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Cyber Akuma - Jan 25, 2003

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  Cyber Akuma Jan 25, 2003
I am having trouble encoding this one video file, its a CinePak file, .CPK

All the CPK files from my other games I have been able to encode ok, but this one is giving me a ton of trouble.

For some reason ANY player and/or encoder I try to use it on, it messes up at the same spot. About 20 seconds into the video, when it is about to show the game's logo, it either really glitches up, which causes the video and audio to dsync and have artifacts everywhere, or to make the video play as if its in fast-forward. I have no idea what causes this, the game plays the intro fine in the saturn itself and all my other saturn games I was able to encode the CinePak files with no problem, but this is the only one that keeps messing me up like this, and always in that same spot. Help anyone?

The game I am talking about is Magic Knight Rayearth, USA version.

 Cyber Akuma Jan 25, 2003
Ok, after some expirimentation I have found out this:

The reason the entire vid was playing fast was because I was using a vey low quality VBR mp3. I used a CBR mp3 and it played fine........... almost.

The entire vid plays ok except for one part, that stupid logo. The logo lasts for about 5 seconds in the saturn, but on every player/encoder it plays that part only in like less then half a second, which of course messes up the rest of the video. Also for some reason the audio isnt affected, only the video.

 Alexvrb Jan 26, 2003
What you could probably do is extract the audio from the video you've encoded and cut out parts at the logo until it matches. Or, you could edit the video and add more frames of the logo just sitting there. The Saturn probably stops the video on the logo for a bit or something.

 Cyber Akuma Jan 26, 2003
The logo isnt a static image, it is a moving image

 Alexvrb Jan 28, 2003
Well that's funky (how it only plays for a short time on the PC). You could still either cut out some audio or make the logo animation loop or do whatever it does on the Saturn. It all depends how dedicated you are.

 M3d10n Jan 28, 2003
Strange... I don't recall having any problems in ripping MKR's intro. It worked fine with ACPK2AVI.

 Cyber Akuma Jan 28, 2003
I have never ONCE gotten that program to work right. I tried using it for the intro, it calculated it at -17### frames. NEGATIVE 17K frames! It has never once ripped somethign correctly. I am starting to question my own CinePak codec, but its the same one I used from this site. Is it possible other codecs or filters could be interfering with it? I almost thaught the intro file itself was damaged since it always messes up in that spot and all other CinePak files play ok, but my saturn has no problem playing the intro, so that cant be it.

Any ideas? You siad you have seen the intro. The part in question is when the song gets to "conquering their fears" and shows the sword goming up from the bottom of the screen in a starfield. On my saturn it plays fine, on my px that part either plays with a hundred artifacts or plays instantly instead of the speed its supopsed to. Which messes up the rest of the video and de-syncs the audio.

 M3d10n Jan 29, 2003
I'll re-rip that intro when I get back home to see if there is audio desync. Maybe I didn't notice it at all. But I recall ACPK2AVI decompressing it without errors.

 Cyber Akuma Jan 29, 2003
Yes, actually I used acpk2avi just now, ONLY thing that worked. cpk2avi didnt work, decoding it through vdub or other encoding programs didnt work, playing it in ANY player didnt work. Strange, its annoying how acpk2avi still made it cpk though, but I re-encoded it to an xvid format at less then half the original size. Personally I liked how cpk2avi encodes in uncompressed format, so theres no inition quality loss before you re-encode it. Too bad cpk2avi NEVER works for me. But if you have the time, try playing it in anything (I used vdub, microoft media player, ATI file player, active movie controls, and BSplayer, all freeware, all messed up playing the original .cpk) I tried using cpk2avi to encode, made arfifacts everywere and I tried vdub, jsut llike all the players, went berzerk on that stupid little logo part. I wonder why all the programs go berzerk on THAT one part, no other saturn vids I tried messed up like this.

 M3d10n Jan 29, 2003
While that CPK parser works like a charm for most files with WMP, it's NOT reliable for loading .CPK files directly into video editing apps, like Vdub. It always messed audio sync with the videos I tried to convert directly to MPEG.

ACPK2AVI is only faulty when it comes to CPK files with ADX audio (Burning Rangers, Lunar 2, it won't extract the audio), and CPK files with audio-only sections (i.e: the image becomes static and only the audio goes on), or some oddities (Shining Force 3 Scenario 3 ending video, while gigantic in size, will decode to a 30 seconds or so clip - it's prolly protected against peeking )

I think I have other CPK decoding tools I might test, but, in overall, I coudln't notice a loss of quality with ACPK2AVI. Seems it merely adjusts the video format to the windows cinepak format, instead of re-encoding (encoding vids with cinepak takes AWAY too long in Premiere).

 Cyber Akuma Jan 29, 2003
Burning Rangers? Damn, I was planning on encoding that sometime soon. Heh, if I ever find all those games you nentioned I will have to try myself to see what I can do. Figuring out how to decode various movie files from different systems REALLY interigues me.

Edit: Have you tried CPK2AVI in audio only mode for those files you cant get the audio to extract in? Or any other program? And for that CPK 2 codec on this site, the majority of CPK movies play. So far only this and one other gave me problems. But using an .avs in Vdub fixed the problem with the other game (steam hearts). I dunno WHAT was with the video for MKR that made most programs go berzerk. And Ill have to try BR when I get home. And even SF3 if I have it, whats the name of the ending movie file, or is it obvious?

 M3d10n Jan 29, 2003
Yes, there is a very obscure Saturn ADX decoder, that is supposed to run .CAK (Burning Rangers, Lunar 2) files, but it has no videl display. It can extract the audio from those videos (it can also load Grandia's music/dialogue), so you can merge them with the video on Vdub.

For Shining Force 3... on Scenario 3 CD, simply look for the biggest file you can find. I'm not sure if it has a .CPK extension (I think they renamed it to .bin), but you can see it's first seconds, without audio, on any CPK decoder, no more than that.

 Cyber Akuma Jan 29, 2003
Tried using an avs to load it in vdub or other encoding/video editing programs?

 M3d10n Jan 29, 2003
I tried loading it in Tsunami MPEG and Vdub. They all think it's a 29 seconds audioless clip.

Seems Camelot wanted to keep people from watching the end (since I think this is the so called complete ending that's only avaliable after playing through all scenarios, or if you use the save file generator in Premium Disc to make a complete scenario 3 save file).

Ah, yes, the very same video clip is in Premium Disc as well, and it's protected as well.

 Cyber Akuma Jan 29, 2003
Heh, well im no encoding wizard (yet) but ill see what I can do when I get home if I do have this game. My guess is purposely corrupted data that the saturn is told to skip or a mis-leading index that the saturn is told to ignore. Try opening it in vdub with extended options and choose to re-build the index/keyframes. (If itll let you do that on a complete file, usually it only asks on incomplete files)

 Cyber Akuma Jan 29, 2003
Ok, the largest file on the CD was the intro, all otehr files were 4 megs or lower, and it was .cpk format. Is this game multi cd? Cause I only have one disk. Also, is that a special edition of the game or something?

I dont suppose you can send me that movie file through ftp or something? I am REALLY interested in trying to encode it straight off that movie file.

 MasterAkumaMatata Jan 29, 2003
I'm surprised you missed the windowshots of the CPK file listings I posted of Shining Force III in the Saturn... forum.

What does it spell?

 Cyber Akuma Jan 29, 2003
Heh, I dont check every post in every forum, sounds like you are trying to convert this too. How come yours is a .cpk file? Somebody here said that it is a CinePak disguised as a .bin. Anyway, did you try what I said about forcing vdub to rebuild the keyframes/index of the file? If its possible for you to send the file to me I can try all I know to make it readable too, if not I understand, I can still try to help you best I can through this messabeboard if you cant or wont want to send it to me.

 MasterAkumaMatata Jan 29, 2003
It is a CPK file. M3d10n said that he wasn't sure if that 163 MB CPK file on Scenario 3 has a .CPK or .BIN extension, that's all. My windowshot confirms it.




  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by M3d10n@Jan. 29 2003, 3:07 pm



For Shining Force 3... on Scenario 3 CD, simply look for the biggest file you can find. I'm not sure if it has a .CPK extension (I think they renamed it to .bin), but you can see it's first seconds, without audio, on any CPK decoder, no more than that.


 Cyber Akuma Jan 30, 2003
I did it........ almost

Video I figured out, sound I didnt. Took me about 5 min to figure it out.

You see, that isnt one CinePak file, but really many (around 8 is my guess, didnt have the time to count) stacked on top of each other, with the first one being the intro. It puzzled me how a file like that can have the intro in it, and how every program played it perfectly until it hit me. I opened a hex editor and searched for the "cvid" header. Theres several in the file. I tried deleting all the information before the first header, saved it, and checked. The file was around 25-27 megs smaller, the same size of the intro. I played it, no sound, but now it was a 1:50 min movie starting by swirling around a board-eye view of a town then showing people moving around instead of the intro. This file is many different movies stacked on top of each other.

As for the sound, atm i have no clue. One possibility is the sound is in another file. Another is that the sound is at the end of all the movies also stacked on top of each other like the movies are. Since I dont know what the sound headers look like. A third possibility is that the sound is in each stack of video too (although why the sound wouldn't play if this is the case I dunno). If the 3rd is true then you can cut and paste (not an easy task since EACH cut and paste task will be like 20-50 megs of binary data) each video segment into a seperate blank file. My worst fear is if either the sound has no headers and the saturn is jsut told exactly where to look for it through the game's programming or if its without headers AND in a seperate file. As long as the sound has headers it hopefully wont be TOO hard to combine it with the video, or if its even in the video alredy (3rd hypothesis I posted) then it will be a monotonis and slow and ram/virtual ram consuming job, but a breeze to do.

I would post pics in case you dont know how to use a hex editor but its 1am and I gotta wake up at 6am for my University (man how time flies). So ill try more work on thus tomorrow, and even see what I can do about Burning Rangers, though that sounds like its not too hard to decode.

Good luck Akuma, I hops this information has helped you or anyone else that reads this. If anyone else starts working on this now tell me your progress as well, I am decent with video ripping but know nothing about audio ripping.

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