As for Pinup Player. To explain what it is...at it's basic core, it's a program that plays videos in VLC media player windows (it does so much more than that though). This can be sized and positioned, and layered anywhere on any screen. FP can use DOFLinx to trigger Pinup Player (PUP) for videos, images, Overlay frames, and SSF. Anything that VLC can play can be used for video files.
Pinup Player Packs (PuP-Packs) are the active video backglass / topper that can be used optionally with a FP table that has both DOFLinx and PUP support added)
The VLC windows can NOT be "part" of the FP window itself. They can only display "over top" of FP. Therefor the limitations for using it with FP is:
-with desktop view. It "can" work fine, as I showed in one of my demo videos...but FP must be run in windowed mode (and you can use another program to force it to Borderless Fullscreen windowed). This will allow the PuP window to show over top of FP's window. This also means you can only use one PuP layer for videos.
-in cabinet view, or 2/3 screen view. You can one way or another fully use PuP on a Backglass screen and a Topper screen. For multi-layered PuP-Packs you just need to "hide" the FP backglass when launching the FP table from a front-end so that only the PuP-Pack is displayed on that screen.
So as an example my Tron Legacy PuP-Pack can work fine for both because it only uses one PuP screen layer. My more complex PuP-Packs like Transformers which uses 7 PuP layers won't work on desktop, but will work fine on a second screen setup if the FP Backglass window is hidden or not used.
The big difference with playing FP in a cabinet vs desktop or VR is that cabinets use a "static" view. The angle of this view is set so that is looks "correct" for your angle when playing at the cabinet.... BUT the limitation of this is that for many tables, you don't get the best view and angle of the mini videos screens like in Jaws. There's not much you can do about it.
Also...the FP lower resolution videos and images really do stand out when being shown on a HD backglass screen compared to real HD videos using 24fps up to 60fps.
So for a cabinet, Pinup Player really works nicely to make the table look really charp and also is nice for other spectators.
I agree with SLAM, in that the videos needs to be used appropriately and timed nice and tightly to the events on the table. You don't want to see the video still playing 10 seconds after the event is long done. If you have a long timing for an "intro" for a MB mode...that's fine to use a longer video to match. In fact it can be really cool...but the video should be done when that mode starts.
For some events like a timed "hurry up" mode, I think longer/looping videos can be nicely used though and can work well. A great example is the APC mode for my Aliens FX3 PUP-Pack. This is a mode that is limited in time...so I just had the APC video clips edited together to play over and over again to look like they are seamless. It's only when that mode is done do you get the video to stop.
Even in my FP Tron PuP-Pack I want to re-edit it and refine it to be tighter and look nicer and less loopy.
My record for videos in a PuP-Pack is Transformers. Almost 250 videos! That includes topper and Text,etc.. but that table had so many modes and unique Jackpots it was crazy!
