Old Video Formats Help

[Velhans]

Hello, Im not really sure if im in the right place but I have been having trouble playing back old videos in formats that are either program specific or that utilize earlier versions of Windows that I don't have access too. Such as what I've been dong now looking at old cut scenes of pc games in their install folder directories. Sometimes the videos will be in normal formats, wmv, avi and so on or are in a format that I can just manually change the extension to say .mp4 and it will then be able to be viewed normally. But there are a lot of videos that have some of the wildest extensions I have no clue to even start looking for codecs that would play some of these videos, but nonetheless the video is still there in the file and i'm wondering if there is a really good program out there that does some deep analysis of files to check for media inside files like these and that can extract them somehow.

Also I have tried some "any video" converters but most fail as you have to start with at least a recognizable video format for the converter to even accept the file in the first place.

[redwudz]

I'd make two suggestions.

First, DL VLC Media player for playback. It plays most formats. Windows plays very few by itself.

Second, DL MediaInfo to see exactly what format and specification your video is.

A few formats may be difficult to edit or even play. Here's a list of common format extensions: http://fileinfo.com/filetypes/video

And welcome to our forums.

[DB83]

Apart from what has already been said, I am curious about these 'old' formats. Can you, at the very least tell us the extension.

Of course some screen and game capture programs use propriety formats so they will be software specific.

[LigH.de]

Several games may use Bink or Smacker cutscenes. They are not supported by most common media players, only by the rather exotic Rad Video Tools.

There are even games which hide their cutscenes with nonsensical extensions (here only an in-depth analysis will reveal the true content), or inside big archives containing many different assets (here you would first need to know how to unpack those). The more different games, the more different solutions, if any at all.

Many "Any format converters" are just a ripoff, hiding the fact that they (ab-)use ffmpeg or similar tools from the user, and demanding a payment after a trial period or installing spyware to get sponsored. People should have had asked in forums before trying them all and messing up their Windows installation.

[hech54]

Several games may use Bink or Smacker cutscenes.

Oh yea. I remember those fanboys showing up here and polluting this place with their nonsense.....or trying to anyway.

[Hoser Rob]

... Many "Any format converters" are just a ripoff, hiding the fact that they (ab-)use ffmpeg or similar tools from the user, and demanding a payment after a trial period or installing spyware to get sponsored. People should have had asked in forums before trying them all and messing up their Windows installation.

Very good advice, esp. the last part. And cleaning up a buggered windows registry is not trivial. The only tool I trusted was codec tweak toll, which can be found at sourceforge. My windows 7 solution was to yank all 3rd party codec packs and use Linux ports for media apps when possible. Now I don't use windows anymore.

The other thing is that ffmpeg and all those other apps that these guys write bad GUI interfaces for are free and open source. This is absoloutely routine.

But the GUI problems aren't just the author's fault. The typical user just wants an easy fast one click solution. That works fine for netflix. The standards there are pretty good. For converting video, they aren't. Video encoding is complicated and it can't be made all that simple. All those easy one click encoders do a crappy job.

As mentioned you need to install mediainfo and post results from some of them.

FWIW the only video format that's caused me any trouble in linux is VC-1(Microsoft), which you may see in old wmv files. But menccoder will handle them, I just need to find a good mencoder GUI for linux. In windows it should be easier to find something.

[Velhans]

Apart from what has already been said, I am curious about these 'old' formats. Can you, at the very least tell us the extension.

Of course some screen and game capture programs use propriety formats so they will be software specific.

Thanks for welcoming me! I have just the file I found for an example, though I wanted to stay away from specific extensions as what LigH.de is true. A video file from what I can tell could have any extension really, I've even seen some that used the name of the game *.UTV (Unreal Tournament -Video-) for example. As long as there is a codec or function that's built into the files somewhere to run the video in game. Also the file doesn't have to be from an "old" game exactly but that's is where I have been seeing a lot of these.

D2xVideo.MPQ - A file from the game Diablo 2, not a super complex game but still a 100meg file that should contain the cutscenes/cg intros stuff like that. Trying to play this file either normally with that extension or changing/converting it will result in failure with the players and codecs I use. VLC and Media Player Classic all with multi codec packs and plugins installed. MediaInfo gives no detail on files like these.

[poisondeathray]

Those mpq files in diablo and other blizzard games are data archives - they contain game data. If you search inside them, you might be able to find what you are looking for

Look for a mpq editor
eg
http://www.zezula.net/en/mpq/download.html

[Bjs]

You'll find most tools in game related forums or some game hacker websites.

For MPQ, click the little download button on this page from the frozen keep website

Right click on it once unzipped and choose run as administrator to avoid application error ... can view and extract