need help with video files ripped from xbox 360 game disc

[Clutchins]

i had the brilliant idea to rip the bonus features from the Halo 3 Limited Edition disc, which if you didnt know is an actual 360 disc that wont play in regular DVD drives.

i managed to decode all the files to play in MPC-HC but the display aspect ratio information in the header is preventing the video to display in 16:9. instead it displays in an oddball (heh) ratio of 800:657 and i cant figure out how to fix it without changing my video player ratio settings.

if anybody would like the original files to replicate this issue seeing as this is a pretty niche scenario, im happy to provide.

here is the file: https://we.tl/t-khRZHTb7Q5

here is the mediainfo for the decoded file:

(this disc stores these videos in chunks not unlike a blu-ray, so for example the main documentary "anatomy of a game" is stored in 128 unique 30-sec .m2v files)

<track type="General">
<VideoCount>1</VideoCount>
<FileExtension>m2v</FileExtension>
<Format>MPEG Video</Format>
<Format_Version>1</Format_Version>
<FileSize>26106489</FileSize>
<Duration>30.030</Duration>
<OverallBitRate_Mode>VBR</OverallBitRate_Mode>
<OverallBitRate>6954776</OverallBitRate>
<FrameRate>29.970</FrameRate>
<FrameCount>900</FrameCount>
<StreamSize>0</StreamSize>
<File_Created_Date>UTC 2021-05-12 18:46:02.364</File_Created_Date>
<File_Created_Date_Local>2021-05-12 14:46:02.364</File_Created_Date_Local>
<File_Modified_Date>UTC 2021-05-12 18:46:05.196</File_Modified_Date>
<File_Modified_Date_Local>2021-05-12 14:46:05.196</File_Modified_Date_Local>
<Encoded_Library>&lt;SUDPS_&gt;&lt;000006&gt;02ANP</Encoded_Library>
<Encoded_Library_Name>&lt;SUDPS_&gt;&lt;000006&gt;02ANP</Encoded_Library_Name>
</track>
<track type="Video">
<Format>MPEG Video</Format>
<Format_Version>1</Format_Version>
<Format_Settings_BVOP>Yes</Format_Settings_BVOP>
<Format_Settings_Matrix>Custom</Format_Settings_Matrix>
<Format_Settings_Matrix_Data>0802020202020202020204040204040404040404040404040804040404080808080808040404040804040404040404040404040404040404040404040408080C / 02020202020202020202030202020303030202030303030302030303030303030303030303030303030303030303030303030303030303030303030303030303</Format_Settings_Matrix_Data>
<Format_Settings_GOP>Variable</Format_Settings_GOP>
<Duration>30.030</Duration>
<BitRate_Mode>VBR</BitRate_Mode>
<BitRate>6954776</BitRate>
<Width>960</Width>
<Height>720</Height>
<Sampled_Width>960</Sampled_Width>
<Sampled_Height>720</Sampled_Height>
<PixelAspectRatio>0.889</PixelAspectRatio>
<DisplayAspectRatio>1.185</DisplayAspectRatio>
<FrameRate>29.970</FrameRate>
<FrameCount>900</FrameCount>
<ColorSpace>YUV</ColorSpace>
<ChromaSubsampling>4:2:0</ChromaSubsampling>
<BitDepth>8</BitDepth>
<ScanType>Progressive</ScanType>
<Compression_Mode>Lossy</Compression_Mode>
<Delay>0.000</Delay>
<TimeCode_FirstFrame>00:00:00:00</TimeCode_FirstFrame>
<StreamSize>26106489</StreamSize>
<Encoded_Library>&lt;SUDPS_&gt;&lt;000006&gt;02ANP</Encoded_Library>
<Encoded_Library_Name>&lt;SUDPS_&gt;&lt;000006&gt;02ANP</Encoded_Library_Name>
<BufferSize>245760</BufferSize>
</track>

[poisondeathray]

Problems downloading from that link

Did you try changing the AR info with restream ?

[Clutchins]

Originally Posted by poisondeathray

Problems downloading from that link

Did you try changing the AR info with restream ?

link works for me and yes i tried restream and no luck

[Emulgator]

poisondeathray's suggestion works, just tested:
ReStream -> 16:9 -> Write !
Done, playable as 16:9 AR in MPC-BE.
Strange encode, wrong signalling ?
DAR (1,185) embedded, 960x720x29,97fps MPEG-1 @7Mbps.
Maybe thought only for that appropriate decoder (XBox360).

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by Emulgator

poisondeathray's suggestion works, just tested:
ReStream -> 16:9 -> Write !
Done, playable as 16:9 AR in MPC-BE.
Strange encode, wrong signalling ?
DAR (1,185) embedded, 960x720x29,97fps MPEG-1 @7Mbps.
Maybe thought only for that appropriate decoder (XBox360).

I cannot imagine why someone would use MPEG-1 for anamorphic 720p on the Xbox 360. I was on Microsoft's digital media team in that era, and it was more than capable of real-time H.264 and VC-1 at square pixel 720p. Generally those games were space-constrained as much as anything, so saving bits from video cut scenes should have been important.

Maybe they were trying to do a lot of compute while the video was playing? Hence a very fast to decode codec and anamorphic pixels. All video decode on the 360 was in software.

I wasn't aware of any games that used MPEG-1 on the 360. The most common video codec was Bink, often for bad reasons and yielding poor quality.

How does the file look?

[benwaggoner]

It plays in VLC fine as long as aspect ratio is set manually. I'm guessing they meant to type 1.85:1 for picture aspect ratio but entered 1.185 instead.

It is a truly long tradition that game developers never, ever, ever asking digital media compression experts to help .

[rwill]

The format seems to some sort of modified Mpeg-1. FFMPEG has extra code to handle the differences to standard Mpeg-1 so it plays it back correctly. It can be identified by the string "\0TMPGEXS\0" in a user data video packet. A quick google shows also references to The Witcher 2 and some Sonic the Hedgehog ( Unleashed ) game using some sort of this format. So the format was around in XBOX 360 times and was probably middleware licensed by studios.

It is possible that the sample aspect ratio code meaning is different, given that certain lower level parameters have a slightly different meaning in this format too if compared to the Mpeg-1 standard.

[Clutchins]

i appreciate all the replies trying to help me with this

here is what i have tried so far

changing the AR on restream results in this:

<Duration>30.030</Duration>
<BitRate_Mode>VBR</BitRate_Mode>
<BitRate>6954776</BitRate>
<Width>960</Width>
<Height>720</Height>
<Sampled_Width>960</Sampled_Width>
<Sampled_Height>720</Sampled_Height>
<PixelAspectRatio>1.422</PixelAspectRatio>
<DisplayAspectRatio>1.896</DisplayAspectRatio>
<FrameRate>29.970</FrameRate>
<FrameCount>900</FrameCount>
<ColorSpace>YUV</ColorSpace>
<ChromaSubsampling>4:2:0</ChromaSubsampling>
<BitDepth>8</BitDepth>
<ScanType>Progressive</ScanType>
<Compression_Mode>Lossy</Compression_Mode>

a friend of mine tried changing the "Set aspect ratio" option in mkvtoolnix to 1.617:1 because he thought the PAR might 40:33 after seeing the target reticle in one of the frames appear stretched, but this could be due to a number of factors. anyway, this is the result:

<Duration>30.030000000</Duration>
<BitRate_Mode>VBR</BitRate_Mode>
<BitRate>6954758</BitRate>
<Width>960</Width>
<Height>720</Height>
<Sampled_Width>960</Sampled_Width>
<Sampled_Height>720</Sampled_Height>
<PixelAspectRatio>1.213</PixelAspectRatio>
<PixelAspectRatio_Original>0.889</PixelAspectRatio_Original>
<DisplayAspectRatio>1.617</DisplayAspectRatio>
<DisplayAspectRatio_Original>1.185</DisplayAspectRatio_Original>
<FrameRate_Mode>VFR</FrameRate_Mode>
<FrameRate>29.970</FrameRate>
<FrameCount>900</FrameCount>
<ColorSpace>YUV</ColorSpace>
<ChromaSubsampling>4:2:0</ChromaSubsampling>
<BitDepth>8</BitDepth>
<ScanType>Progressive</ScanType>
<Compression_Mode>Lossy</Compression_Mode>

then he tried just changing that to 1.85:1 and here is that result:

<Duration>30.030000000</Duration>
<BitRate_Mode>VBR</BitRate_Mode>
<BitRate>6954758</BitRate>
<Width>960</Width>
<Height>720</Height>
<Sampled_Width>960</Sampled_Width>
<Sampled_Height>720</Sampled_Height>
<PixelAspectRatio>1.388</PixelAspectRatio>
<PixelAspectRatio_Original>0.889</PixelAspectRatio_Original>
<DisplayAspectRatio>1.850</DisplayAspectRatio>
<DisplayAspectRatio_Original>1.185</DisplayAspectRatio_Original>
<FrameRate_Mode>VFR</FrameRate_Mode>
<FrameRate>29.970</FrameRate>
<FrameCount>900</FrameCount>
<ColorSpace>YUV</ColorSpace>
<ChromaSubsampling>4:2:0</ChromaSubsampling>
<BitDepth>8</BitDepth>
<ScanType>Progressive</ScanType>
<Compression_Mode>Lossy</Compression_Mode>

here are the results of these tests. the restream test may look correct, but it is 1.896:1 and not the proper 1.85:1.
https://we.tl/t-3933cbaR18

[huhn]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

It plays in VLC fine as long as aspect ratio is set manually. I'm guessing they meant to type 1.85:1 for picture aspect ratio but entered 1.185 instead.

It is a truly long tradition that game developers never, ever, ever asking digital media compression experts to help .

simple reason money.
that's why even today PC games get released with Bink.
there are videos made from still image in 25 FPS i mean who isn't running his monitor with a refreshrate multiplayer of 25?
the darkest dungeon is shipped with 3 types of videos PC, PS4 and PSV.
the console version are AVC with proper quality. the PC version has seconds where you are just seeing 16X16 makro blocks by using theora.
audio is 80 kbit vorbis.
the consoles got 300+ AAC LC.
and all 3 versions are shipped on PC they are simply not used just to make that clear.

it's just as it is.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by huhn

simple reason money.
that's why even today PC games get released with Bink.

How does money factor into it? Bink has to be licensed, and using built-in video formats is free.

The big reasons Bink got used in the past were developer familiarity and low CPU use so stuff could be done in the background during video playback. Which made sense with 360/PS3 which didn't have HW decoders, but with PS4+ and Xbox One, everything has at least HW H.264. And Windows 7+ has built-in H.264 even if there's not a compatible GPU. And I've not seen a game with a minimum CPU/GPU requirement that doesn't come with H.264 decode in years. Recommended includes HEVC most of the time too.

I think it's mainly because lots of game devs don't know video tech well enough to know what they don't know. Which is fair; there is way more I don't even know I don't know about game development than I know, or know I don't know.

[huhn]

it cost money to even get someone that knows more than the basic stuff so these absolutely terrible decision are made over and over again.

theora is at least free so i can see a reason for why. i would use VP9/8 and stay as far away from hardware decoding as possible but that's me. taking minimum hardware requirement into account software decoding shouldn't be any problem.

i have no clue how much the distribute cost of h264 on PC is.

just to be clear console usually have proper codec use and the PC is the one that doesn't get anything useful.
on PC you "should" "always" deliver the decoder directly with the game no matter what there are all kind of windows version that have limited features like the big windows N version i don't know if the decoder are missing in them too but never risk it.

another major issue could be simple things like this...
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Vide...ideoFiles.html

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by huhn

it cost money to even get someone that knows more than the basic stuff so these absolutely terrible decision are made over and over again.

theora is at least free so i can see a reason for why.

Is anyone using Theora for anything in the last decade? It is basically a patched version of VP3, a late 90's codec that never got a high quality encoder. H.263 probably gives better results and is patent free.

I would use VP9/8 and stay as far away from hardware decoding as possible but that's me. taking minimum hardware requirement into account software decoding shouldn't be any problem.

Any game with GPU requirements can know exactly what hardware decoders are available on those GPUs.

i have no clue how much the distribute cost of h264 on PC is.

H.264 is a built-in Windows feature since Windows 7+. You are right that the "N" versions don't have it, but I've not heard of anyone using one of those in the wild for >10 years. Although when I was at Microsoft back then, we did get a hilarious user bug report of "I can't play WMV files on Windows N." Not being able to play media files out of the box is literally the only feature of "N."

just to be clear console usually have proper codec use and the PC is the one that doesn't get anything useful.

I'm glad to hear that's improving. I've seen some games use Bink in the last five years, but don't recall one more recently.

another major issue could be simple things like this...
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Vide...ideoFiles.html

What's the issue there? It seems to be just a very high level of media playback. Is it the potential complexity of containers? That's irrelevant to a game that's playing its own media files which wouldn't use those very rare features.

[j7n]

A PC game should include all its codecs. They are a small part of the total distribution. Far into the future Microsoft might stop shipping some codecs or obsolete the specific interface that the game relies upon (VFW, DirectShow). It is inconvenient to install the Indeo codec, WMA, QuickTime or DirectMusic for older games. H.264 will remain part of systems for decades, but not in the form that the game expects. Having ffdshow and being able to play the particular formats doesn't help if the game wants a specific decoder. Bink, Smacker, FMOD, etc just work. It is unfortunate that media is sometimes bit-starved with space left over on the disc for demos, redists and launchers.

[huhn]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

Is anyone using Theora for anything in the last decade? It is basically a patched version of VP3, a late 90's codec that never got a high quality encoder. H.263 probably gives better results and is patent free.

the darkest dungeon. not that old but not a new game too.
looking at the quality of that video i wouldn't been shocked if h263 obliterates it.

Any game with GPU requirements can know exactly what hardware decoders are available on those GPUs.

even if known it's you kinda need software for fallback so you can just stick with it. user don't take system requirement serious there was more than 1 user complaining that a game like stardew valley doesn't work on the intel IGPU because it needs DX11.
what about cross platform with software you are fine on anything with hardware decoding you are doomed to write code for every OS and for GPU manufactory too because linux isn't windows with a simple DXVA2 or D3D11 API.

H.264 is a built-in Windows feature since Windows 7+. You are right that the "N" versions don't have it, but I've not heard of anyone using one of those in the wild for >10 years. Although when I was at Microsoft back then, we did get a hilarious user bug report of "I can't play WMV files on Windows N." Not being able to play media files out of the box is literally the only feature of "N."

AFAIK the law is still in effect no media support on schweiz version of windows so just for them you have to do it differently if you go software it's easier to port too.
and isn't the distribution license still something that needs paying if windows can decode it or not. BTW. the software decoder of windows 10 for HEVC was pretty good it stomped everything on release date. and know it's not shipped with it anymore. so at one point you could ship a game that uses media foundation or DS to play the video (some games did that and software like lavfilter have to block them to make them still work...) but you would be totally screwed now where you have to buy the decoder first.

I'm glad to hear that's improving. I've seen some games use Bink in the last five years, but don't recall one more recently.

not sure if it was bink but persona 4 was released on PC last year and the videos looked worse than bink not sure what that was but
it's not as easy to access videos directly these days so i can't even test this.

What's the issue there? It seems to be just a very high level of media playback. Is it the potential complexity of containers? That's irrelevant to a game that's playing its own media files which wouldn't use those very rare features.

it can only do VP8 in software.

[Clutchins]

here are the full video contents of the disc if anybody is interested

you will need a program like vgmtoolbox to convert the usm files to m2v

https://mega.nz/folder/rRYjgSzZ#YLh8RmQ1d4i1nZeGWLPDtA

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by huhn

the darkest dungeon. not that old but not a new game too.
looking at the quality of that video i wouldn't been shocked if h263 obliterates it.

Theora got software types really excited back then, like VPx did later and AV1 did now. I think I did a demo page (here?) 10+ years ago which showed that a well-done MPEG-1 could beat Theora for quality @ bitrate. The real challenge for alternative codecs is getting encoders that are well-tuned for perceptual quality and performance. x264 had the benefit of obsessive testing and tuning from a whole generation of video pirates. Autoregression to optimize for mean VMAF scores is no replacement for that.

even if known it's you kinda need software for fallback so you can just stick with it. user don't take system requirement serious there was more than 1 user complaining that a game like stardew valley doesn't work on the intel IGPU because it needs DX11.

Well, that's going to happen regardless of video. For almost any game, there is a line below where it just will not run. It's been more than a decade since one could buy a new PC without at least H.264 HW decode.

what about cross platform with software you are fine on anything with hardware decoding you are doomed to write code for every OS and for GPU manufactory too because linux isn't windows with a simple DXVA2 or D3D11 API.

Ah, yes. If you're supporting anything beyond Windows and Mac, so many things become so much less certain. Unless you have a GPU requirement that guarantees HW decoder availability, having a SW fallback would be required.

AFAIK the law is still in effect no media support on schweiz version of windows so just for them you have to do it differently if you go software it's easier to port too.
and isn't the distribution license still something that needs paying if windows can decode it or not.

There's still a Windows 10 N? Wow. Windows N was a dumb solution to a non-problem that doesn't even exist anymore. Microsoft gave up on proprietary media formats and codecs 12+ years ago.

BTW. the software decoder of windows 10 for HEVC was pretty good it stomped everything on release date. and know it's not shipped with it anymore. so at one point you could ship a game that uses media foundation or DS to play the video (some games did that and software like lavfilter have to block them to make them still work...) but you would be totally screwed now where you have to buy the decoder first.

I wish there was a way to have Microsoft bill the game vendor for the HEVC SW decoder when needed. It's still available and gets updated in the Windows Store, and was only $0.99 last I checked.

not sure if it was bink but persona 4 was released on PC last year and the videos looked worse than bink not sure what that was but
it's not as easy to access videos directly these days so i can't even test this.

it can only do VP8 in software.

It could well be Bink. Wasn't it originally a PS3 title? Those didn't have any HW decoders, so using a Bink would have made a lot of sense, and might as well keep using it if one isn't remastering the video for higher quality.

[huhn]

the persona 4 cut scene on PC are massively worse compared to PS3 or PSV. the version 1.1 is supposed to "fix" this.

here an image from a cut scene on steam https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/s...g?t=1612959923
i leave it up to your imaginary how this looks in motion.

yakuza 3 remastered also suffers from this issue where the very old console version is massively superior to the relative new PC version there is even a mod to replace the new cut scene encodes with original PS3 ones. no clue how the PS4 version looks but i assume they are normal H264 quality like most modern console games.

i don't have access to the PS3 encodes but i assume they are MPEG2 full DVD spec for the video not the container.

so just to make that clear they make new encodes that are bink or in that quality range today.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by huhn

the persona 4 cut scene on PC are massively worse compared to PS3 or PSV. the version 1.1 is supposed to "fix" this.

here an image from a cut scene on steam https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/s...g?t=1612959923
i leave it up to your imaginary how this looks in motion.

yakuza 3 remastered also suffers from this issue where the very old console version is massively superior to the relative new PC version there is even a mod to replace the new cut scene encodes with original PS3 ones. no clue how the PS4 version looks but i assume they are normal H264 quality like most modern console games.

i don't have access to the PS3 encodes but i assume they are MPEG2 full DVD spec for the video not the container.

so just to make that clear they make new encodes that are bink or in that quality range today.

Wow, that's pretty bad. The basis pattern is really obvious; it's not encoded in something with in-loop deblocking. Small blocks, though. x264 --profile main --fastdecode? That would yield 4x4 blocks without deblocking.

This gets frustrating. There were some old Blizzard games with Bink cut scenes were rendered with Y'=16 converted to RGB=16 instead of 0, so blacks and whites were dingy and saturation low. I'd extract those and play them in the standalone Bink player to actually enjoy watching them.

Someone (we) should do a Gamasutra article on "how to do video right in remasters and ports."

[huhn]

with my experience with BD disks and what i saw and heard there the professionals in that space are in dire need of help too.

persona 4 is supposed to be fix i can test this one game yakuza 3 is still a mess for example and darkest dungeon looks worse this this example image.

[rwill]

!!! NECRO WARNING !!!

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

Is anyone using Theora for anything in the last decade? It is basically a patched version of VP3, a late 90's codec that never got a high quality encoder. H.263 probably gives better results and is patent free.

I just noticed that Diablo3 had some Theora encoded videos for animated UI elements ... the little videos in character creation at least.

It says this in the D3Debug.txt logfile:

2023.08.23 00:06:00.420612100	Ogg logical stream 63a1 is Theora 432x240 24.00 fps 420 236