transitions.
It's 11 values separated by =. Each value is optional, as long as all the ones that appear before it are there. So if only the first value needs to be set, that's all that needs to be there. If the 7th needs to be set, 1 through 6 must be there too.

1. start beat
2. file or folder name
3. play rate (Hellrazor confirmed that this arg is broken right now)
4. Backward compatible transition type. CrossFade is used if this is not 0.
5. Backward compatible effect flag. StretchRewind is used if this is not 0.
6. Backward compatible effect flag. StretchNoLoop is used if this is not 0.
7. Name of the effect file to use. The BackgroundEffects folder will be searched for a match.
8. Name of the second file, not sure what this is used for.
9. Name of the transition file to use. The BackgroundTransitions folder will be searched for a match.
10. Color string in either "1.0^0.5^0.75^0.25" or "#ff7fcf3f" form. The fourth channel is optional. (no, I don't know why it uses ^ instead of ,)
11. Second color string, same format.

With that said, I'm going to do some research and see if the start beat is being ignored the way the play rate is.

Hey Kyzentun,

Were you able to come up with anything? I have learned to use a video editor program to make the videos shorter or longer to fit the music. I just wanted to confirm that messsing with #BGchanges does not affect when the video starts in Stepmania 5? Did it work in earlier versions like 3.9?

I set the start beat to 60 and the video didn't start until beat 60, so that part works just fine.

When adust the start beat to 60, will the steps still be in sync? can you tell me which setting in the sm you are changing?

Changing the BGChanges line has no effect on when the steps start.
Here's what I did:
I put this line in to make the video start on beat 60:
#BGCHANGES:60.000=Cheat Code for Happiness.avi=1.000=0=0=0=StretchNoLoop====
;

Then when I played the file, I saw that the video started on beat 60.