I was super excited to buy DRM-free Thief from this site, and even more excited that an official patch was released! I had some problems, however. Although the game ran smooth as butter, the videos simply would not play. I tried a number of solutions:

1. Move the ddfix Thief.exe and files into the main game folder and configure them.
1a. This worked for the movies, but crashed when the game tried to load.

2. Download and register the Indeo Video Codec.
2a. I've already played through every Thief game on this Windows installation before (W7Ux64) with no issues. Reinstalling the video codec and manually registering ir50_32.dll did absolutely nothing.

3. Download the movies re-encoded into VP6.
3a. Still no change.

4. Delete the entire folder, reinstall from setup_thief_gold_2.0.0.46.exe, copy THIEF.EXE from the backup folder to the main game folder, then download and apply TFix 1.16.
4a. This last method worked perfectly and loaded in-game immediately.

I can say very clearly that the issue has nothing to do with registered or installed codecs of any sort, but a problem in the patch(es) applied/configured in the Universal update (2.0.1). Maybe it's specific to Windows 7 x64, but something really should be done about this.

I'd like to take this moment to thank the great people at GOG.com for being as active in trying to make this experience seamless as the fans have been. It's absolutely nuts and amazing to me that almost 15 years later, this game still works and is still modded.

I'd also like to give a special thanks to voodoo47 for his stickied post including that fix. Show that guy some love, especially if my method here fixed your problem. Modifying by hand was a real pain in the ass before, so these installers and quick guides are invaluable and ultimately the lifeline of these games.

Now to figure out how to get Open Broadcaster Software to capture the game for live streaming...

the 2.0.1.46 GOG release (with the last GOG patch 2.0.1.47) should run everything out of the box, and is also compatible with TFix without the need to move files around.

messing with codecs, ddfix and encoding has no effect, as you have already found out.

By itself (2.0.1.47), movies weren't playing. I wasn't aware that it was already compatible though, so I might rename the folder and try a reinstall/patch/patch to see if that works as well. I just wanted to make sure that I documented exactly what I did to make it work correctly.


Also, figured out that I could set the game to Borderless Windowed in cam_ext.cfg, then set OBS to capture the window, so I'll be live-streaming on Expert in about 20 minutes (when my pizza gets here) via Twitch.TV.

as for the capability to play movies, there is no difference between 2.0.1.47 and TFix 1.16 (both use NewDark). sometimes, a reboot is required after installing the game to get the movies going, it's possible that this was your case as well.

I'm pretty sure that's not the case here. I haven't shutdown my computer in 4 days. All of this was done with the same Windows session.

Upon further testing, it looks like TFix fixed a problem with system files.

Just now I:

- Moved all Thief GOLD contents to a new folder and reinstall 2.0.0.46 full.
-- Movies play.

- Applied 2.0.1.47 patch.
-- Movies still play.

- Applied TFix 1.16.
-- Movies stopped playing! This includes the good folder backup I created.

- Copied Thief GOLD\backup\ddfix\THIEF.EXE to Thief GOLD\ and ran it,
-- Movies play again! Thief GOLD logo in main menu is blank, lots of graphical errors in-game.

- Applied TFix 1.16 again.
-- No dice, movies broken again.

- Copied ALL files from ddfix\ to the game folder.
-- Movies run, no graphical errors in-game, low-res everything.

- Ran TFix 1.16 YET AGAIN.
-- Movies stop playing again, but high-res and widescreen.

It was at this point I decided to stop going in circles.

- Delete all files and reinstall 2.0.0.46.
-- Movies play!

- Patch to 2.0.1.47 again.
-- Still playing!

- Copy good folder contents back into the main game folder and replace all files (to restore all of my previous settings).
-- Movies broke again. :|

- Copy cam.cfg from new install (moved into another folder) that's still playing movies.
-- Movies work again!

- Copy cam.cfg from copied folder that worked before doing all of this testing (for science).
-- Movies broke again! (AYFKM)

So there's a problem in cam.cfg. The one from the now-working fresh install had different contents than the previous one that's failing. Here's a list of what I added to the good file to try to make it work.

LEGEND:
added
changed
removed

dark1
game_screen_size 1920 1080
sfx_channels 16
game_screen_flags 46
game_full_screen 0
master_volume -1
gamma 1.149999976
character_detail 1
render_weather 1
enhanced_sky 1
fogging 1

That successfully broke the movies again.

- Flushed all of the files again and replaced with already-working new install files (version 2.0.1.47).
-- Movies working again.

- TFix 1.16
-- Broke again.

I'm just gonna take a break here because I'm sure I'm just doing something wrong, but again, it doesn't look like the issue really has anything to do with restarting the machine.

I honestly doubt TFix would be breaking the movies (I would be seeing bugreports all over the forum in that case), but post the contents of the cfg that works and I'll have a look.

Aaaand, ffmpeg.dll randomly doesn't load.

I copied my old working install files over again just for giggles and it played movies the first time. Then I closed the game and opened it again and they broke...again. Log files indicate inability to load ffmpeg.dll so I'm gonna try replacing that with another, newer one I have in my system.

: lgvid.dll: Failed to find/load ffmpeg.dll, no movie playback possible (err 0xC1, cwd: C:\Gaming\Thief GOLD)

FOUND IT! This is really getting ridiculous.

SO....

The installation I had before all of this, we'll call it "good files". The new install I made when I started testing today, we'll call that "new good".

I flushed my Thief GOLD directory again and copied "good files" back into it. Like I said before in this reply, the movies played the first time and then failed. There's a command designed to deal with that specific occurrence, no_unload_ffmpeg, but that was already enabled in cam_ext.cfg

I did a quick search for ffmpeg.dll and tried the Thief 2 1.19 demo's file, which was a bit larger than this one. Same result, couldn't load. Then, out of curiosity, I took at look at the dll that calls FFMPEG, lgvid.dll.

"good files" has one that's 21 KB
"new good" has one that's 5,479 KB

With all of the rest of my files being otherwise back to where they were last night, when I was able to stream the game with zero issues, replacing the tiny lgvid.dll file in my current game directory with the huge one from the "new good" directory completely fixed my issue.

I apologize for the massive pillar that is the previous post, but I hope it's useful in any case. cam.cfg did make a difference before but I'm not sure why.

To confirm this, I ran TFix on my Thief GOLD folder again and successfully broke movie playback. The lgvid.dll file was also replaced with a tinier file. I copied over the larger file again and BAM! Instant success.

I've also hosted it here for more science. I'm not sure what the deal is or why it wouldn't work before (I should've checked my logs then, but I also didn't know what I was looking for). TFix had previously remedied my issue, now the opposite. At least there's a solution for me that seems to work just fine. I'm pretty sure this is the same version of the dll that's installed with 2.0.0.46. I'd recommend that any future installers make a backup of this file for troubleshooting, if there are other users with my issue. ; $Header: r:/prj/cam/src/RCS/cam.cfg 1.14 1998/09/23 20:00:41 mahk Exp $

; hey, which game is this
game dark

; general configs
include_user_cfg user.cfg
editor_include_dromed_cfg dromed.cfg

; game specific paths/configs
dark_include_install_cfg install.cfg

shock_resname_base r:\prj\shock\art\finals

; set trait cache to include concretes
trait_cache_flags 2
;skip_intro
sfx_device 1
game_screen_depth 32
game_hardware 1
game_screen_size 800 600
sfx_channels 8
game_screen_flags 45
game_full_screen 1
master_volume 0
always_play_intro
skip_starting_checks
vmCenterY 0.5014409423
vmCenterX 0.5007849336
always_play_intro
skip_starting_checks
sfx_vol_3d 0
reverse_stereo 0
sfx_vol_music 0
sfx_vol_2d 0
gamma 1.
ambient_volume 0

yeah, this is the random ffmpeg dll not loading problem. just reboot your machine and it should be fine.

Harg. The old lgvid.dll is working perfectly though. Seems fishy.

Also I hate restarting, so I use it as a last resort.

ok, GOG is using the statically linked dll from TTLG. both should work fine, if not, as I've said, reboot should clear it.