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Playing full length movies with out a vcd card

shandu - Oct 19, 2001

		shandu		Oct 19, 2001
			This thing is harder than i thought i can do it but it'll take some time My plan was to convert a movie into cpk format and play it on my saturn II thought of a way but i dont know if it my work here is it I was thinking of ripping the boot sector of a saturn game and rip a commad line to tell the saturn read the movie file. You know games like dbz shinbutoden plays it cpk before the game start right? So i was going to use that game command line to do so. Then put the movie on a disk (not with the game only the movie ) By the way is there a comman line the saturn follows to read the movie files? and do you know how to identify it? well to me my idea is far fetch at the moment but i think its possible Can any one help me out with the saturn movie play back command line?

		ExCyber		Oct 21, 2001
			There's no standard CLI on Saturn - the "operating system" consists of BIOS services and whatever is on the CD/cartridge. As far as I've seen, the standard CD boot code loads the first file on the disc to a location specified in the boot area, then jumps to it, so you'd need to make that file contain code that loads the Cinepak player.

		Rolzup		Oct 21, 2001
			but lets not make this more complicated than it is. Use the method of trial and error to find the movie file that plays that movie at the beggining of dbz shinbutoden then code a new move into the same format and swap the files. tadaa. try it. Don't jump the gun just yet.

		RadSil		Oct 26, 2001
			The cinepak playing code is usually in it's own program overlay... normally called something like "MOVIE.BIN" or similar. But it would be somewhat difficult without a tracing debugger to find out how the overlay program is called and what functions it has available, etc. (Don't take that out of context, it would still be difficult even if you had access to stuff like this.) Otherwise it would be possible to write a loader for this movie driver, or more simply, a Saturn movie player.

		RadSil		Oct 26, 2001
			One more thing. Cinepak compression isn't that great size-wise, you'd only get around a half hour of video if you used the full screen at 320x224/24fps (the sound would have to be low-sample rate as well). Some games, like Silhouette Mirage, push the limit of CPK compression and even though they get decent picture quality, they get video at 12fps and sound at 22050Hz 8-bit stereo if I remember correctly. So conclusively, even if you got it working okay, you would get a pretty bad quality, even at its best. Maybe you could try Truemotion, but I don't know where the codec for that one is.

		Rolzup		Oct 27, 2001
			hmmm, ok is Truemotion and Cinepak the only codecs? How about modifing the bios to accept the moves directly?

		IceDigger		Oct 27, 2001
			"modifying the bios" would involve a) needing the source code of the original bios), b) the machines to burn surface mount eproms, c) the skills to remove and solder in surface mount eproms and d) the programming skills to write a player or possibly even a complete new bios from scratch. I'd say spending 50 bucks for a vcd card definately sounds better.

		Ohtori of Saturn		Oct 27, 2001
			There are many source codes to MPEG codecs out there, why not try and edit it's code to Saturn C format, or Saturn Binary format? Then try and make a loader for it (I doubt the movies would play fast though)

		IceDigger		Oct 27, 2001
			well, the entire reason why there is a VCD cart in the first place (with mpeg decoder chips that do all the work), is that the saturn is simply not powerful enough to play mpeg at full speed with sound. the video would most likely skip like a bitch.

		shandu		Nov 1, 2001
			Thank all you guys for advice the reason i havn't respond to these post because my isp was messing up like for 2 weeks any way So you guys think my paln is far fecth and can't work?

		Fabrizo		Nov 2, 2001
			Well, it seams more like they are all saying it could work, but would be hard to do, and would look very bad (ex: bad frame rate, lousy sound quality). If you can find a way to change a file from normal formats to saturn ones, you could try placing it in a game using winemage and naming it the same as the intro. Delete the intro, and insert it with the same name as the intro. Probly wouldn't work, but worth a try anyways.