Alternate Xan Decoder Developed (June 7, 2006)

[ChrisReid]

Multimedia Mike has created an extension for the Xine player that will decode Origin's Xanmovie file formats[/url]. The movies for Wing Commander 3, Wing Commander 4, Kilrathi Saga and the Crusader games used this method of video compression. This will mainly benefit people who like to dabble in the guts of stuff like this, since HCl's actual Movie Player allows fans an easy way to watch scenes from all of the WC games that featured live-actor FMV. You can find more information on Mike's xine plugin and other codec reverse engineering here. Thanks to AD.

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Original update published on June 7, 2006

 

[BrynS]

Neat find, AD!

Although most of it goes way over my head, there's some interesting stuff on the site, such as this WC3 codec trivia:

Origin originally advertised a 486/33 and 2X (300KB/s) CDROM drive as the minimum requirements for playing the video. However, video playback functions perfectly on a 386/40 (about 20% slower than a 486/33) and, with few exceptions, plays just fine on a 1X (150KB/s) CDROM drive. This suggests that Origin was either being conservative with requirements in an effort to ward off anticipated tech support calls caused by flaky clones (a common occurance, unfortunately), or possibly had originally targeted 1X CDROM drives but had to go over the 150KB/s datarate in a few scenes due to low picture quality.

(For the curious, the scenes that don't quite make the 1X datarate cut are scenes where more than 30% of the scene is changing in every frame, such as the spaceflight sequences in the introduction, or scenes that take place in the hanger.)

Was this the guy you were referring recently in the WC3 Movie Project thread regarding someone finding a way to play/extract the WC3 PSX/3DO video files? Assuming you have the 3DO version of WC3, have you tried using Freedo to play the game?

Might be worth putting the two guys in touch with each other if Multimedia Mike is working on such a solution? Alternatively, I can drop one of the Freedo programmers an e-mail asking if they any recommendations on extracting the video files.

Cheers,


BrynS

 

[ChrisReid]

AD mentioned there was some other stuff there, but I didn't find it at the time. I'd kind of question the 386/40 1X CD thing. How many of us with 486/66s and 4X CDs had it playing perfectly? I noticed an improvement when I eventually got to a Pentium system. RAM also seemed to be a factor.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I actually tried WC3 on a 386/40 (with a 2X CD) -- the video did not play at all smoothly.

I think we already knew that it was practically designed for a 1X CD, though, as that was the reason given for the removel of various scenes (Hobbes' speech, news briefings, etc.)... that people who were still using the first generation of CD-ROMS would be unable to read 72 minute CDs.

I imagine there was always an effort to make games run, however poorly, below their minimum specifications...

 

[AD]

I actually tried WC3 on a 386/40 (with a 2X CD) -- the video did not play at all smoothly.

I think we already knew that it was practically designed for a 1X CD, though, as that was the reason given for the removel of various scenes (Hobbes' speech, news briefings, etc.)... that people who were still using the first generation of CD-ROMS would be unable to read 72 minute CDs.

I imagine there was always an effort to make games run, however poorly, below their minimum specifications...

Yeah, I actually ran wc4 on a 386sx at 16 mhz with 6 megs of ram, by running it in windows with a crapload (for the time) or virtual mem. I took a hell of a long time to install and the framerate made it unplayable really though but the movies and the game still ran. ( I think we had a double speed cartridge CD-rom though).




BrynS: I only have the wc3 3do demo which didint work in freedo for me (though maybe I'm missing something) Either way I've exchanged a number of emails with mike and he's been looking into the video formats a bit. But Having just got back from some vacation time (if visiting relatives can be called a vacation) and havent had a chance to corespond more. Anyway, with his help I did some superficial diging into the PSX version which I do have... The movies1.lib indexes all the contained movies in the same way that they are saved in the DVD version of wc4 ( ex.: sc_001a) except the extension is listed as *.wve so I imagine someone needs to figure out how to separate all the wve files and then look into figuring out playing the format from there... The 3DO ones all have the MOV extension though they are not quicktime. In the full game they are in a movie library file too but the demo has them all saved as individual files already if one were to bother "unCDROM"-ing the ISO that loaf posted to the CIC a while back, except that a cursory glance shows some slight differences to the way they are saved in the full game.

 

[BrynS]

@AD - I tried running WC3 3DO in Freedo a couple weeks ago, but didn't have any luck, although I was concerned about the noticable crack in disk 1 of my 3DO version of WC3 as the possible culprit, as the disk is sometimes not recognised in my FZ-1 either.

Hmm, I forgot about the WC3 demo that Loaf discovered a few months back -- just burnt it to CD yesterday and it plays fine on the FZ-1, however I can't read the CD in either of my PC CD or DVD drives, same with the full version of WC3 3DO. I've made ISOs of some of the disks and will examine them in UltraISO when I return next week to see if I can extract the original data files.

Interestingly, the WC3 3DO demo appears somewhat different in a couple of areas to the full 3DO game -- I've only briefly played through the demo twice and haven't progressed too far through the full game yet, but it seems to use the more lossy, PC compressed FMV instead of the higher quality, recompressed footage seen in the full 3DO version and PSX, while the gameplay (particularly cockpit movement) feels slightly different to the game. There may also be a new transport model in the demo, although it could be in the full game; I just haven't progressed far enough through the 3DO version to be sure. I'll look into it further and post some comparison videos next week sometime.

Hopefully you and Mike can realise a solution for WC3 PSX at some point -- keep us informed.

Cheers,


Bryn

 

[AD]

Hmm, I forgot about the WC3 demo that Loaf discovered a few months back -- just burnt it to CD yesterday and it plays fine on the FZ-1, however I can't read the CD in either of my PC CD or DVD drives, same with the full version of WC3 3DO. I've made ISOs of some of the disks and will examine them in UltraISO when I return next week to see if I can extract the original data files.

You need something like Blindwrite to make ISOs of the 3D0 disks. And then you can use unCD-ROM to extract the data. Alternately some stuff like image files can be seen with the 3DOresexplorer program.

 

[Unregistered]

@AD - I tried running WC3 3DO in Freedo a couple weeks ago, but didn't have any luck, although I was concerned about the noticable crack in disk 1 of my 3DO version of WC3 as the possible culprit, as the disk is sometimes not recognised in my FZ-1 either.

Hmm, I forgot about the WC3 demo that Loaf discovered a few months back -- just burnt it to CD yesterday and it plays fine on the FZ-1, however I can't read the CD in either of my PC CD or DVD drives, same with the full version of WC3 3DO. I've made ISOs of some of the disks and will examine them in UltraISO when I return next week to see if I can extract the original data files.

Interestingly, the WC3 3DO demo appears somewhat different in a couple of areas to the full 3DO game -- I've only briefly played through the demo twice and haven't progressed too far through the full game yet, but it seems to use the more lossy, PC compressed FMV instead of the higher quality, recompressed footage seen in the full 3DO version and PSX, while the gameplay (particularly cockpit movement) feels slightly different to the game. There may also be a new transport model in the demo, although it could be in the full game; I just haven't progressed far enough through the 3DO version to be sure. I'll look into it further and post some comparison videos next week sometime.

Hopefully you and Mike can realise a solution for WC3 PSX at some point -- keep us informed.

Cheers,


Bryn

Try using magiciso to make iso image from wc3 3do CD.
http://www.magiciso.com/