WILL FFVII run movies based on another codec?

[Sir Canealot]

Yo all.

I heard a while ago that FFVII WILL run other movies in place of the default ones, as long as the codecs are installed on the system.

Is this true?
If it is, I've been thinking about re-encoding those movies for a while.
Think about it, one could clean them up and get rid of a lot of the blocking, and perhaps even give them a decent resize up to 640x480, so the game wouldn't have to bother using whatever shity resizer it usually uses. If we could get the game to play XVid files especially...

Input?
If this did work out, I could easily put a Bittorent up for the files, so everyone could get them....

[J*** H*******]

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[Darkness]

The FF7 videos are so bad, anyway... It would be cool if someone remade them and posted those.

[Sir Canealot]

Heh, play FFVII's movies in Windows Media player. Do they look better? Are you running your desktop over 640x480?
The reason they look better at a res even higher than 640x is because Direct X applys filtering, and uses a resizer not out of the prehistoric age (FFVII looks like it's using point resizing, eww) - eg, bilinier resizing (even though bilinier is shity, haha). FFVII PC does none of this.

I propose recompressing them and cleaning them up - eliminating such a 'need' for the post processing Direct X does when you play the videos in WMP.

I know for a fact I can clean the blocking and the artifacting up, it's just the resize and keeping the detail (not smoothing over or bluring them to hell) and whether or not they'll even work is what is bothering me.

Hey, if I can be bothered - I'll see what I can do tonight even
That's if I can work out how to get the videos to open in Virtual Dub, which if I remember the last time I did that was a PAIN

Edit: The movies are in worse condition than I remember. There even seems to be deinterlacing artifacts in there (god knows why, I don't remember the Psx movies being interlaced); I can't see ANY other reason for the weird pixel shimering - that's Dot Matrix and as far as I know it only comes from deinterlacing.
I managed to soften that out a little with a filter designed to remove dirt.
And I softed the blocking as much as I could, then encoded to XVid.
I also resized them to 640x480 (which is actually an incorrect ratio - since FFVII runs with the little bar at the bottom, but I can't be bothered to figure out what the correct 640x ratio is right now), so FFVII wouldn't need to bother resizing with its horrible point resizer.
Here's how well I did anyway. For some reason the audio is broken, I can't be bothered to figure out why, so there's no audio.

http://www.williams1.homechoice.co.uk/bikeXVIDFinal1.avi

I'm afraid with my level of skill, I'm not going to get it looking much better than that.
I think I might check out the Psx disks when I can be bothered (I have the USA version sitting around here somewhere). Not only is the audio a million times better, I also remember the video being a little better too...

And this would certainly be a bad idea, for obvious reasons, even if there were something to be gained by recompressing.

And if Square even batted an eye lid about such activitys, I'd gladly sue MYSELF before they even issue a cease and detist.

[J*** H*******]

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[Sir Canealot]

I'm implying I'd be suprised if they gave a crap, and if they did I'd walk into Jail before we even got a cease and detist.

And as for BT, I'll probably try to get ahold of a private(ish) tracker. It's as you said... I wouldn't put this up on a public tracker, it's just BT would be an easy way to get a gig of movies to the few peeps I'd actually do this for on this board.

And I'll say the PC version movies MAY clean up alright. I'm not that much of an encoder certainly, but I've seen some insane things done just using AVI Synth filters (which in their way far surpass even professional tools in the right hands). Fortunately I know a pair of hands, it's just a case of kicking him a lot and seeing what he can do with the clip
I'm going to dig up my PSX version in a minute, and see what the Bike scene looks like on that. If I remember rightly, there was at least less blocking to clean up on the Psx movies...

[Messiah99]

Either way, Square raising piss about a game they didnt ever want to make a decent port of or not, and a BT tracker being an no-no or not, at least give it a shot and see what you can do with the movies.

If you cant do enough to make it worth it, then no hurt no foul, just go on with things as usual.

But what if you can? If you can get everything else to work out and successfully improve what anyone would agree was a terrible flaw in the port, then work on a way to get it to the masses. I couldnt download a gig of movies from a BT tracker myself, but Im on a 28.8k connection, but then again I dont play FF7 much these days either.

But if you can do it, take it one step at a time, and who knows? You may just bring us all one step closer to FF7 the way it deserves to be!

[Sir Canealot]

The PSX movies are 540582035823058023x better:

http://www.williams1.homechoice.co.uk/Bike(PSXVersion).avi

The PC movies are waay too dark.
The PSX movies are a tad too bright though.

I might just go ahead with this if I can get quality a few nothces higher with futher tweaking.
IF it works that is.
Anyone have any idea yet?

[Sir Canealot]

I did the intro:

http://www.williams1.homechoice.co.uk/Opening(PSX)XVidV1.avi

If someone wants to see if this actually works now, go ahead.
Although I've relised that any minor ammount of filtering might be pointless if FFVII doesn't post process at all. However, I'm hoping it's FFVII resizing from 320x-640x using a shity resizer is what kills most of the quality.
I've got to find a way of cleaning up the videos more - there's still tons of blocking left from the original PSX FMV. Especially in the shot where it pans out on Midgar - there's probably so much blocking, the filters I'm using are mistaking the blocking for detail NOT to be smoothed over -_-

[Aaron]

If you run the game in 320x240 mode, you'll see that the videos still look crappy . So the resizing doesn't do anything bad except retain the blocky-ness.

[Sir Canealot]

I don't trust the 320x mode though. The backgrounds don't look any better either...
But yeah, you may be right...

[J*** H*******]

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[Aaron]

I don't trust the 320x mode though. The backgrounds don't look any better either...

The backgrounds don't look better because they are displayed in their native resolution when you are running in 320x240, and just scaled to fill the screen via pixel doubling in 640x480. The only visual difference between the two modes is all of the 3D stuff and the menus/font.

The PC movies indeed look terrible, but they are noticeably less terrible if you play them in WMP. I think this has to do with FF7 running in 16-bit color mode (did I hear the movies looked better when you were using the window mode patch and playing in 32-bit color depth? I think the full-screen 32-bit patch messed up the movies, but not the window patch).

If they would look in FF7 like they do in WMP, I'd be reasonably happy. Since they're messed up in FF7 for some reason, re-encoded movies might suffer similar negative effects...?

[Sir Canealot]

The backgrounds don't look better because they are displayed in their native resolution when you are running in 320x240, and just scaled to fill the screen via pixel doubling in 640x480.

Aha - that'd make sense.
And in FFVIII years later we get a shity bilinier filter -_-

The PC movies indeed look terrible, but they are noticeably less terrible if you play them in WMP. I think this has to do with FF7 running in 16-bit color mode (did I hear the movies looked better when you were using the window mode patch and playing in 32-bit color depth?

Yes, the colour thing is true. However, I'm really not sure about how colour effects movies. The movies never looked anywhere near as bad if I ran my desktop in 16 bit colour and played the movies. And since I never bothered with the 32bit colour patch, I'm not sure what sort of quality was gained.

If they would look in FF7 like they do in WMP, I'd be reasonably happy. Since they're messed up in FF7 for some reason, re-encoded movies might suffer similar negative effects...?

I'm really not sure. If you could clean up the blocking present in either the Psx or PC movies, so there was no blocking visable without using Direct X's postprocessing (better find out how to turn that off again, haha), then it shouldn't display blocks when it plays in FFVII PC.
It's simply a case of someone being bothered to try it - I certainly can't be bothered right now, especially considering the effort involved in getting FFVII PC up and running
Either way, cleaning up the movies is past my current ability. I hate smoothing over detail, so simply slaping on heavier filters isn't really an option. I need to find some way of cleaning up the blocking present in the original movies...
I'm also trying to sharpen the movies ( http://www.williams1.homechoice.co.uk/Re-Original.png ,  http://www.williams1.homechoice.co.uk/Re-Sharp.png) which is another pain in the ass.
I know this is do able up to a fairly decent quality.
It's just, encoding gives you out as much as you put in. And improving on my current level of skill is pretty annoying, as the community is very n00b unfriendly

[Neo_Cortex]

Sir Canealot, I watched the opening movie!! I looks soooooooo great!!!!!
Keep up the good work  

[J*** H*******]

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[The SaiNt]

Does anyone have the VFW codec for Duck Trumotion 2?
When I say codec, I really mean encoder-decoder, not the decoder that's provided with the game.
I used to have it but I lost it in the last format.

[Aaron]

I think this is it?

[halkun]

If I remember correctly, you have to licence the encoder from duck for a "Just ask us" price tag. Therefore, I don't know about the status of that encoder you have there

[Aaron]

What I have linked there is the "TrueMotion Professional Toolkit."
It installs in trial mode, says encoded frames will have the duck logo, and you can contact them about licensing.

[J*** H*******]

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[Sir Canealot]

Virtual Dub won't open FFVII PC movies normally. You need to install the proper codec, it can't use VFW (video for windows) codec. I installed it ages ago, but I couldn't be bothered to do it again, so I just loaded the PC movie into Virtual Dub with AVI Synth's DirectShowSource
Which basically does use VFW, even if it is slower than decoding with the proper codecs.

As for the PSX movies, they're just ripped to uncompressed AVI, so... no comment.

I think you may be able to open the videos in Virtual Dub with that Tool Kit, but don't bet on it; I really don't remember...

After seeing how much better the PSX movies are though, I've sorta given up on the PC movies. The only problem with the PSX movies are that they have a slight green tiny, and some of them are a little bright (and ALL of the PC's movies are too dark - guess they had to compensate for glare on TV screens or something, the green tint can't be intentional though - they must have noticed it and fixed it for the PC version, or maybe it's even a problem with the video compression codec Square used for the FFVII movies).

[J*** H*******]

Virtual Dub won't open FFVII PC movies normally. You need to install the proper codec, it can't use VFW (video for windows) codec. I installed it ages ago, but I couldn't be bothered to do it again, so I just loaded the PC movie into Virtual Dub with AVI Synth's DirectShowSource

Well, doh. Why didn't I think of that? It's not like I haven't used DirectShowSource (and AviSynth) before.

The only problem with the PSX movies are that they have a slight green tiny, and some of them are a little bright

Neuron2 has two color adjustment filters for VirtualDub (and I suspect that more exist), try them?

[Sir Canealot]

Dunno, just tweaking the brightness/contrast seems to help a lot.

More concerned with trying to clean out the blocks right now...

Too tired at the moment though. For some reason, it's more effort that it seems.