AL Emmo and the lost dutchmans mine

from Stardock Forums
I purchased Al Emmo and the lost dutchmans mine on 4-25-08 and cannot get past the opening movie when playing on Vista Ultimate. I checked to see if i was running ffdshow as outlined in a post i found on the web and that was not the problem. I discovered that if i hold down the esc key when choosing a new game or to load a game, the movie doesn't play and i jump into the game. If i continue to play this way, am i missing anything in the game other than the opening movie? If so, do you have a recommendation or could you refund my credits as the game is listed as being compatible with Vista. Thanks.
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Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I talked with the developer of this game and here is the fix that they recommend in the event anyone else has an issue with this game......

"The movie files are encoded in MPEG-1 format, and FFDShow is usually the reason why it hangs in this manner. Though, I guess other instances could be due to other graphics or video card issues that we haven't been able to track down, or that are quirks that the individual's system has with the MPEG-1 format.

If you've tried everything and nothing seems to work, then as a last resort, you could try re-encoding the movie files to another format (like DivX) which works without problems on your system. A google search should find you plenty of programs that can convert video formats from one type to another.

The files in the game directory that are movie files are as follows:

Al_Emmo.023
Al_Emmo.024
Al_Emmo.025
Al_Emmo.026
Al_Emmo.030

Note: some of those files may not exist, depending where you bought the game.

Rename them to Al_Emmo.0xx.MPG. Next, encode them to a more compatible format (DivX, for example). And finally, rename them back to their original filenames and simply replace the files in your game directory with the newly encoded ones.

Alternatively you can view the original files in Windows Media Player, but they won't have sound. (The sound is stored in the game archive, not in the movie files themselves.) Though, they will have subtitle text."