Author Topic: FF7 PSX videos (Read 52235 times)

Hellbringer616 · « **on:** 2009-11-14 16:36:20 »

I'm working on converting the higher quality PSX videos to the PC version though i'm running into a snag, they all need to be 15 FPS last i knew, But i am getting 11 - 13 FPS depending on the video... will this impact on FF7 PC or not?

Nevermind guess some videos are 15 FPS

willis936 · « **Reply #1 on:** 2009-11-14 20:02:08 »

I pray Halkun is game with this. It is technically the same game so he's not really "ripping" material off other sources.
And the potential payoff could be awesome. Can you confirm the PSX videos are higher quality? Do you have side by side screens?

Hellbringer616 · « **Reply #2 on:** 2009-11-14 20:03:42 »

No but i'll try and take one, when i figure out how, And i thought it was okay since it was FF7 related, If not then i am very very sorry i didn't think about the fact it is from the PSX version it would matter. Halkun if this is against the rules i'm sorry and just delete this thread.

EDIT: here you go and image to compare left is PSX right is PC

Both images were taken at 2 times the normal size as at default the images are tiny, But you can still see a difference

Link for bigger view: http://i34.tinypic.com/vy7f6d.png

willis936 · « **Reply #3 on:** 2009-11-14 21:27:35 »

Holy Jesus!

I'm very excited about this!

Hellbringer616 · « **Reply #4 on:** 2009-11-14 22:17:05 »

i'm hoping i can find a good video resizer, But all the ones i find that are halfway decent are a couple hundred..

drfeelgud88 · « **Reply #5 on:** 2009-11-15 03:54:37 »

Wow, this sounds like a fantastic idea! Will be keeping an eye on this!

m35 · « **Reply #6 on:** 2009-11-15 07:19:32 »

Which video converter are you using? Not all of them are equal it seems. What output format are you targeting? Do you want to use the same codec the game uses, or use an alternative codec?

Quote

i'm hoping i can find a good video resizer, But all the ones i find that are halfway decent are a couple hundred..

I suspect ffmpeg has the ability to do resizing as well as any professional tool--albeit a little less user-friendly

Grimmy · « **Reply #7 on:** 2009-11-15 15:38:47 »

For all your video resizing/encoding I suggest using super.

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

You can also use Prism, Any Video Converter, or VDub.

Generally when exporting AVI the XVID codec is the best.

If you are going to be applying filters then VDub is your best bet. It comes with around 50 filters that will work wonders for small blurry videos.

Hellbringer616 · « **Reply #8 on:** 2009-11-15 21:35:46 »

i am using jpsxdec the recommended best.

And i'll check out vdub, i was looking at video enhancer, But last i knew that didn't work to well..

I also am exporting in loseless uncompressed .avi format, then i will convert to a good codec when i finish enhancing them

Kranmer · « **Reply #9 on:** 2009-11-17 07:55:06 »

well seifer and me a while ago went into this looking ar the better quality pictures on the PSX and also that the PSX videos had higher sound quality in the video's (the ones that had sound anyway). I tried lots of methods of resizing the video's but i personally found that photoshop did a better job (granted photoshop takes forever but the outputed picture is slightly better) then any of the resizing video programs i tried although siefer personally prefered Video enhancer (i only tried the trail of this since i wasnt gonna buy a program just for enhancing videos then never use it again) i also tried Vreveal which gave pretty decent quality output but i still found photoshop slightly better.
Also what size are you planning to resizing the videos to ? is it just double size or are you planning to go higher ?
also in a few topics in the past we have looked at different codecs to find which one worked best (although the topics are old and i havent tested Aali's newest driver to find out of H264 works yet) but the codec i found that worked best was H263+ but since this was a bit obscure for some people i ended up using xvid to make it easyer for other people.
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=8962
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=8980
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=8553

Also it should be noted the sound in the PSX videos is different to the PC ones. if you look at the opening you will notice the PSX video does not play the music like the PC opening (i believe this is because the BGM is kept in a different file on the PSX videos so when you convert STR it doesnt convert the BMG as well)

Hellbringer616 · « **Reply #10 on:** 2009-11-17 12:49:59 »

video enhancer causes my video driver to go crazy and crash so thats out, How would you improve a video with photoshop?

Kranmer · « **Reply #11 on:** 2009-11-17 22:18:08 »

ah well there is 2 ways to do it with photoshop.
Method1 is to use CS3 or higher and import a uncompressed AVI of 500 frames (so if the video is longer you would have to split it up into groups of 500) and process it but i found this to be way to difficult so i decided against it.

Method 2 (i used this method but it does take a while to do) Extracting all video into a picture format so each frame is extracted as 1 image (so for example if you have a 1923 frame video it would extract that to 1923 PNG files or JPEG etc)
To do this i first converted the original PSX video into uncompressed AVI then extracted the frames to PNG using RadTools (freeware) then i was left with the pictures which i then batch processed with whatever filters i thought looked good in photoshop then used Radtools to put all the images back into video.
But since this method took a long time to do i often just left it on when i went out or slept (but it could be the reason it takes so long for me is proberly because my setup is kind of old nowerdays).

lansing · « **Reply #12 on:** 2009-11-19 06:55:20 »

photoshop is not for handling of videos, in addition, the resizing filters that it uses are simple bilinear or bicubic (VirtualDub has this filter as its internal resizer too).

hellbringer616, if you're really into video editing, you should spend a couple of days looking into AviSynth, it has a large base of filters which are suitable for many purposes. For resizing filters, the best I can think of is NNEDI2

For a quick general usage in your case:

download and install Avisynth
download nnedi2.zip, extract the nnedi2.dll file to the avisynth installed directory/plugins
create a new text file with extension of avs, write these lines in it and then save it (change the areas indicated accordingly)

Code: [Select]

AviSource("your source file.avi")
nnedi2_rpow2(rfactor=2,cshift="spline36resize",fwidth=x,fheight=y)  #this is the resizing filter, x and y are your final width and height of the video

open the avs with some video editing program, like VirtualDub, and there you can do whatever you want to it

Micky · « **Reply #13 on:** 2009-11-19 18:47:59 »

Quote from: superbbjai on 2009-11-19 06:55:20

For resizing filters, the best I can think of is NNEDI2

I played around with that code a few years ago and it produced stunning results on static images compared to the classic bilinear/bicubic filters. Though there were a few artefacts around animated/moving areas, so it'll be interesting to see how it looks applied to an AVI. The problems were caused when changes inside the window around a pixel were modifying the interpolation values. Though that could've been fixed with intelligent masking.

Timber · « **Reply #14 on:** 2010-02-13 18:44:58 »

I'm would love to have the higher quality videos
Are you still working on these hellbringer?

Hellbringer616 · « **Reply #15 on:** 2010-02-13 19:47:36 »

Yes and no. I am currently very pressed for time at the moment, and my good video editing computer is down at the moment. I am also looking for better mastering software, But with no luck...

If you wish you can have somewhat higher quality videos by taking your PSX disc of FF7 (if you have one) and rip the videos from there.

Cyberman · « **Reply #16 on:** 2010-02-13 23:15:19 »

Quote from: hellbringer616 on 2010-02-13 19:47:36

Yes and no. I am currently very pressed for time at the moment, and my good video editing computer is down at the moment. I am also looking for better mastering software, But with no luck...

If you wish you can have somewhat higher quality videos by taking your PSX disc of FF7 (if you have one) and rip the videos from there.

Combine AVI synh and Virtual Dub and you have some of the most functional editing software on the internet. First you need to decode the video obviously into something AVI synth will like (YUV12?) and then have AVI synth apply the image processing algorythm you use. AVI synth is purely a cli program just to warn you. STill it is extremely powerful and you can create quite sophisticated filter systems with it (as well as add hard subtitles to video etc.)

m35 · « **Reply #17 on:** 2010-02-15 05:01:54 »

Update on using jPSXdec rip the videos.

A new version has been released. This version has slightly more accurate frame rate detection, but still needs more work in that area. It can also extract to the fourcc YV12 codec. In theory this should be the absolute best quality you can get, but the brightness/contrast somehow are different from the uncompressed rgb codec. So the equations need to be double-checked, and possibly also an investigation if some gamma correction is unintentionally happening somewhere.

titeguy3 · « **Reply #18 on:** 2010-02-15 05:37:32 »

Hey guys, I know this sounds far fetched and somewhat moronic of an idea and feel free to shoot it down, but...

How about an emulator? If you've got the original FF7 Game disc, just pop it into your PC and run it with a good PSX emulator. The emulator can upscale the video, apply smoothing filters *and* give the original audio, all you have to do is use a video recording software like Camtasia Recorder (or Snag-it, the freeware version), to capture the video in full frames off your display, then convert it to XVID or what-have-you.

Of course, this is all assuming that the emulator can run the FMV's at peak quality, which I'm not even sure that the original Playstation did, but hell, it's just an idea that occurred to me.

If it looks better it looks better, right?

Timber · « **Reply #19 on:** 2010-02-15 06:10:52 »

Quote from: titeguy3 on 2010-02-15 05:37:32

Hey guys, I know this sounds far fetched and somewhat moronic of an idea and feel free to shoot it down, but...

How about an emulator? If you've got the original FF7 Game disc, just pop it into your PC and run it with a good PSX emulator. The emulator can upscale the video, apply smoothing filters *and* give the original audio, all you have to do is use a video recording software like Camtasia Recorder (or Snag-it, the freeware version), to capture the video in full frames off your display, then convert it to XVID or what-have-you.

Of course, this is all assuming that the emulator can run the FMV's at peak quality, which I'm not even sure that the original Playstation did, but hell, it's just an idea that occurred to me.

If it looks better it looks better, right?

That actually sounds like a pretty good idea, using ePSXe and FRAPS would probably do the trick.
I lost my PSX copy of FF7 quite a while ago though.

Anyone wonna try this? Wouldn't be too hard.

EDIT: Just realised this won't work so well with all videos, because of characters on screen and music playing.

Hellbringer616 · « **Reply #20 on:** 2010-02-15 15:27:33 »

emulators upscale? I never really noticed. I just rip the original file off my PSX disc and got the above result (ripped in lossless of course. 800mb of video. 11 files

)

m35 · « **Reply #21 on:** 2010-02-15 16:10:53 »

There are several things to consider with the conversion of PSX movies.

1) PSX video converter
The PlayStation could run in two graphics modes: 24-bit or 15-bit. Most games (including FF7) used 15-bit. So all the movies are displayed with that lesser color depth. Additionally, the PlayStation (and all emulators) use very fast video decoding methods that sacrifice quality for speed. Using any of the direct converters out there will definitely produce better results than capturing the video in play.

The PlayStation movie data is stored on the disc in a (slightly unique) YUV format. jPSXdec is the only converter that takes advantage of this and performs the least amount of operations on the data by outputting YUV directly (all other converters add the additional operation of converting to rgb). Ultimately we need the data in a YUV colorspace anyway. YUV may also let other video processors perform magical mathematical operations on it in ways that can't be done on just rgb. (I just need to figure out why the colors are coming out differently ;)

2) framerate
Due to limitations of the video formats on PlayStation discs, frame rates often fluxuate slightly during play. This fluctuation didn't exist in the original movies rendered by Square. So which is more accurate: the movies Square made, or the movies you actually watch when playing the game?

For FF7 specifically, I'm pretty sure all the movies originally had a half-NTSC rate of 15000/1001. However only the videos with sound were played back (approximately) at that rate (and probably only because the audio would get out of sync otherwise). Videos without sound were played back at exactly 15 fps.

Note that an upcoming option in jPSXdec will let you output exactly how it is rendered on the PlayStation (or at least my best guess ;).

3) how the audio & video sync
Also due to the PlayStation limitations, audio and video may not have synced up exactly how the original master did. I'm curious now how the PC FF7 videos sync the audio and video. That might give some insight as to how we might want them to sync as well.

4) scaling algorithm
Not very familiar with these technologies, but it sounds like NNEDI2 may be the way to go. I also wonder if there are any other filters worth running the videos through (an example of what filters can do to improve quality).

5) final format
h.264 is pretty much the best quality codec available these days (just ask google to compare xvid and h.264).

6) how to encode
I'm not familiar with any other free h.264 encoders other than ffmpeg. Even the SUPER converter is actually using ffmpeg under the hood (it just provides a pretty interface). The hard part is experimenting with various qscales and/or bitrates to determine the best quality:size ratio.

Hellbringer616 · « **Reply #22 on:** 2010-02-16 03:48:30 »

h.264 isn't supported by Aali's driver i believe.. (sadly

)
As for you image. i can do that. But i'm trying to make it look less like crap at super high resolutions. (which if we remake a lot of the backgrounds will make my life A LOT easier) But thanks for the info. maybe i'll get off my lazy butt and get to work XD

Timber · « **Reply #23 on:** 2010-02-16 05:45:55 »

Quote from: hellbringer616 on 2010-02-15 15:27:33

emulators upscale? I never really noticed. I just rip the original file off my PSX disc and got the above result (ripped in lossless of course. 800mb of video. 11 files )

Out of curiosity, do the lossless videos work in ff7?

Hellbringer616 · « **Reply #24 on:** 2010-02-16 15:38:53 »

no idea. you'd have to ask ali that one. but I was using losses until I finished residing/filtering them then I was playing to switch to a high quality code