Reinsert edited PSX Final Vantasy VII videos

[Unknown Master]

Hello, folks... I'm here to ask for your help!

I'm from Brazil, and I'm trying translate FFVII PSX to Portuguese Language. ALL THE GAME was already translated, EXCEPT the subtitled videos. Menus, Dialogs, Graphics, Kernel, Minigames, etc, are perfectly translated.

But the translation only will be completed when the original subtitled videos were replaced by our translated and edited videos. We want replace ONLY 2 videos in special, JENOVA_E.MOV - the video that shows Sephiroth talking with Jenova, subtitled, and the last video of the game, the ending scene, I can't remenber the name of the file now, but I'm sure that's a *.MOV, with subtitles too...

JUST ONLY THOSE 2 VIDEOS!

I can convert them to .AVI format, with PSXVideo or PSX Movie Converter, edit them with VirtualDub, and convert them to STR with any STR Converter. But I can't reinsert them back into the ISO. I've been searched around the google, but... I cannot find nothing about this. I talked to jPSXdec author, and he says me:

"Is jPSXdec able to rip ANY video of FFVII PSX perfectly?"

The truth is, because nearly all PSX movie frame-rates fluctuate a little bit, there are no existing converters that can rip FF7 movies "perfectly." 15 FPS is definitely more accurate than 13 FPS, although a frame rate of 15000/1001 might be even more accurate. But even that wouldn't reflect the subtle variations in frame presentation times.

JENOVA_E.MOV, like some other FF7 movies, contains trailing audio after the video has finished. jPSXdec v0.35 assumes audio and video should start and end at about the same time, so that extra 4 seconds of audio is messing up the calculation.

The next version of jPSXdec will have better frame rate calculation. For now, it is very easy to change an AVI's frame rate using other programs (such as VirtualDub).

"And later, when I convert them to STR again, can I reinsert back into the ISO?"

No, jPSXdec cannot currently re-encode or re-insert new movies into games, although I hope it can some day. FF7, like most SquareSoft games, will be extra tricky because it uses some unique movie encoding. While you seem very concerned about frame rates, when jPSXdec is updated to re-insert movies, it probably won't even need the frame rate. As long as the new movie has the same number of frames as the original, the frame rate can be ignored.

As a side note, in the difficult case where someone wants to change the number of frames or frame rate of a movie, then that person will definitely need serious technical and programming skills. Replacing PSX movies can be a very complicated process.

We tried so many times to encode/decode FFVII videos to replace into the ISO, but... We can't!

Can someone help us with this process?
There's any tool to extract the PSX FFVII Videos/Reinsert them back into the ISO?
There's someone that could reinsert a edited video into the PSX FFVII ISO???

Please, help us. It's very, very difficult...

Sorry for any english error... But I hope that you can understand my problem.

Thank you very much.

[Gemini]

There's someone that could reinsert a edited video into the PSX FFVII ISO???

It is doable to alter the language of those two movies, but you don't necessarily need to replace anything at all. For my FFVII International translation package I'm planning to alter those movies using a soft subtitle algorithm I created myself for the Innocent Sin translation, which means that you don't have to replace anything on disk other than the overlay responsible for movie playback.

[Unknown Master]

Dear Gemini,

Thanks for your reply!

Man, those videos are causing headache on us... We tried many, many times, but we can't solve this problem yet...

Do you can help us, sending us your tool??? After this, our translation will be launched, and your name will be in the credits of the translation!

If you need any tool or any help to translate Menus, Dialogs, Graphics, Kernel, Scene.bin, we'll send for you without problem!

Once more time, thank you!

[Gemini]

Do you can help us, sending us your tool???

Soft subtitles means that there is no "tool" anywhere. It's just a hack that embeds somewhere in an overlay (aka "module", if you don't know what an overlay is) the machine code for altering the playback, printing subtitles where you'd usually hardcode the movie to have the same effect.
As for the send request, I'm sorry but that isn't possible, at least not yet. I have the subtitling code ready from my previous project, but I haven't started looking inside FF7i. In other words, no pie for celebrating at the moment.

If you need any tool or any help to translate Menus, Dialogs, Graphics, Kernel, Scene.bin, we'll send for you without problem!

That isn't really necessary. I've already coded all of those by myself.

[Unknown Master]

Dear Gemini,

Thanks once more time for your reply. I understand what you mean. I thought that you was coding a tool to do this. =P

I hope that you can "edit" those videos, and I hope that you can help us, if possible. For us, it's extremly hard to hack those videos...

Do you can help us, if you could hack those videos???

As for the send request, I'm sorry but that isn't possible, at least not yet. I have the subtitling code ready from my previous project, but I haven't started looking inside FF7i. In other words, no pie for celebrating at the moment.

Ok, pal, "no pie for celebrating at the moment"... Hehehhe. Good Luck for you. If you can hack those videos, you'll enter to history, man... =D No one that I know could do this yet!!!

FFVII is a GREAT RPG game, and we trying translate it to Portuguese Language. As I said before, we translated the game EXCEPT the subtitled movies...

English errors? Sorry, I'm from Brazil, not an american =D

See ya!

[Gemini]

If you can hack those videos, you'll enter to history, man... =D No one that I know could do this yet!!!

Not many really bothered to hack any Psx games as extensively as I do, that's why they "failed". If you have control over code you can even make the game fart jellybeans.

[m35]

Soft subtitles means that there is no "tool" anywhere. It's just a hack that embeds somewhere in an overlay (aka "module", if you don't know what an overlay is) the machine code for altering the playback, printing subtitles where you'd usually hardcode the movie to have the same effect.

Are you saying you reverse engineered the R3051 assembly code and inserted your own unique R3051 assembly code to render text on top of movie frames after they have been displayed?

[Gemini]

Notice how there are no compression artifacts on the English text.

[m35]

Notice how there are no compression artifacts on the English text.

Thanks for the reply, and the screenshot. Is that a "yes?"

Please forgive me, but there are so many things I am very interested to know.

* Are the alphabet images already in the video ram, or did you have to manually load them?
* Did you have to write the text rendering code yourself, including the kerning logic, or are you utilizing existing functions?
* Where did you insert the new code? Are you completely replacing entire functions with your own? Did you have to add additional code at the end of the executable?

Sorry if it seems I'm bombarding you with questions. I am truly fascinated with what you are proposing.

[Gemini]

* Are the alphabet images already in the video ram, or did you have to manually load them?
* Did you have to write the text rendering code yourself, including the kerning logic, or are you utilizing existing functions?
* Where did you insert the new code? Are you completely replacing entire functions with your own? Did you have to add additional code at the end of the executable?

• They are not in VRAM, and they aren't allowed to be there to impress the subtitles. All the font data is stored along with the new code in RAM;
• The code used to sub is all brand new, but it's nothing more but an additional function between decompression and image upload;
• In that case it's stored in an expanded area of the movie playback module. The hack for Innocent Sin (the game in the screen) is about 3836 bytes.

[Unknown Master]

Gemini...

Man, I haven't no words... I can say only a thing:

YOU ROCK, MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Phew... I have SO MUCH to learn about hack a game yet! Good questions by the m35...

FFVII PSX Videos are extremly hard to hack, like I said before, I can convert them to .AVI format, with PSXVideo or PSX Movie Converter, edit them with VirtualDub, and convert them to STR with any STR Converter. But I can't reinsert them back into the ISO. I got an error message (I reinsert files using the old and good CDMage).

I just want edit 2 videos in special: JENOVA_E.MOV and the ending scene - those videos are subtitles and need be replaced, or the our Portuguese translation will be not complete! Here my list of tools to edit FFVII:


Dialogs Editing:

FFVII Dialogs Editor (by Lasyan3):
 
- Automatically resizes the windows of the game,
- Decompress & recompress ALL the DAT files of the game (release),
- Extracts and reinserts the dialogs of the game (release),
- Shows the hidden dialogs (read-only feature) (release)
- Automatically resizes the windows of the game (release),
- Reinserts the DAT files inside the image disk of the game (ISO file, like a CDMage) (release) =P
- Extracts and reinserts the events of the game (beta) -  may cause serious bugs if you don't know what you are doing
- Customizable ASCII table (release)

Kernel Editing:

Kernel Text Editor (by Lasyan3) and WallMarket (by NFITC1)

- Edit ALL texts inside the KERNEL.BIN (Items, Descriptions, Materia, Summons, Key Items, Weapons, Acessories, etc).
- Unpack and repack the KERNEL.BIN at once!
- WallMarket by NFITC1 allows me to edit things very cool!!! =P

Graphics Editing:

- FiceLZS (by Ficedulla) with GUI (by me =P) - Perfect tool decompress/compress ALL .LZS files of the game! This include image of change discs, minigames, enemies, and others files with .LZS extension!
- Tile Molester - Perfect tool to edit those .DEC files provided by FiceLZS! =P

Menus Editing:

- A simple hex editor with tables (I LOVE WindHex =P)
- FFVII Table with all characters - It's enough =P

Font Editing:

- FFVII Font Extractor - Allows extract all the files inside the WINDOW.BIN, and recreate the WINDOW.BIN. One of them it's the game font into .TIM format. Using TimTool or similar, you can change it for ANY font that you LOVE =D (Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana...)

Reinserting Single Files:

- CDMage - GREAT tool ro reinsert single files =P

Correct ECC/EDC Sectors:

- ECCRegen - GREAT tool to correct ECC/EDC sectors.

Ohhhhhhh - to launch our translation, we need edit the subtitled movies =P We hope that the dream comes true!

See ya!