FFVII .str integration...

[xeriouxi]

Hi!

Is it possible to get the original .str files from the PSX version of FFVII and get them to play in the PC version? They are pretty much the same in file size and I'm sure that a plug-in wouldn't be that hard to find, would it? Also, whether you are using the standard MIDI music or the FF7Music patch with PSF support, the music for the opening theme and ending theme are included... so this could be played over the .str files!  

What does everybody think?  

xeriouxi.

[sfx1999]

Why?

[xeriouxi]

Hi!

Well... for the simple reason that the movies will be of a very high quality and the sound quality will be much better than the .avi movies...  

xeriouxi.

[kkcazajeg]

Nope, they won't.
1. The movie quality of the PSone version is worse than that of the PC version.
2. These midis are not used, they only were too lazy to delete them from the disc (game developers leave beta stuff on the discs/cartridges very often). The music in the opening and ending are the original files from the PSone version.

Thus, there is absolutely no need for the STR-files.

[Qhimm]

Uhm... the quality of PSX movies are in fact better than the PC equivalents, but that's mostly because the FF7 engine has decided to render each movie frame to 256-color surfaces before displaying them on-screen. Hence, great ugliness (compared to the PSX, or simply playing the PC movies in your normal media player). Problem is, unless you reprogram the FF7 engine it doesn't matter how your image is compressed, it will still be rendered in 256 colors.

The PSFs would make no difference in the opening and ending though, correct. And as for the rest of the game it should work like normal, so nothing new there.

[Cid Highwind]

So you're telling me that if I rip the psx movies in a resolution of 640x480, the quality won't be determined by the movies, but for a bigger part by the FF7 engine.... Bummer.
 -_-  

Well I'm gonna try to find out if the resolution of the psx versions can make a difference.  

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

Message

[Aaron]

Is PSX actually capable of displaying 640x480 movies? I thought that they are 3-something x something.

IIRC, FF7PC's movies are 320x224?  Anyway, I don't know if FF7PC would run with movies of a different size without rewriting something.  And yeah... the in-game movie quality would be way better if it would just play them at the color depth you see in Windows Media Player (or any other player), instead of cutting it down to 256 colors.  Ugh.

[Cid Highwind]

Is PSX actually capable of displaying 640x480 movies? I thought that they are 3-something x something.

Isn't the MDEC supposed to choke with anything over 9000 macroblocks per second? That would mean a maximum of about 320x240, 30 fps.

PSX's default resolution is 320x240 (244??) and the movies are in a resolution of 320x244 @ 15FPS, at least that's what my psxmovieplayer says, as does Virtual Dub. But that player, called PSX Multi Convertor (PSXMC: Downloadable from www.ngemu.com from the download database), is able to store them as .AVI files, in a resolution the double from the default, and I tried with FF8, and the movies looked great, talking about resolution. But you could see some colour switchings (like when you look at a pic in 256 colours).

How many colours can the PSX handle??

[Aaron]

How many colours can the PSX handle??

IIRC, in FF7 for PSX, the movies are 16-bit color (65k colors) and the rest of the game runs in 24-bit color (16M colors).

[Qhimm]

IIRC, in FF7 for PSX, the movies are 16-bit color (65k colors) and the rest of the game runs in 24-bit color (16M colors).

I thought the majority of the PSX games runs entirely in 16-bit, but it can do 24-bit by switching to special video modes... could be wrong though.

[Aaron]

Hmm, that's why I said IIRC ^^
Oh well, that's what I thought but I'm not sure.