Broken Sword I & II - Enhanced cutscene project - Update
Moderator: ScummVM Team
I have made a .dxa file from Phreddy's mp4-file.
Here it is: http://uploaded.to/?id=y7pdx6 (Only a test)
But it looks not really better than the original dxa file. Why?
And the file is to big, aprox. 45MB. I don't know how I can more compress the png pictures.
The PNG (8bit) files are great, but if I encode it to dxa and play it ScummVM, the video looks not so good.
Okay, it's has only 12 frames/sec, but that isn't the problem.
I want to know what the tool "encode_dxa" do, or how ScummVM use the dxa in the engine?
Why looks pictures after encode so bad? Really. No Antialiasing!
And thanks Phreddy for his great work
Here it is: http://uploaded.to/?id=y7pdx6 (Only a test)
But it looks not really better than the original dxa file. Why?
And the file is to big, aprox. 45MB. I don't know how I can more compress the png pictures.
The PNG (8bit) files are great, but if I encode it to dxa and play it ScummVM, the video looks not so good.
Okay, it's has only 12 frames/sec, but that isn't the problem.
I want to know what the tool "encode_dxa" do, or how ScummVM use the dxa in the engine?
Why looks pictures after encode so bad? Really. No Antialiasing!
And thanks Phreddy for his great work
- eriktorbjorn
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The compression of the PNG images don't matter. The frames are re-compressed using one of several different methods. Whichever method produces the smallest output is used.doelli811 wrote: And the file is to big, aprox. 45MB. I don't know how I can more compress the png pictures.
I don't really understand the methods that are used myself. One of them simply stores a compressed description of the difference between one frame and the next one. That method works best if there are little or no difference between the frame. If there's even the tiniest difference (it might not even be visible to the naked eye) in the colours used, the method could break down completely. In that case, another method would probably be used, but it's likely that they too work best if two consecutive frames are almost identical.
Some of the Broken Sword 1 movies were originally 640x200 pixels, rather than 640x400. The movie was then scaled up on plaback. That might improve the compression rate, too, though I don't remember if the intro movie was one of these. Cleaned-up versions of the movies wouldn't have this advantage.
The encoder shouldn't make any changes to the frames at all. Whatever is in them will be what's in the resulting DXA file as well.doelli811 wrote: The PNG (8bit) files are great, but if I encode it to dxa and play it ScummVM, the video looks not so good.
Okay, it's has only 12 frames/sec, but that isn't the problem.
I want to know what the tool "encode_dxa" do, or how ScummVM use the dxa in the engine?
Why looks pictures after encode so bad? Really. No Antialiasing!
I haven't looked at yours, though. It's too late at night here.
Thanks for the encouragement, it's much appreciated .
I'm currently trying to find a way to convert back to 8 bit color with as little image quality loss as possible. After that, I'll scour the web for a DXA codec (so that I can encode using VDubMod rather than a standalone application) or at least a standalone encoder that can take an AVI file as input.
I'm currently trying to find a way to convert back to 8 bit color with as little image quality loss as possible. After that, I'll scour the web for a DXA codec (so that I can encode using VDubMod rather than a standalone application) or at least a standalone encoder that can take an AVI file as input.
- eriktorbjorn
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I'd be surprised if you found one, really. From what I understand, DXA was something Runesoft invented, probably as a Smacker replacement, for the Macintosh and Amiga versions of The Feeble Files. ScummVM's DXA encoder extends the format further by adding some further compression methods, and allowing the sound to be a separate, compressed file.Phreddy wrote:TI'll scour the web for a DXA codec (so that I can encode using VDubMod rather than a standalone application) or at least a standalone encoder that can take an AVI file as input.
So it's not widely used to begin with, and ScummVM uses a non-standard version of it.
- JohnnyWalker2001
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- eriktorbjorn
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If you mean using an alternative set of DXA movies, ScummVM can already do that, of course. If you mean adding support for a another movie format that uses 16-bit colour, I doubt it. I'm even hoping for the MPEG support (which does use 16-bit colour) to eventually go away, since it's such an annoying hack.JohnnyWalker2001 wrote:Could ScummVM be altered to allow the usage of these vastly improved videos? Could that be possible? (In the same way it supports .OGG for audio.)
If 16bit videos need to be supported one day, I'd either use Theora (better than MPEG2, no licensing issues and the API is ok to use and a similar interface like that of the DXA decoder would be easy to do) or roll an own simple codec.
I even played around with this idea ("DXA32" ) but never got far.
I even played around with this idea ("DXA32" ) but never got far.
- eriktorbjorn
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Last time I tried, Theora needed fairly fast hardware to work well. By which I mean that my previous computer (450 MHz P3) wasn't quite fast enough to handle it.john_doe wrote:If 16bit videos need to be supported one day, I'd either use Theora (better than MPEG2, no licensing issues and the API is ok to use and a similar interface like that of the DXA decoder would be easy to do) or roll an own simple codec.
I even played around with this idea ("DXA32" ) but never got far.
Then again, the Theora libraries still have "alpha" in their version number, so maybe that'll improve over time.
- JamesWoodcock
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not sure what exactly you are trying to do, but bink is actually quite userfriendly from a programmer's perspective.Phreddy wrote:The Bink FAQ says that it supports AVI input, so the only thing I'd need to do is modify the .BAT file, right?
run "binkconv /?" for command line switches
"binkconv file.avi outfile.png" will convert to a series of png files. It is also possible to create an AVI file from a series of png files (it'll prompt you for the compressor)