Author Topic: FF7 Improving Movies (Read 10687 times)

corpse · « **on:** 2004-07-05 09:27:33 »

Hi My movies play fine, no upside down problems no blank screens. But they Look really pixulated. Is anyway of of improving them. I've tried to reencode them with divx, they look fine untill thier streched to full screen in windows media player, so wouldn't the game do the same.

1. Do I need to encode them to improve qualtity or is thier an other way
2. what codec should I use
3. has anyone had any success with this

Thanks in advance
Corpse

trickstar66 · « **Reply #1 on:** 2004-07-05 17:00:00 »

That pixelation you speak of has to do with the resolution of the movies.(which can't be changed) It seems to me that the only thing you can do is either blur it (anti-aliasing) or redo all the movies yourself.

Stretching will obviously make it more pixelated and as it is a full screen game, looking at the movies through a window will not help you out. In short, re-encoding the movie does nothing but format it to another type of file and no codec will change that. And lastly, no there is no other way with currently existing technology... sorry.

tomawashi · « **Reply #2 on:** 2004-07-05 17:37:29 »

Maybe if you take the movies from the Playstation version and reencode it ? They might be in a higher quality, but I'm really not sure...

Aaron · « **Reply #3 on:** 2004-07-05 17:59:52 »

I tried the 32-bit hack, and the movies look much better when running in 32-bit mode. The messed up movies have more to do with how FF7 plays them in 16-bit than how the movies are actually encoded, and I think its unlikely that re-enconding them will do much good...

tomawashi · « **Reply #4 on:** 2004-07-05 18:25:48 »

Quote from: Aaron

I tried the 32-bit hack, and the movies look much better when running in 32-bit mode. The messed up movies have more to do with how FF7 plays them in 16-bit than how the movies are actually encoded, and I think its unlikely that re-enconding them will do much good...

I tried the hack you talk about, but I have 2 big vertical black lines on the screen during the movies. :isee:

Aaron · « **Reply #5 on:** 2004-07-05 18:38:31 »

Yeah, that's true, but the movie colors are correct.

corpse · « **Reply #6 on:** 2004-07-05 19:09:15 »

I still wish to compress them anyway, to limit the space taken. I have the tried some but they see to bring up some weird green boxes. I was thinking of divx, would you recommend this.

I also read somewhere that the movies could be improved if directX postprocessing was turned off, I found this
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wcedshow/html/_cooridirectshowregistrykeys.asp
This didn't work for me, but it may help someone else

Also I haved considered ripping the psx movies, but I wouldn't know where to start.

Thanks for your replys

Darkdevil · « **Reply #7 on:** 2004-07-05 19:11:41 »

Dude, why would you want to limit the space it takes?!
The whole game is about 650mb IIRC, and compressing it will give load times, and slow fmv-game integration and playback...

corpse · « **Reply #8 on:** 2004-07-05 19:27:38 »

ok fair enough, I still want to look in PSX movies though, can anyone offer any help with this?

Contra · « **Reply #9 on:** 2004-07-05 20:51:14 »

There is no difference in quality between the PSX and PC movies. None. Besides that, many of the movies would have to be chopped and re-edited. The fact of the matter is that what may be one movie on the PC is often on PSX the first half of one video file and the second half of another. Or two movies might be squeezed into one video. To top that off, the music files on PC are part of the movie, but on PSX they are played from Midi. So reincoded PSX movies will have sound effects, but no music.

Reincoding the PSX version movies will be a long and strenuous process with no quality improvement of any worth.

However, one alternative might be to reincode the PSX version movies limited to 16 bit color. The reincoding process would probably render better results then FF7's antique on-the-fly playback, and the movie wouldn't lose any color depth in the process.

Just a thought.

-Contra-

trickstar66 · « **Reply #10 on:** 2004-07-05 21:00:11 »

In case you were wondering why there is no quality difference from the PSX and PC versions is simply put: the PSX versions movies are interlaced which means scanlines. More scanlines means less pixelation but does make the screen dimmer so that's why you have turn up the brightness on your TV when you play a game. And the PC versions are not interlaced. That's also why you remember NES games looking so much better back in the day...

Marc · « **Reply #11 on:** 2004-07-05 21:19:49 »

I've been playing the psx version lately and I was wondering about something.

Why do the psx version movies look so much better in a psx emu like epsxe than in ff7 pc ? I mean if the movies are both the same resolution, how can they be rendered much better through pete's ogl2 plugin (or anyother plugin I've tried for that matter) ? And if they can be rendered so well through a psx plugin, couldn't they theorically be rendred with equal quality from within ff7 ?

Aaron · « **Reply #12 on:** 2004-07-05 21:25:43 »

Actually, the PSX version movies are not interlaced. Since they only run at about half the resolution of the TV (and only at 15 FPS IIRC), the movies themselves to not need to be interlaced, the PSX console takes care of that.

As for the movies looking better in ePSXe, that's because FF7 doesn't show them good in 16-bit mode as I said before, and it doesn't do any decent scaling/filtering to make them fill the whole screen, so they turn out blocky.

halkun · « **Reply #13 on:** 2004-07-05 22:24:50 »

Also remeber, the PSX videos switch colordepths *WHILE THEY ARE RUNNING* in order to make seamless 24bpp (Full video) to 16 bpp (Overlay video) jumps.

That's pretty cool....

For example, in the opening move the movie is 24 bit until it starts to "fall" into the train station, then the colordepth is dropped.

Marc · « **Reply #14 on:** 2004-07-05 23:03:57 »

Quote from: Aaron

As for the movies looking better in ePSXe, that's because FF7 doesn't show them good in 16-bit mode as I said before, and it doesn't do any decent scaling/filtering to make them fill the whole screen, so they turn out blocky.

Couldn't a patch fix that somehow ?

Or would a patch to use the epsxe plugins to render only the videos be possible ?

Aaron · « **Reply #15 on:** 2004-07-05 23:56:11 »

Marcis: While either patch is conceivably possible to create, it would be rather difficult and I don't think anyone here knows enough about FF7 to do it right now. You'll have to deal with the bad movies or use ePSXe.

Marc · « **Reply #16 on:** 2004-07-06 00:59:06 »

That's a shame.

I'm used to the grainy movies after the number of times I've played the game through.

To me there are only actually 3 minor problems with the version of ff7 for pc, the grainy movies, the midi sound (even though ither soundfont or ffmusic really improves the basic music 10 fold) and the lack of aa for radeon card.

Apart from that and with the patches you guys have released (hi-res cloud, hand patch, etc.) the game is as good as it ever was.

Darkdevil · « **Reply #17 on:** 2004-07-06 08:23:00 »

Gah...I WANT AA!!!!!

trickstar66 · « **Reply #18 on:** 2004-07-06 11:04:49 »

I know this has almost nothing to do with this thread but why is it that 3D models don't stay in one place when the background is changed to a movie? Example: When Irvine takes the shot in FF8 and in the train sequence as you metioned a while back.

Darkdevil · « **Reply #19 on:** 2004-07-06 12:08:46 »

I beleive its just the timing. Like in the Dyne scene. You should copy the fmv's to the HD for optimal synchronisation of fmv-game integration...Cd drives are no way near as fast as Hds, hence the lag and lack of synchro.

trickstar66 · « **Reply #20 on:** 2004-07-06 12:14:38 »

Don't have too much space to put movies on HD and I don't think it's the timing. A better example is when you see Ultimecia for the final battle and she's in her throne. She jitters in that chair so bad!!

EmperorSteele · « **Reply #21 on:** 2004-07-07 06:21:22 »

I can say for a fact that even with the movies on the HD, the dyne/barret sequence is STILL mistimed. I think they compensated for slow cd drives and tried to time it with the movie running at 80%. Cuz now the movie is faster than the characters. o__o

trickstar66 · « **Reply #22 on:** 2004-07-07 15:25:54 »

Hmm... They must suck at timing real bad then because it even does it with the PSX! Square = :drunk:

Darkdevil · « **Reply #23 on:** 2004-07-07 15:43:02 »

Try drunk, stoned and high on meth at the same time.

corpse · « **Reply #24 on:** 2004-07-07 19:02:04 »

I have tried to encode the PSX movies with PC wavs, I have done this with the opening scene. I have attempted this with DIVX, it looks great in windows media player. But when I get in the game the goes all snowy like but green. I have the Same result with Xvid. I Have also tried the movie up compressed and they work great, but I haven't really got enough room for all the movies to be this size.

Is divX known to work, am I doing something wrong? Or can you suggest and other codec to try?

Thanks

Corpse

Author Topic: FF7 Improving Movies (Read 10687 times)

tomawashi

tomawashi