zraw - rawvideo.bin to AVI

RealmRPGer · Post by **RealmRPGer** » Sat Jul 29, 2006 10:06 am

Okay, so, some of you may remember me asking about saving the rawvideo.bin files to an uncompressed avi format. Nothing worked out, so I ended up writing a program to do it. It should also support most/all encoders you have, since it uses the standard dialog seen in standard applications.

Note that this is a very very early and sloppy version, but it gets the job done.

zsnes seems to dump a "junk" frame, so you can select not to load that one in the options dialog.
edit: The junk frame actually appears to be from the save state load.

The only other thing you can do is set what frame to start the avi at(currently it always runs to the end).

Anyway, try it out, give me your comments / suggestions.

Thanks.

http://files.realmprotectors.com/zraw.exe

paulguy · Post by **paulguy** » Sat Jul 29, 2006 7:05 pm

doesn't zsnes already interface with mencoder to encode it?

snkcube · Post by **snkcube** » Sat Jul 29, 2006 7:46 pm

paulguy wrote:doesn't zsnes already interface with mencoder to encode it?

Yes it does...

RealmRPGer · Post by **RealmRPGer** » Sat Jul 29, 2006 9:01 pm

Yes, but afaik it doesn't have as many encoding options, and a lot of them (such as the "raw" / uncompressed mode) doesn't work typical movie players. Hence why I created this program.

Poobah · Post by **Poobah** » Sat Jul 29, 2006 11:35 pm

Perhaps you could see if the devs could implement some of your ideas into ZSNES.

Post by **Nach** » Sat Jul 29, 2006 11:51 pm

Poobah wrote:Perhaps you could see if the devs could implement some of your ideas into ZSNES.

Do I have to say it again?

It is not possible to make a raw AVI all movie players will use.

RealmRPGer · Post by **RealmRPGer** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 12:55 am

Maybe not, but it is very possible to make one that the grand majority does. ;D

Unfortunately to say, this is not currently the case with ZSNES/MEncoder. =/

I WOULD like to see if I could optimize this program to run on-the-fly like MEncoder does. How does ZSNES pass it the raw video file? I mean, it doesn't know the length of the movie at the start, does it?

paulguy · Post by **paulguy** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 1:27 am

yeah im a bit curois how it sends it over in windows. I could see inlinux with a pipe since that's all through memory but not in windows where it'd make a tempfile also it wouldn't actually encode anything until you close zsnes.

Post by **Nach** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 1:54 am

RealmRPGer wrote:Maybe not, but it is very possible to make one that the grand majority does. ;D

Yes, I could do that and it would be a pain in the neck. I tried doing that before I thought of using MEncoder, and I can tell you, it's just not worth it.

RealmRPGer wrote: Unfortunately to say, this is not currently the case with ZSNES/MEncoder. =/

ZSNES/MEncoder produced videos work everywhere with the right codecs. But that is not raw.

RealmRPGer wrote: How does ZSNES pass it the raw video file?

Via stdin.

RealmRPGer · Post by **RealmRPGer** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 2:46 am

Yes, I could do that and it would be a pain in the neck. I tried doing that before I thought of using MEncoder, and I can tell you, it's just not worth it.

Hence why I created zraw

Via stdin.

If it is passed via stdin, then how does Mencoder know the % completed?

OutrightOwnage · Post by **OutrightOwnage** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 3:58 am

um doesnt zsnes know how long the movie is? maybe it sends a header or something to mencoder.

but i know next to nothing about that stuff so maybe not

Post by **Nach** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 2:20 pm

RealmRPGer wrote:
Yes, I could do that and it would be a pain in the neck. I tried doing that before I thought of using MEncoder, and I can tell you, it's just not worth it.
Hence why I created zraw

I highly doubt your zraw does as much as needed.

RealmRPGer wrote:
Via stdin.
If it is passed via stdin, then how does Mencoder know the % completed?

It doesn't.

RealmRPGer · Post by **RealmRPGer** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 8:56 pm

Nach wrote: I highly doubt your zraw does as much as needed.

Well, try it out and you tell me. =p

Nach wrote: It doesn't.

Hrmmmm... Oh, I thought MEncoder displayed a percentage...Guess not.

Post by **Nach** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 9:05 pm

RealmRPGer wrote:
Nach wrote: I highly doubt your zraw does as much as needed.
Well, try it out and you tell me. =p

Got source?

And unless you're going to spend hours reading docs all over the web, hex analyze many existing AVIs made with all sorts of programs, and testing with dozens of applications, I don't see how it's possible you even remotely have any large level of compatibility.

RealmRPGer · Post by **RealmRPGer** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 12:09 am

As I stated in the original post, the program uses the default encoding utility. That is, it uses the one contained in avifil32.dll. Use the program and the popup window of encoder selections should seem familiar to you (if you're a windows user, of course). This is the standard that most programs use, thus it should be the most compatible one, and the standard Windows movie players go by.

Oh, and, I don't know if it's you trying to be defensive, offensive, or it's just your normal demeanor, but if it's anything other than the latter, I don't mean to be causing you trouble. I had a problem, and this turned out to be the best / easiest solution (for me, anyway).

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 12:19 am

RealmRPGer, Nach's questiong on your app hinges on what it actually does internally... hence he is asking for the source. What may work for media players for Windows may/may not work for those in Linux and vice versa... basically there really needs to be some useful analysis to be done before you say "this works better than what is currently used".

Post by **Nach** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 12:29 am

Okay so it just uses VFW. I can assure you that VFW produced raw AVIs work nicely in other VFW apps, but fail in many other places.

RealmRPGer · Post by **RealmRPGer** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 3:31 am

Deathlike2 wrote:RealmRPGer, Nach's questiong on your app hinges on what it actually does internally... hence he is asking for the source. What may work for media players for Windows may/may not work for those in Linux and vice versa... basically there really needs to be some useful analysis to be done before you say "this works better than what is currently used".

Well, I know it's windows only. It uses the windows dll. And I never said that it works better than what is currently used. It doesn't even work in the same manner as the MEncoder encoding. What I did say was that MEncoder wasn't working for me, so I did this, and it DOES work for me, so see if it works for you too. At no point was I saying or trying to say that my program is "better" or that it's really awesome and you have to use it because it's so cool. I see it as a second option if MEncoder isn't working for you and you're using Windows.

Anyway, if you want the source, I can put something together. It's made in C# (I wanted to make something quick and dirty), and is probably dependant on Visual Studio 2005.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 3:37 am

The ironic thing is that mencoder works just fine for me (but I haven't used it for your specific task). I have no idea why you won't use any of the compression formats.. but the convienence the current system already provides is already awesome.

Que · Post by **Que** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 9:34 am

Nach wrote:
Poobah wrote:Perhaps you could see if the devs could implement some of your ideas into ZSNES.
Do I have to say it again?

It is not possible to make a raw AVI all movie players will use.

Could you dump mpeg/2/4? That would be supported by the greater majority of everything.

RealmRPGer · Post by **RealmRPGer** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 9:43 am

Could you dump mpeg/2/4? That would be supported by the greater majority of everything.

I believe it's only an avi saver. Since I primarily created the program for my own use, it's unlikely I'd add mpeg support unless there was another dll I could use.

I have no idea why you won't use any of the compression formats..

I'm using the movies to sprite rip ( http://www.kurokastle.net/SBL/thread.ph ... bb3&page=1 ) and so I need an uncompressed or lossless format. FFV1 or XVid or whatever that was supposed to be lossless had technical imperfections that were unfitting for proper sprite ripping, and the format MEncoder churned out for uncompressed movies wasn't readable by any of my animation programs. That's why I created zraw.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 10:40 am

I'm pretty sure you can do sprite ripping with other options that don't involve the movie format... it's been discussed before IIRC. VSnes is what you need.

Post by **Nach** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 11:53 am

Que wrote: Could you dump mpeg/2/4? That would be supported by the greater majority of everything.

XviD and x264 are both MPEG4 streams.
However I can look into outputting an MPEG container video, I believe mencoder has an option for that.

RealmRPGer wrote:and the format MEncoder churned out for uncompressed movies wasn't readable by any of my animation programs. That's why I created zraw.

We don't have ZSNES use MEncoder for the uncompressed options.
However if you edit zmovie.cfg to have MEncoder output uncompressed AVIs, it's going to use RGB0x18 as it's 4CC which isn't liked by VFW. You can however change that to 0x00000000 which is liked by VFW, but then all VFW applications will display the video upside down.

RealmRPGer · Post by **RealmRPGer** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 12:30 pm

Actually, I couldn't figure out how to get it to output 0x000000 as the fourcc option takes a string, and the ascii character representing 0x00 is non-printable.

Oh, and I took a quick look at vSNES, and I don't see how it's supposed to suit my sprite ripping needs. If you followed the links I gave, you'd see that my rips are animated sprites that are also exact frame captures, meaning the number of frames for each, er, frame of animation is exactly the same as it is in the game. This is the kind of sprite ripping that I need.

Post by **Nach** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 1:29 pm

RealmRPGer wrote:Actually, I couldn't figure out how to get it to output 0x000000 as the fourcc option takes a string, and the ascii character representing 0x00 is non-printable.

Use a hex editor.