MVE files

[GauntM75]

Hello.

I'm trying very hard to make intro replacers mods for every classic Fallout game,
it's a project of mine that I'm working on.

I tried several times, but I can't get to convert AVI to MVE with AVI2MVE.
It says: "Cannot open converter for this format. Try to re-compress your movie".

Tried already different things, but no succes.

Could anyone help me with some advice, please?
Don't know what is my error here...

 

[fffffffff]

As far as I know AVI format is just container for many codecs. Is your avi video in Uncompressed format?

 

[GauntM75]

As far as I know AVI format is just container for many codecs. Is your avi video in Uncompressed format?

Sadly, I don't really know. First time working with FFMPEG.
But I know it's the AVI file that gives you the command "ffmpeg -i intro.mp4 -qscale 0 -ar 22050 intro.avi".
I can search for ways to compress AVI files and see if that works with AVI2MVE. Thanks for the hint! I will try.

 

[fffffffff]

Well, that's the way I create my avi files in Sony Vegas but in my opinion output quality after avi2mve conversion is poor.

 

[gustarballs1983]

Don't waste your time with .MVE files. Simply code your video into *any* resolution and code them as Xvid codec .AVI in ffmpeg i did jus that with my upscales. MVE is obsolete now with sfall. when sfall is set to usedshowmovies=1 or whatever the game can playback xvid avi videos with any given resolution ( well 4k does lag a bit since xvid has no hardware acceleration support :p but up to FUllHD should be fine as long as your game is set to use all cpu cores) .

Audio format, audio quailty, frames per second absolutely do not matter. sfall can go even 60fps and the playback is fine with xvid avi

 

[GauntM75]

Don't waste your time with .MVE files. Simply code your video into *any* resolution and code them as Xvid codec .AVI in ffmpeg i did jus that with my upscales. MVE is obsolete now with sfall. when sfall is set to usedshowmovies=1 or whatever the game can playback xvid avi videos with any given resolution ( well 4k does lag a bit since xvid has no hardware acceleration support :p but up to FUllHD should be fine as long as your game is set to use all cpu cores) .

Audio format, audio quailty, frames per second absolutely do not matter. sfall can go even 60fps and the playback is fine with xvid avi

Ok, so, I did what you said and you were absolutely right!

I install SFALL, made a XVID AVI and get the video and audio showing up in-game.
Waaayy more easy than MVE files. I was loosing my mind...

I know how to make these for Fallout 2 and Fallout: Tactics.
Now, I'm on my way to see if I can make this for Fallout too.

 

[gustarballs1983]

Nah don't bother with Fo1 engine, now that we have Fallout EtTu ( a.k.a Fallout1 in Fallout2 engine, there's absolutely no need for Fo1engine vids. besides i'm not sure if Fo1's sfall has the xvid .avi feature built in, as it's an old sfall fork, and it's development ceased).

As for Tactics, You'd need to rely on Rad Video Tools to convert them into "bink video format 1.0" the so called .bik extension It's quite a hassle to get the tool runing. especially that there's litterally no tutorials on how to do it, the gui app doesn't run well and lacks some functions, and the gui app is a command line app at the same time, which only spews errors on misuse.

And so error by error i managed to convert some upscaled videos i made into bink format (an intro for a game called Black and White) and it worked.

on a side note. when converting into XVID .AVI using FFMPEG be absolutely sure to set best possible quality for video and audio. by default the quality is set to worstest one 15 or 30 i don't remember now. the best quality is "1" both for audio and video.

Good Luck on Your work man..
P.S.
can we see some snippets of your work on youtube somewhere?

P.S.#2
xvid .avi playback works only if you have the nessecary codecs installed in your system. So just use K-Lite if You have none. just don't instal two sets of codecs at once.

 

[GauntM75]

Nah don't bother with Fo1 engine, now that we have Fallout EtTu ( a.k.a Fallout1 in Fallout2 engine, there's absolutely no need for Fo1engine vids. besides i'm not sure if Fo1's sfall has the xvid .avi feature built in, as it's an old sfall fork, and it's development ceased).

As for Tactics, You'd need to rely on Rad Video Tools to convert them into "bink video format 1.0" the so called .bik extension It's quite a hassle to get the tool runing. especially that there's litterally no tutorials on how to do it, the gui app doesn't run well and lacks some functions, and the gui app is a command line app at the same time, which only spews errors on misuse.

And so error by error i managed to convert some upscaled videos i made into bink format (an intro for a game called Black and White) and it worked.

on a side note. when converting into XVID .AVI using FFMPEG be absolutely sure to set best possible quality for video and audio. by default the quality is set to worstest one 15 or 30 i don't remember now. the best quality is "1" both for audio and video.

Good Luck on Your work man..
P.S.
can we see some snippets of your work on youtube somewhere?

P.S.#2
xvid .avi playback works only if you have the nessecary codecs installed in your system. So just use K-Lite if You have none. just don't instal two sets of codecs at once.

Thanks for all your help!

XFVIV AVI files are playing nice in my computer, but not in the game at full resolution.
After messing around a few hours, I saw that 960x540 was better for the engine (I guess that's what's happening).
It's ok for me, I never got in mind make remastered video replacers, but rather other things with them.

Luckily about Tactics, I got experience with RAD Tools from modding other games. So, I'm ok with BIK files.
Don't tried yet, but I guess it should be a similar process like BK2. And, if not, I will learn how to.
I'm more confident with RAD Tools.

Once I finsih, I will uploaded full resolution to Youtube and uploaded them as mods on
the internet for any user who may want those.

About what they acutally will be:

Spoiler

Tactics is the one I'm more interested in making cutscenes replacers, because, that game is waesome, but, for obvious reasons with the plot, it's not canon.
And it's kind of sad that I feel this "guilty" feeling of enjoying something about Fallout that "it's not actually Fallout", you know?
And I thought: maybe, all the issues with the plot/lore could be "fixed" with a different intro and different approach.

So, I got this idea: instead of being a intro trying to be "official/serious/canon", it could start telling the player that this story it's
a legend, a myth, told by the inhabitants of the wasteland in bars, in front of the bonfire, after a day of hard work...
And, despite their lack of truthfulness compared to their real events, people enjoyed them.

Just a "little touch" to make something about the lore breaking in that game (and other events like finding "Pip-Boy" is a real character and so on) and
still have that game's content intact. It would make sense to me to believe all that and even wanting to pay attention if the game tells me
before that is a myth of the wasteland. Then, I would be able to enjoy that spin-off's plot exactly as it is.

I already got the script and Ron Pearlman AI voice ready for it.

And, now that I'm on it, I also thought: maybe I can do something whith Fallout and Fallout 2 too,
like: using some remakes that I found in Youtube with permission; finally, add "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" to Fallout 1
as the original team wanted; game over and end screens as old films, etc.

 

[gustarballs1983]

Just about the XVID .AVI files playback ingame.

1920x1080p smooth playback *is* possible, depending on your hardware and settings.
It requires the game to be installed on a Fast HDD or a decent SSD, plus You need to switch the default SingleCore=1 to SingleCore=0, using only one processor core may slow down the FullHD playback (as originally this standard rquired at least a dual core cpu), so if You have a quad core or better, simply set SingleCore=0 in sfall and you should be good to go.

I also thought 720p is the maximum the engine can handle, that is, until i enabled the rest of the cpu cores for Fallout2 engine. after that there was only a matter of copying the game data ( including the new videos over to an ssd drive, and everything started to play smoothly) the main reason behind video lagging behind audio is not enaugh cpu power for the video playback, and that is because I had SingleCore=1 set ( this effectively sets affinity for Fallout2 engine only to one processor core, which is not enaugh for a FullHD playback).

 

[GauntM75]

Ok. I will give it a try to see if I can go with higher resolution.
Thanks for everything. I actually just manage to replace cutscenes in the three games and
it works beautifully.