How to rip PS2 FMV files - Step by Step Guide.

angelstarfire_hikarist · Post by **angelstarfire_hikarist** » Sat Nov 25, 2006 5:40 am

I never understood why you had to change it to .pss..... I just run the .mpg through dvd2avi, and add the sound later if I want it... *shrug* just a suggestion.

Sky-Wolf · Post by **Sky-Wolf** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 12:00 am

I really hope someone comes out with a way to get FFXII's cutscenes. So far the only means of getting the cutscenes would be by running the game by and emulator and FRAPing in, or by using a camera to record it. Annoyances both of them. If I could be of any help to speed up this process, just tell me.

comorbid · Post by **comorbid** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 7:17 pm

So, I was going over this thread and Quu's guide for ripping game footage, and I noticed that there was no mention of .BIN or .MFA files (specifically on PS2 discs). A forum search for these formats also turned up nothing. These are multimedia files on some of the PS2 games that I own (Silent Hill 3, GitS:SAC), and I tried using the PSS extratcion programs listed to no avail. However, they play in VLC Media Player.

I was able to successfully convert some of them to MPEG-1 files (rather quickly, I might add - a nice suprise, as my computer runs like molasses in cases such as this), but they come out at 30FPS. The file sizes are around 1/10 of the size, though, when transcoding at the highest available bitrate using the VLC wizard, in save-to-file mode. It didn't always work, resulting in VLC crashing at certain points in the transcoding process, but the file that came from the crash still plays in VLC, and can be opened in VDubMod.

Prior to the process, I dragged the files to my HD - they were under 1GB, and it made the process go faster. It'll probably work even better if I actually rip the disc to an ISO file first (lots of interesting quirks with the GitS .BIN files), but I'm actually about to leave the house - and will likely be plastered when I get back ^_^; - so that's going to have to wait. :/

File -> Wizard -> Transcode/Save to file

After selecting the file to transcode

Transcode video:
MPEG-1 Video

Bitrate:
3072

(left Transcode audio unchecked - no apparent audio present when file played normally, probably stored in one of the *bgm*.mfa / *bgm*.bin files)

Ecapsulation:
MPEG 1

Save to:
filename.mpg

Granted, I haven't actually tried the proper setup as noted in the original post, so maybe I wasted my time, but I thought it was worth sharing. I haven't acutally tried it with any other settings, but I'll try the originally intended setup and see if that turns anything up, as well.

Still, I'm wondering, are the .BINs and .MFAs technically .PSS files in "disguise"? I haven't checked my other games yet (all of this came up like half an hour ago), but I'm not actually sure any of them have .PSS files on them, except for GTA which I've used MFAudio on before.

Guardian4 · Post by **Guardian4** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 7:41 pm

I try every new method that comes down the pike, but alas, apparently that method also does not apply to Shadow Hearts Covenant, for those that might want to know. I did not find a .mfa file anywhere on the disc/image and VLC wouldn't play the few .bin files there were. Perhaps I'm looking in the wrong area or the bin/mfa files you speak of are in another file...

Don't suppose you could give a bit more detailed directions?

comorbid · Post by **comorbid** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 1:35 pm

Guardian4 wrote:Perhaps I'm looking in the wrong area or the bin/mfa files you speak of are in another file...

If the file contains video at all, it'll probably be a file of a size larger than 500MB. Or, at the very least, a 6-figure number, representative of the size in megabytes. I don't think you should have to do anything more than open them with VLC to play them, if they contain video. But if any of the files are that large, there's a chance that they might.

It's also likely that it's MPEG-2 video - not definitely, just likely. I say this because I just plugged the .bin videos from my copy of GitS into DGIndex and made a .d2v file which also opens in VDubMod. The process went even faster than it did with the VLC Transcoder, and all I had to do was add the files and save the project.

So basically, you may not even need to use the Transcoder. However, it might still be useful - like if you wanted to, say, make an AMV from any episode of that Space Symphony Maetel fansub from 6 on, because the Quicktime player doesn't even recognize them as proper MP4s, so it can't export them to anything, WTF is that about?!

But I digress.

I still need to do some playing with VLC, but as it stands now, I would say that if the file from a PS2 game disc can be played in VLC, you should be able to run it through DGIndex and get an .AVS file that you can edit to your needs and open in VDubMod to convert to whatever format you want.

croik · Post by **croik** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 4:04 pm

Another newb here trying to get FFXII's videos.

I was able to use the Japanese tool to extract the videos into 39 separate .m2v and and .wav files, but now I can't get either to play. The .m2v's won't work in DVD2AVI, VirtualDub, or TMPGEnc, and I downloaded the audio codec the Read Me file suggested (ATRAC3) but the .wav's still won't play on anything I have, either.

Does anyone have a suggestion?

sayde · Post by **sayde** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 8:13 pm

do me a favor croik. First off, check the file sizes of the m2v's. If they're 0mb/kb in size, then it's obviously not going to work. (This happened to me, but then again, I was using that tool on a ISO of the game and not on the japanese version of the disk itself.

Anyways, if your m2v files are of varying sizes (of which would be appropriate for the fmv's), then download a program called WinHex. Open the program and drag any one of the fmv's into it. Take note of the first 8 digits or so of hex you see on the first row of offsets. It would be nice if you could also record the last 8 digits on the last row of offsets in the file as well.

Post the numbers you recorded here. I'd like to see if the fmv's in the japanese version of the game are encoded with the same hex values as the NA version. I'm hoping that if I could at least get one header for one fmv, I could use it to search for them all.

Guardian4 · Post by **Guardian4** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 8:42 pm

comorbid wrote:I still need to do some playing with VLC, but as it stands now, I would say that if the file from a PS2 game disc can be played in VLC, you should be able to run it through DGIndex and get an .AVS file that you can edit to your needs and open in VDubMod to convert to whatever format you want.

I think that's just it though. The bin files that are on the disc, when I opened them with VLC player, the slider moved yeah for a few seconds, but there was no video and no audio. Does that mean they weren't the video files?

Honestly speaking, I'm almost positive that FMVs for Shadow Hearts Covenant is somewhere in this LSD.PKB file, as its two gigs and all the other files are only a few kbs. However, I have no idea in what format it is. I've tried opening it with vlc as it is from the cd, but it just opens and closes the file without even trying to play.

croik · Post by **croik** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 10:10 pm

Ahh...yeah, it looks like mine are all 0 kb, too. I've tried it twice now with the same results (It's also a copy. It plays on my PS2 fine and I've been able to extract video from copies before, so I was hopeful).

Sorry, guess I won't be any help!

sayde · Post by **sayde** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 10:43 pm

It's ok. At least we were able to figure out what the problem was. Apparently, the person that made that FFXII ripper only made it work for legit copies of the japanese version only. Sucks for the rest of us though .