I am not into porn, and there wasnt any pics in this game that I woudl consider porn, there isnt even any visible nudity! I just wanted to know because there were some good TASTEFUL pictures in the game.
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- Thread starter Cyber Akuma
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I'm sorta busy with exams... The format is way weird, nothing like what i've seen ^^;
Ouch, just my luck that the one game I try to extract scenes from has an EXTREMELY obscure format >.<
LOL. you said you were having speed problems when you tried to play it back. try running it through virtualdub and see what happens. what i'd guess is that it outputted in uncompressed avi format. bout 1.2gb min, so your machine won't play them at the proper speed. some scenes would be fast, some skipi, some slow. do a fast recompress of it in virtualdub, using divx or somthing.
Gallstaff: Tasteful as in have at least some degree of clothes on. Some of the most mature scenes in the game are nothing more then one of them naked but something such as a rock or blown up ship part or their hands is covering them up.
sat985: I was able to encode the video. I had to use a file, forogt the format, basically its a text file that links to the movie file and tells vdub in what codec and framerate to run it in. The audio of course didnt play and I had to rip it then encode it when the video. Anyway it made it into a 7 meg divx avi. The action in the video is choppy at times, stupid 15fps like 200x200 res saturn movie standard. Did all saturn games use this format or did some of them use higher quality? Most movies I found were like this. When comparing the psx and saturn grandia intros, sorry to say this but, the saturn version had ssssooooo much pixelation I could BARELY see some of the scens and the action seemed VERY jerky and paused at times. It was much more fluid and clearer on teh psx. But then again, the saturn was made a couple of years before the psx so I guess its only fair that the psx has better movie playback abilities. So far though, out of all the systems I have encoded movies from (DC, PSX, PS2, Saturn), this one particular game was my hardest to date.
sat985: I was able to encode the video. I had to use a file, forogt the format, basically its a text file that links to the movie file and tells vdub in what codec and framerate to run it in. The audio of course didnt play and I had to rip it then encode it when the video. Anyway it made it into a 7 meg divx avi. The action in the video is choppy at times, stupid 15fps like 200x200 res saturn movie standard. Did all saturn games use this format or did some of them use higher quality? Most movies I found were like this. When comparing the psx and saturn grandia intros, sorry to say this but, the saturn version had ssssooooo much pixelation I could BARELY see some of the scens and the action seemed VERY jerky and paused at times. It was much more fluid and clearer on teh psx. But then again, the saturn was made a couple of years before the psx so I guess its only fair that the psx has better movie playback abilities. So far though, out of all the systems I have encoded movies from (DC, PSX, PS2, Saturn), this one particular game was my hardest to date.
antime
Extra Hard Mid Boss
Main difference between the PSX and Saturn is of course that the PSX has hardware decoding built-in while the Saturn uses software-only decoders (with the exception of those few games that take advantage of the VCD card).
For examples of Saturn video quality at its best, take a look at late EA Sports games (eg. NHL'98).
For examples of Saturn video quality at its best, take a look at late EA Sports games (eg. NHL'98).
The Saturn has hardware video decoding, but, when compared to the PSX, it all comes to what video format is natively supported.
The Saturn followed the 3DO way: Cinepak. It can be decoded it at no cost for the system.
The Saturn cinepak codec is very similar to the PC one. Try encoding a movie, 320x240 (or 320x224, the saturn res), at 300K/s, and see the quality... not pretty good, heh? Cinepak uses lossy-RLE frame compression, and the scene change detection is pretty poor crude.
The PSX used a MPEG-based video compression. It uses lossy-JPEG frame compression, and the scene change, while far from perfect, is more accurate than cinepak's.
Since JPEG compression is optimized for blurred images, and preserves smooth image areas, the PSX videos looks much smoother and anti-alised than the Saturn videos. The RLE compression, in lossy mode, bases itself in finding solid fill areas in the image, and compressing them. It has no native gradient detection suport, so gradient colors usually look bad in it. It can look acceptable if the videos uses lots of solid colors (ie: anime cutscenes).
Cinepak quality depends FAR more on the encoding than the decoding. If you ever tried making cinepak AVIs, you know that the encoding process is VERY SLOW, no matter how fast your computer is. The codec is veyr primitive and unoptimized.
Some Saturn developers managed to build their own, more optimized, encoders, as you can see some games, that clearly uses Cinepak, have much better video, that look smooth, and aren't that much blocky.
Check Radiant Silvergun, Lunar 2, Shining Force 3 (tought Scenario 2's intro is not very well encoded), and a few others.
Some developers (and Sega themselves) were unhappy with Cinepak, and experimented software-based codecs. There comes Duck's Truemotion.
It's frame and motion compression are far better than Cinepak's, being much less blocky, and it support smooth/blurrer images better.
The problem? Well, when running Cinepak, the Saturn runs at true color. But true color modes aren't freely accessible on the Saturn (they're kinda slow and are used only for cetain special corcunstances - cinepak is one of those), so the Truemotion videos used the defalut 16-bit color mode.
Since the the video colors look washed out when using only 65K colors, Duck implemented dithering (yeah, that same thing that PLAGUES most PSX games). So... truemotion looks like PSX games... dithered to death. But some games' videos did manged to look well enough, by using well balanced colors and contrast (Fighter's Megamix, Sonic Jam, Enemy Zero)
Also, a few games managed to use Truemotion at true color. I only recall DraculaX, but there are others.
And very very few games got thei OWN custom video codecs. Grandia is included.
Grandia's videos do look like they use MPEG-based compression. BUT, they run at high resolution modes, with 200% zoom (seems that was the only way Game Arts found to run them at truecolor), so the videos look pixelated AND suffer the hi-res tearing, a shame. Seems the PSX version .mov files are THE SAME as the Saturn version, but since they run at standard resolutions, they don't get teared.
Well, I also think Tengai Makyou IV uses custom codecs, since everyone says it's videos looks just as good as VCD. But I never found that game, neither to buy (considering my limits, of course) neither by ISO downloading, so I can't comment on it.
The Saturn followed the 3DO way: Cinepak. It can be decoded it at no cost for the system.
The Saturn cinepak codec is very similar to the PC one. Try encoding a movie, 320x240 (or 320x224, the saturn res), at 300K/s, and see the quality... not pretty good, heh? Cinepak uses lossy-RLE frame compression, and the scene change detection is pretty poor crude.
The PSX used a MPEG-based video compression. It uses lossy-JPEG frame compression, and the scene change, while far from perfect, is more accurate than cinepak's.
Since JPEG compression is optimized for blurred images, and preserves smooth image areas, the PSX videos looks much smoother and anti-alised than the Saturn videos. The RLE compression, in lossy mode, bases itself in finding solid fill areas in the image, and compressing them. It has no native gradient detection suport, so gradient colors usually look bad in it. It can look acceptable if the videos uses lots of solid colors (ie: anime cutscenes).
Cinepak quality depends FAR more on the encoding than the decoding. If you ever tried making cinepak AVIs, you know that the encoding process is VERY SLOW, no matter how fast your computer is. The codec is veyr primitive and unoptimized.
Some Saturn developers managed to build their own, more optimized, encoders, as you can see some games, that clearly uses Cinepak, have much better video, that look smooth, and aren't that much blocky.
Check Radiant Silvergun, Lunar 2, Shining Force 3 (tought Scenario 2's intro is not very well encoded), and a few others.
Some developers (and Sega themselves) were unhappy with Cinepak, and experimented software-based codecs. There comes Duck's Truemotion.
It's frame and motion compression are far better than Cinepak's, being much less blocky, and it support smooth/blurrer images better.
The problem? Well, when running Cinepak, the Saturn runs at true color. But true color modes aren't freely accessible on the Saturn (they're kinda slow and are used only for cetain special corcunstances - cinepak is one of those), so the Truemotion videos used the defalut 16-bit color mode.
Since the the video colors look washed out when using only 65K colors, Duck implemented dithering (yeah, that same thing that PLAGUES most PSX games). So... truemotion looks like PSX games... dithered to death. But some games' videos did manged to look well enough, by using well balanced colors and contrast (Fighter's Megamix, Sonic Jam, Enemy Zero)
Also, a few games managed to use Truemotion at true color. I only recall DraculaX, but there are others.
And very very few games got thei OWN custom video codecs. Grandia is included.
Grandia's videos do look like they use MPEG-based compression. BUT, they run at high resolution modes, with 200% zoom (seems that was the only way Game Arts found to run them at truecolor), so the videos look pixelated AND suffer the hi-res tearing, a shame. Seems the PSX version .mov files are THE SAME as the Saturn version, but since they run at standard resolutions, they don't get teared.
Well, I also think Tengai Makyou IV uses custom codecs, since everyone says it's videos looks just as good as VCD. But I never found that game, neither to buy (considering my limits, of course) neither by ISO downloading, so I can't comment on it.
Yes, I'd like to see clear evidences as well. The Truemotion codec explanation doesn't sound right to me as well.
Maybe I didn't express it well, when I said 'hardware decoding', I meant that the Saturn has native suport for the cinepak codec. Prolly it decodes it 100% in the main processors, but the default CPK format doesn't requires many extra bells and whistles to work, and can be easily (?) decoded by it.
Obvisously it was the only ready-to-go video codec offered by Sega, so nearly everyone used it, instead of going through the pain of creating/converting their own codecs.
Now, onto WHY I think the CPK codec has a more deep hardware access than the Truemotion one:
The VDP1, the sprite processor, only draws 32K colors on screen. Only the VDP2 can achieve 24-bit color. Since the CPK movies are 24-bit color, seems the Saturn can playback then using the VDP2. Seems the Saturn has a "playing video" mode, where it transfers the decoded video data into the VDP2 memory. Not realy usefull for image quality... since the cinepak compression usually destroys smooth color transistions.
The truemotion movies, on the other hand, mostly look grossly dithered, denouncing they are being rendered by the VDP1. The movies themselves aren't dithered (they indeed have lotsa compression artifacts, but no full-blown dithering). Anyone can see that by playing them on the computer using the Truemotion player.
--EDIT--
Indeed, the cinepak codec is nowhere built-in on the Saturn, not even in the BIOS. It's part of the Sega dev libraries.
And I just got to play Macross: Do You Remember Love, and I saw some really fine quality videos, Truemotion videos, I might add. They did a good work on this one.
Obvisously it was the only ready-to-go video codec offered by Sega, so nearly everyone used it, instead of going through the pain of creating/converting their own codecs.
Now, onto WHY I think the CPK codec has a more deep hardware access than the Truemotion one:
The VDP1, the sprite processor, only draws 32K colors on screen. Only the VDP2 can achieve 24-bit color. Since the CPK movies are 24-bit color, seems the Saturn can playback then using the VDP2. Seems the Saturn has a "playing video" mode, where it transfers the decoded video data into the VDP2 memory. Not realy usefull for image quality... since the cinepak compression usually destroys smooth color transistions.
The truemotion movies, on the other hand, mostly look grossly dithered, denouncing they are being rendered by the VDP1. The movies themselves aren't dithered (they indeed have lotsa compression artifacts, but no full-blown dithering). Anyone can see that by playing them on the computer using the Truemotion player.
--EDIT--
Indeed, the cinepak codec is nowhere built-in on the Saturn, not even in the BIOS. It's part of the Sega dev libraries.
And I just got to play Macross: Do You Remember Love, and I saw some really fine quality videos, Truemotion videos, I might add. They did a good work on this one.
antime
Extra Hard Mid Boss
Erm, no. The VDP1 and VDP2 manuals are widely available, why not check them yourself. Displaying 24-bit color bitmaps using VDP2 requires some trickery if you want to do it sensibly (see the technical bulletins for details). Besides, you have to do the same type of data transfer to VDP1 memory if playing video that way (DMA copy to video memory).
I guess the popularity of the Cinepak codec is mainly due to there being an available implementation. Cost may also have been a factor.
I guess the popularity of the Cinepak codec is mainly due to there being an available implementation. Cost may also have been a factor.
I sould have swarn that Truemotion is a native 16-bit compressor and that dithering comes from the "macroblocks". Gotta check on that. And not only the VDP1 doesn't work like that, he really "doesn't care" about the VDP2. For example, Linkle Liver Story used 24-bit color BG's and ordinary 16-bit sprites. The only thing that determines a slower decoding is really the overhead of an extra 33% more bytes per resulting frame.
You're right. I've checked some of the Truemotion videos from some games, and they are in 15bpp format. The dithering is printed on the image itself (Sonic Jam denouced it).
I'll check Dracula X, Macross and a few others that show little to no dithering. Dracula X's CG looks far too clean to be 16-bit (and it also runs ate an oddly slow framerate...).
I also think a good amount of games used 24-bit BGs. Cotton's BGs looks too clean for 16-bit. Guardian Heroes, Radiant Silvergun and a few others too.
--EDIT--
Indeed, both DraculaX and Macross uses 24bpp Truemotion videos. DraculaX uses 12fps, and Macross 24fps. But none of those are full screen.
Seems the Truemotion videos are actually streamed into the VDP2, and the common choice for 15bpp depth is to keep the data rate low enough.
I'll check Dracula X, Macross and a few others that show little to no dithering. Dracula X's CG looks far too clean to be 16-bit (and it also runs ate an oddly slow framerate...).
I also think a good amount of games used 24-bit BGs. Cotton's BGs looks too clean for 16-bit. Guardian Heroes, Radiant Silvergun and a few others too.
--EDIT--
Indeed, both DraculaX and Macross uses 24bpp Truemotion videos. DraculaX uses 12fps, and Macross 24fps. But none of those are full screen.
Seems the Truemotion videos are actually streamed into the VDP2, and the common choice for 15bpp depth is to keep the data rate low enough.
So I guess this topic is dead and nobody was able to figure out how to decode the graphic files from the game?
MasterAkumaMatata
Established Member
Have faith and don't give up, my fellow kin. :
:
I would try it myself but I know nothing about decoding graphic file types. Got any hints/websites/names of programs that might help?
Hn - there are several old threads about this, that basicly involves Adobe Photoshop and playing with the .RAW format... unfortanbly, the Giga format is quite complex, and i didn't find 8x8 blocks...
*bump*
Just in case somebody found new information.
Just in case somebody found new information.
about that fmv-issue:
i had similar problems using cpkview or cpk2avi on many games. i figured mots of them used compressed audio like ADX or something like that. what i'm guessing is that these cpk tools can't handle ADX and therefore mess up the whole video.
when i tried to convert fmvs from Burning Rangers f.e. the result was a playable avi-file - yes - but most of the time only the upper half of the screen showed up and the sound was like the noise-generator on the genesis sounded like when simulating rain.
by the way, is cpk a headerless format? :-/
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