SMAX video files converter?

[Commander D.]

Hallo,

does anybody know a player for the SMAX video files (.wve)?
I want to convert them to mpg or something else, so a friend of mine can watch them with his e.g. WinAmp.

Thx

[Maniac]

There's one on the CD. Just drag the movie file on the movie player.

Btw, if you could make those converted movie files available here too, that would be awesome.

[Kataphraktoi]

isnt that piracy?

although please do if you can,while im still on a 75+k\sec connect.my copy dosnt have any movies.

[Commander D.]

Originally posted by Maniac
There's one on the CD. Just drag the movie file on the movie player.

I know, but i want to render them down for smaller file size and, if it's possible make some stand-alone movie files, like bink.

Btw, if you could make those converted movie files available here too, that would be awesome.

I would do some more research and if I'm lucky, i take it for granted to make them available here.

[Spatzimaus]

I know bumping is frowned upon, but there's a new urgency for this.

Civ 4 is coming out. It uses standard audio and video formats. Some of us are already planning on expanding its tech tree into the future, since like all of the previous Civ games it abruptly stops at the present day. Obviously, we choose to use many of the techs, wonders, etc. from SMAC to create this future era. Being able to use the actual Wonder movies would be HUGE.

So, does anyone know a way to convert the .wve files to something more common?

[Blake]

Yes. I've already done research for this. You can use Wing Commander Movie Player to play SMAC .wve's - it appears to be a coincidence that this player works with them, it's undocumented.

You can extract to an uncompressed avi:
wcmv -avi blahblah.wve

This creates a .avi file (~10x larger than the .wve) I don't think you can set a name for the output avi (but as I said wcmv is undocumented I just guessed the -avi flag). You can then use another program to compress the raw avi. This is as far as I've got so far, finding a suitable converter is left as an exercise for the reader (maybe Windows Media Player could be leveraged for this).

For C4:AC I'll be writing a script to batch convert the movies.

It's also worth noting that Mac SMAC and Linux SMACX have the movies saved in easy to read formats.

[Spatzimaus]

Useful tool. Of course, I'm still trying to find a good AVI compressor, so at the moment I have about three gigabytes of uncompressed movies. For some reason, Windows Media Player won't use the compressor .dll I have.

Anyway, we've got a little time to sort this all out. Being able to add a couple dozen Wonders to Civ4 will be a huge benefit, assuming the more complex ones are moddable.

[PJayTycy]

Try Xvid for avi compression.

If you know how to use virtualdub / nandub / ... use them. If you have never heard of these programs, use vidomi :

http://www.vidomi.com/download.php?op=geninfovid&did1=1&did2=5

[Blake]

If you have any advice on a good free convertor and how to invoke it from the command line then that would be a great help.

[PJayTycy]

Try the forum www.doom9.org

They are mostly quality and high-compression freaks (ie: most programs they'll recommend need a lot of settings / configurations, but output very good quality / size). Also, they are mostly concerned with DVD backups. So, best would be to ask such a question on that forum, but state clearly you want to make an automated script without user interaction and the source is uncompressed AVI (instead of dvd VOB files).

[Spatzimaus]

Well, the combination of the Wing Commander player (to go from .wve to uncompressed AVI) and virtualdub worked nicely. There are really only five movies that the WC player doesn't work on:

Citizen's Defense Force
Clinical Immortality
Ascetic Virtues
Merchant Exchange
Telepathic Matrix

Plus, the compression makes a few of the others have various pixellated effects that look sort of iffy. But most of them are okay.

Anyway, we're making progress...

[PJayTycy]

Originally posted by Spatzimaus
virtualdub worked nicely, but the compression makes a few of the others have various pixellated effects that look sort of iffy.

which codec did you use to compress the avi ?

[Spatzimaus]

XviD. My new DivX codec leaves a watermark, so I didn't want to use that. I'm sure I could find a different one, but the pixellation effects in the compression were really a minor issue compared to the problems at the .wve-to-.avi conversion step.