Movie file format

Edwin

What program can convert to the movie file format used in BG, BG2? (all IE games?)

cedesse

You don't need to convert it to play it. Just change the "wbm" file extension to "webm".
VLC will of course play it.
... And so will Windows Media Player if you install either Shark007's codec pack, or the CCCP codec pack or simply the official WebM codec (https://code.google.com/p/webm/downloads/list)

The WebM format is actually Google's 100% license free video format (a simplified Matroska standard (which is best video file format there is)). The video stream format is VP8 and the sound format is Vorbis.

There are some great freeware editors that will open WebM files in case you want to edit it:

1. MediaCoder (http://www.mediacoderhq.com/) - A great video editor/converter for films, but unnecessary for quick & dirty conversions.
2. Handbrake (http://handbrake.fr) - A highly advanced video editing/filtering tool.
3. Vidcoder (http://vidcoder.codeplex.com/) - A beginner-friendly version of Handbrake
4. XMedia Recode (http://www.xmedia-recode.de/)
5. Freemake Video Converter (http://www.freemake.com) - The most user friendly editor (and fastest converter). Be careful during installation - select custom installation and uncheck all the crap that will be installed if you don't!)

Have fun.

Isaya

I believe Edwin is asking about old games format, not BGEE.

Movies in old Infinity Engine games are using the MVE format, probably an Interplay special format.
You can find converters to and from AVI here (follow the link "AVI to Interplay MVE converter"). I never tried the AVI to MVE conversion but there is a mod that adds such a movie to the game, so I guess it must have used it successfully.

Edwin

@Isaya thanks for the info

@cedesse thanks for the nice amount of info. The only thing I could find initialy was a (very hard to learn and configure) command ine tool called ffmpeg.

Sam_

If you are converting to/from the MVE format, you might find PS gui easier than using the command line utilities.

Edwin

@Sam_ I have since found a couple good gui's that make compliant files, but it appear you must trade control of the codec for ease of use. I mean, there is very little control the gui's over compression ratio, data rate, b frames,etc.

Sam_

@Edwin, Which format are you talking about, the MVE format used by the old games, or the WebM format used by BGEE? PS gui gives you the full functionality of Abel's AVI<>MVE converters, in a GUI. If you are wanting to work with WebM files, what I used is called Firefogg. Under options, choose "WebM" as the format and for "Preset" choose custom. This gives you quite a few options.

Ezakimake

I know that this is old topic, but i was searching long time for answer, so maybe someone also will get to this topic.
For BG EE & BG II EE i recommend adobe premiere + plugin WebM_Premiere_v1.1.0- and after that change webm to wbm and works like a charm.

for old movies i recommend PS gui v3.04,conv2mve,avi2mve

Sam_

Ezakimake wrote: »

I know that this is old topic, but i was searching long time for answer, so maybe someone also will get to this topic.
For BG EE & BG II EE i recommend adobe premiere + plugin WebM_Premiere_v1.1.0- and after that change webm to wbm and works like a charm.

When I was up-scaling the old movies to the high-resolution of the EEs, I tried Premiere Pro. I really wasn't happy with the results: the movies turned out really blurry. I had much better results with a specialty program called "Video Enhancer", then converted them to WebM with Firefogg as I said. FWIW, EET uses ffmpeg for the scaling and conversion to WebM.