So.
Is there anything that can play (or, better yet, convert) Grim cutscenes? They show a white screen for me in Residual, both with software rendering and without, and Benny's Smush player won't play them (but then it's not supposed to). I assume the Smush player from the game formats site won't play them either, but it doesn't work on my computer because it's a DOS application and my windows doesn't want to run them anymore.
The sticky says this about ScummRev5:
5 can do many of the things that 3 can but it can also open *some* .lfl files, have multiple files open at the same time, and best of all view and save SMUSH movie's (eg Grim Fandango and CMI cutscenes).
But, while it opens the movie LABs, the video viewer option is greyed out.
Less fortunate alternatives:
Is there any way to record them? I tried with Fraps, but it seems my computer isn't fast enough, I get skipping. And I don't know the framerate, either. I also tried playing windowed and recording with something that's not for games but for windows video screen capture, with poor results.
Any way to compile the player from Residual as a standalone thing, so that I could possibly get it working, maybe on another computer?
Lastly, and least likely as I have no programming knowledge (but two programmers for parents, for what that's worth), anything I could do on my own to make this happen?
I know that ScummRev5 can play the CMI SMUSH cutscenes, but I think the SMUSH format changed for Grim so it looks like residual or a capture program might be your best bet. Perhaps try Hypercam instead of fraps.
The Residual source is all in CVS (
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/scummvm/residual/) so perhaps you could get someone to hack out a standalone player with it.
Try a screen capture program on residual when its playing a grim cutscene, if you can get a decent capture with that then there is a wonky and time consuming way to do it. What you'd do is get my Resource File Creator/Dumper (
http://quick.mixnmojo.com/software.php) tool and use that to extract the Move Lab file - you'd then get the cutscene that you want to play - give it the same name as the intro file and rebuild the lab. When you started the game it'd play the new cutscene as the intro. Thats massively time-consuming though and youd have to be pretty desperate to try it.
Well. I've made some progress.
Messing around with the DirectSound acceleration, the DirectDraw acceleration and software mode, I got cutscenes in Residual to work sometimes (although I'm not sure what the settings are now, since now they seem to have stopped working).
On the other hand, in ScummRev5, when I stand on an SNM file inside a movie LAB, it lets me 'save decompressed zlib file'. This file can be played in the X-Wing Alliance cutscene player (
http://www.geocities.com/v_d_d/snm_play.zip), from here (
http://www.geocities.com/v_d_d/snm_play.zip).
Unfortunately the program only supports the extraction of individual frames, and has no frame by frame playback. Trying to capture the video directly from the screen still gives poor results.
Any thoughts?
Would there be any point in decompressing all the files and putting them back into a LAB file, so that either Grim itself or Residual takes up less resources playing them, thus making the capture less jerky?
Is there perhaps some way to expand on that player?
The player uses one of LEC's own dll's to do the decoding, if you wanted to make a proper smush player you'd be much better using the scummvm source I think.
You can get a decent capture I think, I know I managed it when I did the GF Trailer (
http://www.grimfandango.net/?page=trailers). I *think* I used hypercam and I *think* I used its recommended codec (as mentioned in the help file) and then converted the video later. You need to try and use a codec that captures quickly without being as hefty as raw avi.
I dont know if Grim and Residual would play the videos if they arent compressed, or if it would make much of a difference, you could always give it a go. My guess is that its the capture program/codec thats the bottleneck, not the game.
Hiho, because I'm a really nice person (and had nothing else to do :)) I violently ripped out the Smush code from Residual and hacked it together into a messy pile of code that was the GriSp player.
It can play Grim's videos and - tada - convert them to Avi files.
I haven't tested it and basically just put it on the net to see what happens. I also have the source code for download if anyone's interested.
You'll only need the SDL library, the other details are in the readme.
I hope it works :)
You can download the exe from
http://gamefileformats.the-underdogs.org/files/grisp-0.1.zip)
The source code is here:
http://gamefileformats.the-underdogs.org/files/grisp-0.1-src.zip)
Works great for me :)
I think quite a lot of people have wanted a tool like this at one time or another. Nice one!
Well, I didn't do much. The ScummVM and Residual guys did the main work.
Really, aquadran did most of the work, since he's pretty much our SMUSH (and iMUSE) master :)
Well, I didn't do much. The ScummVM and Residual guys did the main work.
Well yes, but it needed someone to slot it all together :)
Btw did you ever get any further with lua for Psychonauts?
No, it's just too complicated. The if/while stuff still doesn't work, I either need someone who knows about this stuff or something to read. I know there are Java decompilers etc. that do similar things so it's not impossible.
This is too awesome for words.
Thanks to anyone who replied and/or made something.
Well, naturally, not a day goes by and I find something to complain about...
Xvid seems to die when I try to use it, the video doesn't start playing. Any other codec I try (Alpary lossless, Huffyuv, uncompressed AVI) seems to not only drop frames (I get 130 out of 151 at best), but also to create frames like this, amalgamated from two separate frames:
http://toes.xidus.net/grispframe.jpg)
And not only at scene changes.
I tried turning off hardware acceleration and changing the color quality of the display, since Hypercam seems to say those things can help, but no go.
I know about the XviD/DivX/etc issues, it's the Avi output code that doen't work with all codecs.
And your PC seems really slow, what model is it? The problem is that even when writing Avi files the movie is played in realtime, i.e. it doesn't wait for one frame to be written into the Avi first before decoding the next one, that's probably also the reason for the "combined" frames. I'll have a look at the source code again, maybe I can change it so it works regardless of the PC/decoding speed.
PIII, Celeron 1.7, 512MB RAM.
If you could get it to save all the frames as image files, and give the framerate of the video it's playing, the individual frames could be composed into a new video in VirtualDub.
I'm not sure if this is what you were looking for (or if you are still trying to obtain the movies), but ninth-world.com has the cutscenes in wmv format here:
http://ninth-world.com/videos.php)
Hope that helps.
Thank you for replying, but it seems the videos on the site suffer from the same issues I encontered trying to encode my own.
Again, John Doe, or any of you guys who can program, could you possibly make something that extracts the individual frames of the video?
Hiho, I'll try to make a converter that outputs Png and Wav instead playing the files.
Hi, I finished the tool.
You can download it from
http://gamefileformats.the-underdogs.org/files/grisc-0.1a.zip)
I still consider it an "alpha" version since I didn't test it thouroughly but it did it's job.
Instead of playing the videos it now saves each frame as PNG file and the soundtrack to a Wave file.
The parameter is simply the name of the SNM file. The files will be created in the current directory.
This shouldn't drop any frames anymore, too.
Hello there!
I was using this tool to get PNGs and WAWs from the SNM files and I end up with this issue.
I got 2813 frames from GF intro.snm that at 15 fps lasted 3'07'' and a wav file wich lenght was 3'10''.
After that I tried with loladies.snm and I got 1002 frames that at 15 fps lasted 1'06'' meanwhile the wav file lenght was 1'10''.
Does anyone know what is happening here? Does exist 14 and something fps instead of 15?
Thanks!
First of all, John_Doe, thanks so much! Really, I am at a loss for words.
Elbiolin, judging by what happens with stump3c.snm, the WAV file is longer than the actual video. If I recall correctly from the game, the video ends, and the sound plays a bit longer when you get back to the normal view. I'm not sure about the framerate of the video, though.
Well, first I have to say that I was using Quicktime - add scale option like my first choice - for this.
About the different lenghts I tried making enough copies from the last frame to equal the lenghts between video and audio - this time just pasting video and audio.
Also I tried the same thing at the begining. Neither way worked out. They were completley out of sinchrony both.
But if you say that worked out for you, I believe you.
Just wandering what could be the problem - if there's any.
Also I forgot to thank john_doe for his application. Sorry.
Thanks, john.
Amazing program john_doe, congrats :D (the video player)
but, the to convert to AVI, theres no sound ?
Tried with one some (znm) files from Force Commander.. and no sound.
Sorry to necropost, but I can't seem to get the conversion part of john_doe's ZNM player to work. Whenever I press "a," the player just quits. I'm trying to get the lost scenes from the second Behind the Magic CD so I can use them in a fan-edit. Also, the alternate cantina footage looks like scrambled porn. Any ideas?
While I realize this is an old thread, the links to john_doe's utilities do not seem to work. Could anyone either reupload them or point me in the direction of a link less dead?
While I am thankful for your quick and helpful answer, I'm afraid the third link still doesn't work.
Sorry to bother you again, but they do not seem to wish to convert. The AVI converter will play the files, but when I press A it closes down and the PNG and WAV converter seems to be converting, but dumps no files when it is done.
Any idea what I am doing wrong?
Any idea what I am doing wrong?
You need to enter the "A" at the command line, not when the movie is already playing.
Example: GriSp intro.snm A
In case anyone's still wondering, the frame rate (if I remember correctly) is 15. The sound is indeed longer than the video, so just insert blank frames as necessary to get what plays beyond the end of the video.
There are probably easier ways, but I just get VirtualDub to read the image sequence, adding appropriately-numbered blank PNGs at the end of it.
If you really want the one hundred percent authentic experience you can capture the second or two from the game with FRAPS, but it would just be abrupt when it cuts off.