(if no one has told you this yet becouse it has been such a long time since Eric said this...) The .movie filetype is not acctully a .movie but a .mad filetype. This is the file type most commonly used by EA for its game (says http://filext.com/) (to find the real file type and not the extension, open the file in question in Notepad and look at the first few capital letters.) If you guys can make anything of this info, please do.

Hello there! I have made the changes as needed and made the .avi file for my new directory. Questions though:

1.) Does the .avi file have to be a certain size? The one I have done is a little over 12MB. (The ratio of it is 128x128 and less than 15fps)

2.) Do we have to rename the .package file? The one supplied has spaces in it.

For some reason, when I have my sim go watch tv, the whole game locks up and I have to reboot. These are the only two things I can think of that might be giving me probs. I haven't tried changing the name of the .package file yet. Thought I would ask first...game takes a bit to load.

Any reply from anyone who knows would be geatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Oh, thoguht of another question:

3.) Does it matter what the .avi file is named?

What program do you use to convert files from other formats to AVI, and where could I find it...
Thanks

Might Answer Some Questions 4 Newbies......

GUID - I made up a number and it works great, I suggest you change 1 or 2 numbers so it knows it's unique.

Blue Screen - this is NOT a problem with your movie files. it's a problem with your broadcast.ini files. I edited all my broadcast files. see list below

C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Config
C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 University\TSData\Res\UserData\Config
C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSData\Res\UserData\Config
My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Config

It may work by just changing one or two of these. but i changed them all to be on the safe side. Please note. i have all EP's which is why i changed these files. however if you do not have nightlife for example, then you don't need to change it, because you don't have it.

Please make sure when you do edit the broadcast.ini files. that everything is case sensitive. MAKE SURE YOU backup YOUR FILES BEFORE EDITING

I know this works because i was having all the same problems everyone else was having untill i done the above. now my Adult Late Network station works and is watched ALOT by my sims lol

copy and paste it into word 2003, and then highlight the text and click translate.

hope this helps a tad.
PGT

I don't understand it. I'm stuck on like step one when you open SimPE and I click object data then click the instance this is what I see. Me screen looks nothing like the example. What am I doing wrong?

Also I just have Nightlife installed will this still work?

Go to Window > Plugin View.

Oh my God! My sims are watching Serenity an a floor to ceiling projector screen. :bow: This is so awesome!

I love you! Would you like my first born? (you can't have it, but I thought it'd be nice if I at least offered)

THANK YOU!

I think I'm gonna go watch Serenity with my sims now.

Is there a reason that a channel that worked perfectly well in University now does not appear in Nightlife? I added it to Nightlife's broadcast.ini file. Is there anything else that must be done?

You have saved my sim's lives :nod:

Thank you!

im stuck on step 1. Im new to simpe, how do you see all those things under filetype?

Okay, new issue. I figured out where the channel was, though I would like to figure out why the name isn't the one I gave it.

Anyway, bigger issue. If a sim turns to the channel I made, it tells me that a debugger was detected and shuts down. I have Nightlife, and these same videos worked just fine in University. They're uncompressed AVI files with no audio. Thoughts?

After spending several hours within the game attempting to get the blue screen to disappear. I've come to the conclusion that it isn't going to happen.

All attempts i've tried at this point have come back to me in failure. I've tried everything mentioned on this forum:

- Lowercase lettering in the broadcast.ini and in the plugin view value.
- Quadra-checking the broadcast.ini in all directories. (Uni, and Nightlife also, as well as MyDocs, and the original Sims 2 Config folders)
- I tried Coffe's dummy file suggestion, hell I even tried the one person who mentioned copying the contents of those files into the dummy folder. So at one point I had 3 folders full with the same avis. Still no go.
- Then I attempted removing the files one at a night from each of the 3 folders, and trying over 20 possible combinations, as I saw Uni and The Sims 2 movie folders were duplicating the same folder into My Documents/Moves/Broadcast - which confused me.
- I tried opening the .package in Hexworkshop outside of SimPE and still not working.

In conclusion i believe i've tried every possible combination there is, even making sure I had the latest patches in the game. The pie chart thing was simple to replicate, however getting the movie to work on the tv screen isn't.

And yes I am using a 128x128 avi file, which was promoted by a previous poster on this forum. I'm sorry for not giving proper credit i'm not really able to shift through the forum pages and get their names at the moment.

The only thing I could assume that is causing this to not work for me when it has for so many others would be the fact I did a custom intallation onto a different partition than the main install dir.

My game is installed to D:\Games\EA Games\The Sims 2
Along with Nightlife and University which have their own folders in the EA Games dir.

To where all the configuration (Like it or not) is defaulted to the C Drive (main partition), into "My Documents"..

But even so, I tried pointing the folder in the broadcast.ini to "C:\Documents and Settings\ etc etc" still didn't work.

Anyone has any solution let me know please?

I'm running all episodes, and soon will have EP3. Any help would be appreciated.


BREAK THROUGH:

Even though mjy game installationw as english, the code understands only the "Dutch" version of the handlers. I would like to make this a point to anyone out there that hasn't tried this yet. TRY ADDING THE SAME VALUES FOR ALL LANGUAGES in SimPE.

I think I got this now. Sorry for the meltdown earlier.

After spending the better half of two days, in and out of the game (Constantly) I've come to a pretty much guaranteed result to make the pie chart, and the blue menu go away.

For my information I have both University and Nightlife installed. I don't think there's really a difference between the two if you have Nightlife installed, just use the original EA Games dir. If you got Uni is when you have to modify the broadcast.ini past the first My Documents (This is because the expansion adds the "Sports" channel, and therefore forces the game to drop the My Documents broadcast on EACH AND EVERY LOAD) - However if you want to be over-cautious about it. Go ahead and change every broadcast.ini related to Sims 2 on your system. (Better safe than sorry)

- The following directories would be where you can find a boradcast.ini file (If you have Nightlife, and University installed)

Please note: These directories are only relative if you have used the "DEFAULT" installation. Which I have not, but most people do. If you are like me and used a custom installation, just replace the "C:\Program Files\" etc etc up until the game name itself, with the actual directory and partition you installed it on.

C:\Documents and Settings\[Account Name\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Config
C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Config
C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 University\TSData\Res\UserData\Config
C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSData\Res\UserData\Config


The rule of thumb here to be (certain) is for each change you make in one file, make it to them all. In reality you only need to really change the University dir. If you don't have University, and just Nightlife just change the one in the My Documents folder. The same goes if you don't have University or Nightlife installed, focus only on the My Documents broadcast.ini.

Within the broadcast.ini ONLY use lowercase lettering when pointing out your handlers. Which was explained in a post from coffeehedake. The reason why is unknown to me really, I just know it works like this.

You are free to use any length of characters, or capitalization in pointing to the directories within the broadcast.ini within the [category] call.

THIS ONLY APPLIES FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE UNIVERSITY
- Examples, Although the game defaults to "Broadcast/[Foldername]" fill free to do any lenght of sub folders, afterwards (This is useful for organization. I believe coffeehedake's also discovered this as well.)
- Here's a small sample. Folder=Broadcast/Comedy/Dave Chappelle - Ah here's something not many people know without some experience with .ini referencing. You can put spaces in folder "pointers" by grouping them entirely quotes. Folder="Broadcast/Comedy/Dave Chappelle" =)

THIS APPLIES FOR EVERYONE UNIVERSITY/NIGHTLIFE NON-EP
There's been a lot of posts on the forum with people having issues with "Dummy files" coffeehedake suggested. although this might work for a few people, I found it to be more or less a bloated solution to the real issue. Which in most cases is a "translation" issue. When creating your .package file (tv channel) make sure (if you're ENGLISH) to point the language you installed the game with. I.E. me I'm "ENGLISH" however the game understands a dutch routine call (Dunno why) however, as longs I point the same information to English, and English - UK it works fine.

Also an important note on the above comment. Please make sure you "Committ" everytime you make a change to the data strings within the .package. This is crucial (I'm sure eric pointed this out multiple times). A lot of people have issues with just getting the "PIE" charts to show up. On most standard english installations. It's important to change the "English - UK" value and not the "English" value. You can test to see what language your game understands, by placing a small number next to each language and making a note of it when you load the game. For me it was "Testing 2" which turned out to be the English - UK language.

If you followed me up to this point. Then you should be running a nice little .avi clip on your brand new channel. If you have University installed - Make note that you can "SUB" pie menus - Otherwise you have to use single category pie values. (Sorry non-uni users =( )

The only real limitation of the file size has to do with hardware rendering. The file size isn't really relevant however the video size is. 128x128 is the safest viewing. I would try avoid putting files larger than 50mbs into a folder. This caused my system to lockup several times when I would put the game into triple speed mode, while running custom mp3's on the radio.

My system specs were
Radeon x850XT
3.2GHz CPU
2GB DDR434

It's not a glitch with my hardware. It's just far too much to fast-forward a 200mb file at 480x250 in triple 3 mode. I mean think of it. If you got the game at 1600x1200 and running it with full graphic support. It's going to lock up (logically).

I've encountered no issues with running files less than 50mbs in size, at 128x128 size. I've put them to the test. I believe the hardware limitation is with forcing the card to resize the movie into the small television while in game play. Ridding your system of this job alone allows it to run without so much stress.

Enough of my rambling however. I followed both Eric, and Coffeehadek's advice in the forums posted in the past. They have some great advice on how to get the custom channels to work.

- The one thing not mentioned on any page of this forum other than ONE person. Was that this will work with people who have both University and Nightlife installed. Not only for the people who have only University installed.

If anyone has any questions. Or i confused the hell out of you all, feel free to ignore my post. If i've helped someone in some small way. I'm glad. I'm sorry i'm not more clear with my instructions. If you want clearification however feel free to ask me.

Thank you for your time, and for reading =)

Awesome, thank you for this :thumb: been wanting to be able to do this...

Bit premature with post

Tried a few music videos, but cant get them to play past about 2-3mins, the vid just freezes, followed everything in the Tuts to the letter....

HELP!!!

You rock! It took me a second to figure out what to do, but it's done, I went to my game and the channel is there! You rock!

mstybl95--I've got the same problem, so I guess we wait until Eric can find the answer. hope it's soon, I'd like to see the movies I've downloaded. So hang in there girl. Peggy

to complicated i did what u said like u said 2 open the custom channel package thingy in SimPE but it didn't work thwey said it was the wrong file help me man help me!!!

i gotta little prop on stage one the 5 instruction says save changes so i did but SimPE said that i cant save changes why?? help me man heelp me plz plz plz???????

they said that the custom channel package is protecteds what do i do

My custom channel is also flashing blue and it's really annoying.

Thanks ill be using this now!

It'll be cool to put my coutless custom programs on their own channel, thanks!

Edit: Took some wrestling with it to get it working, post #114 was very helpful. Thanks, sVyro.

A tutorial someone suggested in this forum says that AVI videos must be 128x128, which looked pretty small for me.
320x240 works fine!

320x240 works, eh? All the tutorials I have seen have told me to use 128x128. Anyways, the TV screens in game are not square, so the width is going to get stretched if you do 1:1. The small TV might be 4:3 and the bigger ones look a bit wider. When I do my size conversions, I assume the end result is going to be shown in 4:3 and factor that into my use of letterbox. I guess the amount of letterbox you need (if you need it) is much easier to figure out if you don't have to use 128x128.

Just make your own videos and put the videos in the certain channel folders, and the blue screen will go away

I've tried everything except this, and the reason why is because I have no idea what you're talking about. Point the language I installed the game with? Is that something I do in SimPE? And if so, how? Any help is appreciated.
Thanks in advance!