Same problem. Win 7, 64 bit.

Still working on a solution.

Doesnt work on Win7 32bit either :(

Okay. Apparently there is a patch that fixes this issue but it's a Russian patch made by devs/fans after the parent company went under. So, not sure where this leaves us GoG purchasers. I guess I will try some back installs of directx and video codec tinkering and see where that gets me. Maybe that patch will actually install over this version of the game since the only thing that keeps that from working is apparently the DRM, which this copy is suppose to lack.

Seems like a lot of work for a Win 7 compatible game though...

UPDATE: No dice on DirectX 9 SDK install or codec tinkering. Also, messing with the video mode r1/r2 and refresh rates in the config file yields no changes. Frustrating.

I am having same problem but I have a workaround to watch the videos outside the game.

The vdo files are plain avi files using xvid codec renamed as .vdo.
The sound track for the videos are in the music folder and are plain mp3 files renamed as .dat.

So for example to play the video with sound you can use the free Media Player Classic Home Cinema by renaming intro.vdo to intro.avi and copying the intro.dat file to the same folder as the avi and name it as intro.mp3. Playing intro.avi should play both files in sync.

Ex:
music\intro.dat -> data\intro.mp3
data\intro.vdo -> data\intro.avi
Make sure you have option View > Options > Playback > Open settings > Auto-load audio files checked and then open the intro.avi file.
Alternatively you can use the Open option of the player and select intro.avi in the Open: field and intro.mp3 in the Dub field.

Same issue here. No workaround yet?

I imagine the problem is a decoder problem. Usually it would expect a keyframe as the first frame of the video, it needs a keyframe to decode and display the following frames of the video. If the videos use bframes (specifically packed bframes), the first frame in the video might be a bframe, the decoder has to wait until it receives a keyframe before it can display the video. Unfortunately having a bframe as the first frame induces the 'bframe decoder lag'.

I just tried to see if ffdshow could be forced to decode the videos instead and whether that would work, but I don't believe it does.

Although there is no problem muxing the video and the audio together and saving it as a direct stream copy using Vdub or something, the game will crash instead of playing this kind of video file (not sure why they are separated like that but that's what it wants).

Someone could ask the Russians how they fixed it. I just skip the videos myself :)

Welp... this one has me stumped. I have tried every single trick I could think of and still get the dreaded decoder lag.

I think this is simply going to require a patch or the reboot addition. I might be wrong though. Nega Ninja could probably get this to work...

It's a bit of a bummer I guess, but nothing game breaking I suppose. I can't see cutscenes being terribly important in a game that is this much of a sandbox.

Didnt have much success either. Played around with ffdshow exceptions and priority without success. Then i renamed the xvidcore.dll to see whether the game uses native codecs. Game crashed at the intro movie so the outdated xvidcore.dll is probably the culprit. Next step was replacing the xvidcore.dll with a newer one from an xvid build that is 64-bit win7 compatible. Unfortunately this had the game crash as well.

Got myself Space Rangers Reboot which uses a slightly larger xvidcore.dll and guess what, the intro video shows! So i thought copying the Reboot xvidcore.dll over to Dominators would solve the issue, but unfortunatly i get the same crashes as with different xvidcore.dll´s i tried. You can get Reboot on Gamersgate who are having a sale allthough its still quite pricy imho.

I also have this problem. Does anyone know of a fix yet?

I got fed up and decided to search around the internet for thecutscenes. Found them on Youtube. Not missing much but at least it kinda fills out the game a bit.

same problem here. only a black screen with sound playing instead of the intro video. vista 64bit.

I recommend not worrying about it and go as far as to say everyone trying to get them to work is waisting perfectly good gaming time. They work for me but it's irritating having it come up every time I start the game so I turned it off in the INI file. Goes right to the title screen which is great. If you really have to see it then the youtube idea may be the way to go.

Yeah, but it is not only the intro video that doesn't play...