How to convert Broken Sword videos by my own?

[SimSaw]

Since I've got the original German game and the compressed quality of the videos offered on your page is not good enough for me I'd like to convert by my own. But I have no idea on what compression you used. Could anybody please tell me how I can do this?

[Herrscher]

3.3) Broken Sword notes
---- ------------------
Broken Sword 1 and 2 both come with in-game cutscenes compressed using
RAD Game Tools legacy Smacker(tm) format. As RAD is unwilling to open
the older legacy versions of this format to us, and have requested we not
reverse engineer it, Revolution Software has kindly allowed us to provide
re-encoded Broken Sword cutscenes for download on our website.

There is no legal way to extract the proprietary "Smacker"(tm) format.

[olki]

That's not entirely correct. You can use the RAD Video Tools (available from RAD's website for free) to uncompress the Smacker files.

What we did was to convert the entire clips to TIFF files and then used mencoder to compress them to mpeg2. Don't ask me for the details though -- I've long forgotten them.

[Herrscher]

That's not entirely correct. You can use the RAD Video Tools (available from RAD's website for free) to uncompress the Smacker files.

What we did was to convert the entire clips to TIFF files and then used mencoder to compress them to mpeg2. Don't ask me for the details though -- I've long forgotten them.

I am at the moment checking EXACTLY THAT out...

Til now I believe RADTools just let you smack-encode things, not decode...?!

I will see in some minutes...

[clem]

if you're talking about the german compressed BS1 videos, I think those were done by me, with the same settings as the English ones

basically I don't see much difference to the (also compressed) smacker files

clem

[Herrscher]

Yes, you can decompress the Smacks-Directory of BS2 for example using the RADTools.
Just download them, choose a SMK file from BS2 CD, and convert to AVI for example (uncompressed / PCM).
From there you could reencode them via TMPEG or whatever you like.
I just don't know if ScummVM doesn't care about the file format...

[clem]

I just don't know if ScummVM doesn't care about the file format...

I think it'll play any 640x480 mpeg file. The reason why the original SMK files aren't played is that the RAD company doesn't allow re-implementation of their decoder in open source

clem

[Dark-Star]

Here's a snippet from an old IRC log that might help you:

Code: Select all

&#91;18&#58;08&#93; <Dark-Star> anyone know what options I have to throw at mencoder to have it create a valid MPEG-2 file?
&#91;18&#58;09&#93; <Dark-Star> for me it only creates an MPEG-1, even though I use "-lavcopts vcodec&#58;mpeg2video"
&#91;18&#58;11&#93; <Kirben> ie mencoder -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video -mf type=tga&#58;fps=24 mf&#58;//candle*.tga -o candle.mp2

I once tried converting them too, unsuccessfully if I remember correctly
--Darkstar

P.S.: This log excerpt is from Feb 07 2004, here are some more IRC logs: http://logs.scummvm.org/

[Moderator Note: Changed URL to the preferred logs URL, as they may move]

[SimSaw]

Thanks! Your last message has been very helpful. I just downloaded the program and made me a batch file with this command line. My only question remaining is: How to increase quality? Is there an option to make the program create higher quality outputs?

[clem]

I guess mencoder comes with a manual (or probably try "mencoder -?") and fiddle around with compression options

clem

[Nightweaver]

I did this just the other day with Broken Sword 1. I'll try to remember what I did...

1. Extracted smk files with RadGameTools to an AVI file with just the video (using HuffYUV codec), and a WAV file for audio.
2. Converted WAV to FLAC (You can do MP3 or Vorbis if you like, plenty of instructions for doing this)
3. Converted the AVI to MPEG-2 with the Win32 version of mencoder:

Code: Select all

mencoder moviename.avi -o moviename.mp2 -of rawvideo -ovc lavc -nosound -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vhq:vpass=1 -fps 24
mencoder moviename.avi -o moviename.mp2 -of rawvideo -ovc lavc -nosound -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vhq:vpass=2 -fps 24

There's plenty of ways to do it, and libmpeg2 is pretty forgiving when it comes to decoding the files (the -of flag is unneccessary, but I think is a good idea). Also, two-pass might be overkill for most people, but I had far too much time on my hands

[theli]

i also want to reencode videos ( cause i have broken sword 1/2 fully translated to russian )
and i have a couple of wuestions

well.. if scummvm handles 640x480 mp2 then i should reencode those smks in smackshi dir ?

and .. can anyone teell me what are the smks that contain speech so that i have no need to look through all of them before i play the game ...

and .. would it be useful if i'll send the scummvm team reencoded cutscenes of this language?

[clem]

yeah, better use the hi quality .smk files;

video + audio different:
credits.mp2 credits.ogg (only video different, audio same?)
intro.mp2 intro.ogg

audio different:
ferrari.mp2 ferrari.ogg
finale.mp2 finale.ogg
history.mp2 history.ogg

hope that helps,
clem

[Ender]

AFAIK, there is generally no point reencoding BS2 cutscenes.

The audio for these is not including in the cutscene files, unlike in BS1, but actually in the game itself. So you'll hear German, English, whatever your version of BS2 is, with just the normal BS2 cutscene pack.

[theli]

thanks clem and ender