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Game Media Formats DirectShow Filters Package
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Game Media Formats Core Filters Package v1.00 A Few Words That Might Be Called "Documentation" ============================================================================ Overview ============================================================================ GMFCore.ax is the package of freeware DirectShow filters aimed at supporting several game media (audio and video) formats. The word "support" means here that you can open the supported game media files in any program capable of automatic DirectShow filter graph building and do with those files whatever the program allows you to do. The simplest (and I suppose the most wide-spread) way to exercise the DirectShow filters' capabilities is to play back audio/video files in your favorite DirectShow-aware media player. To name a few: Windows Media Player (WMP), BSPlayer, SASAMI2K, ZoomPlayer, CrystalPlayer, WinAMP (with DirectShow input plug-in). Also, you can convert the supported files to convenient AVI/WAV using DirectShow GraphEdit and you can even convert to compressed AVI/WAV (which is especially crucial in case of video files). Finally, if you are a DirectShow developer, you can add the filters to your filter graphs to play back, convert, process, edit the supported media formats. A good destination to proceed towards for a developer is the software capable of playing back game media files right from the game resources (much like GAP does). To implement this all you need is to make the source filter capable of reading data from the game resource files (and, of course, you should supply a convenient GUI and file scanning capabilities). Once the source filter is ready to output the game media stream, all remaining work is handled by the filters contained in this package. The filters are developed by me, Valery Anisimovsky, the author of another multimedia software, Game Audio Player and are Copyright (C) 2004 ANX Software. In some filters I used the source code developed by Mike Melanson and Dr. Tim Ferguson who also contributed to FFmpeg library so that you can watch the same game movies in Linux media players MPlayer and xine. In MVE video decompressor I used the source code from D2X project developed by the unknown person (who is encouraged to contact me for a proper credit). HNM/HNS playback is provided by the Cryo decoder DLLs (CM6_*x16.dll) -- I hope Cryo programmers (in particular, Pascal Urro) would not mind this (at least, too much)... ============================================================================ How To Use ============================================================================ First, register the filters by executing command "regsvr32 GMFCore.ax" in the command line. The batch file register.bat included with the GMFCore.ax does the same. You may unregister the filters later by executing another command "regsvr32 /u GMFCore.ax" or by running unregister.bat. Note that after registring filters the system expects the file GMFCore.ax to be available in the directory it was registered in. Be sure not to move it to other location (or re-register it after move). If you intend to play HNM/HNS movies, you should also copy all "CM6_*x16.dll" files to the directory GMFCore.ax resides in. These DLLs may be found in the Cryo games somewhere near the game EXE. Second, you should configure your favorite media player to open the supported files. In fact, this step is optional, since after registration you can open the supported files using e.g. File|Open menu item in the player or by issuing the command like "bsplay.exe movie.vqa". But each really nice media player (like BSPlayer) allows the user to set the file extensions to which it assigns itself, so that when you double-click on the correspondent file in Windows Explorer (or Total Commander), the system runs the player for that file. It's easy and convenient, isn't it? So, do not hesitate to go to your player's configuration dialog(s), find a section called like "File types" (or "File associations") and add the following extensions to the supported extensions list: .APC, .CIN, .FST, .HNM, .HNS, .ROQ, .VQA, .MVE, .MV8. Note that this step IS REQUIRED for WinAMP and the right place to add the extensions is DirectShow decoder plug-in configuration dialog. Unfortunately, some players do not allow setting custom extensions (and are not intelligent enough to find those extensions themselves in the registry). That is not a problem, in fact: just open the file you want to play and the player will recognize it without a help of its extension (of course if the player uses automatic filter graph building, which is a common behaviour of DirectShow-aware players). Third, if you experience any problems, do not hesitate to access the filters' property pages (the way to do this depends on the player you use, e.g. in BSPlayer the property pages are found under Options|Filters menu item). All GMFCore splitter/parser filters allow you to configure their streaming settings and some filters provide their own (format-specific) settings in addition. The filters contained in this package are all named following the common rule: "ANX <Format Name> <Goal Description>", e.g. "ANX HNM Splitter" and "ANX ROQ Video Decompressor". ============================================================================ Supported Game Media Formats ============================================================================ The filters included in this package provide the support for the following game media formats (used in the listed games): 1) Cryo Interactive APC audio format: Atlantis 2 Odyssee Chine (maybe other Cryo games) 2) Id Software CIN video format: Quake 2 (maybe other Id games?) 3) FutureVision FST video format (currently audio only): Harvester 4) Cryo Interactive HNM/HNS video format: Atlantis 2 Odyssee Chine (maybe other Cryo games) 5) Id Software ROQ video format: Quake 3 American McGee's Alice Return to Castle Wolfenstein Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast (maybe other games based on Q3 engine) 6) Westwood Studios VQA video format: Legend of Kyrandia 3: Malcolm's Revenge Command & Conquer Command & Conquer: Covert Operations Red Alert Red Alert: The Aftermath Red Alert: Counterstrike Tiberian Sun Tiberian Sun: FireStorm Lands Of Lore 2 Lands Of Lore 3 Blade Runner Dune 2000 Nox (maybe other Westwood games) 7) Interplay Productions MVE video format: Descent 2 Descent 2: Vertigo Descent 3 Descent: Freespace (?) Descent to Undermountain (?) M.A.X. 2 (?) MDK MDK 2 (?) KingPin Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (?) Conquest of the New World Dungeon Master 2 Fallout Fallout 2 Planescape: Torment Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate - Tales of the Sword Coast (?) Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn Icewind Dale IceWind Dale - Heart of Winter (surely many other Interplay games) ============================================================================ A Few Pieces Of Advice ============================================================================ By default, external APC soundtracks for HNM files are searched in ".\cine\" directory (where the dot "." stands for the directory HNM file is located in). This policy follows the way those APC files are placed on the game CDs in Atlantis 2. If you dislocated the HNM and/or APC files in some other way, set the correspondent option on the HNM splitter property page. The same issue is relevant for ROQ movies (which may have MP3 external sountracks), but the default directory for their MP3 soundtracks is just "." (ROQ file directory), which is, again, the way those files are located in Alice and MOHAA. For many games, you have first to extract the media files from the game resources to be able to play them. HNM, HNS, APC, CIN, FST files are (as a rule) stand-alone files and do not require any extraction. On the opposite, ROQ and VQA files are usually contained in game archives (PK3 and MIX respectively). PK3 files are regular ZIP archives, so you should have no problem extracting the files from them, and MIX archives can be handled by RA-MIXer, XCC Mixer, etc. MVE files are often either stand-alone files or contained in EXE or some kind of resource files -- you can use FMV-Extractor to extract MVEs from these. Fallout contains MVE movies inside DAT archives, which can be handled by F2RE, undat and other Fallout tools. Finally, aforementioned GAP can search and extract VQAs and MVEs from any resource file. ============================================================================ Known Problems ============================================================================ 1) 8-bit (palettized) video playback produces black picture when the desktop is in 8-bit (256 colors) video mode. This seems to be the problem of the DirectShow video renderer being added to the graph by default. Just watch those movies in 16-bit (hi-color) or 24-/32-bit (true color) mode. 2) FST movie support is limited to audio only. 3) HNM/HNS movies playback is choppy when the desktop is in 16-bit video mode. The problem can be solved by configuring the HNM video decompressor filter to require color space converter for RGB output. 4) In HNM movies of Odyssee the audio volume goes to very low (almost unperceivable) level at the beginning of the movie. I was not able to figure out the reason of this (HNM/HNS movie soundtracks in other Cryo games play fine while using the same audio format). 5) In some HNM movies there is a serious audio/video synchronization problem related to the fact no frame rate is specified in HNM file (thus, the actual frame rate is estimated). When the estimation is inaccurate it results in utterly choppy playback and playback stallation. 6) VQA seeking is implemented only for HiColor VQAs with PCM, WS ADPCM or no soundtrack and is experimental. However, in some players it works for some other VQAs (blame it on the player) but shows artifacts (it should not work anyway). Proper seeking works only to the nearest preceding full codebook frame. 7) Most of the splitters/parsers do not support seeking (some do not even support stream duration reporting). That is a limitation of the media formats themselves, not the filters -- they just do not contain necessary information for seeking or do contain unseekable compressed streams. The only exception is VQA for which the seeking is experimental. 8) Gradient and compressed palettes in MVE videos are (in theory) supported, but the support is not tested as I've got no MVE movies containing such palettes. 9) Variable MVE video dimensions are not supported. If the MVE movie changes image dimension on-the-fly, you'll either see cropped image or experience player crash. ============================================================================ Credits ============================================================================ The detailed credits (including each credited person's contribution, e-mail and URL (if any)) can be found in the filter's property pages accessible in the player after the filter is instantiated (that is, a file of its type is being played or processed). Here I'd just like to thank several people which provided me with the inspiration I wouldn't have otherwise and contributed invaluably (in no particular order, of course): Valentin Efimov Gordan Ugarkovic Mike Melanson Dr. Tim Ferguson Alexey Schepetilnikov Aleck Horn ========================================================================== Technical information about the filters constituting GMFCore.ax ========================================================================== The C header files supplied in this directory contain CLSIDs of the filters and their property pages, IIDs and the definitions of the additional interfaces, supported by the filters, GUIDs of the media and format types accepted by the filters. All the filters belong to the CLSID_LegacyAmFilterCategory and have merit MERIT_NORMAL. The filters in the package fall into two distinct groups: splitters/parsers and transform filters. All the filter objects support IBaseFilter, IAMovieSetup, ISpecifyPropertyPages (so, each filter provides at least one property page). In addition to the standard interfaces, HNM video decompressor supports IConfigHNMVideoDecompressor interface, which allows to configure this filter. For all the filters their input pins support IPin, IQualityControl and IMemInputPin and their output pins support IPin and IQualityControl. All transform filters are one-input-one-output push-model filters. All splitter/parser filters have one input pin and may have multiple output pins depending on the number of streams present in the file. These filters create output pins only after successful connection of the input pin and destroy the output pins after the disconnection of the input pin. The input pin expects the connecting peer pin to support IAsyncReader, so the filters support pull-model on the input and push-model on the output. When available, all the output pins support IMediaSeeking. All splitter/parser filters support IAMMediaContent and IConfigBaseParser in addition to the standard interfaces. The latter interface allows to configure splitter/parser streaming machinery and media type registration. Media types are registered by the file patterns (if available) and file extensions. Additionally, HNM splitter and ROQ splitter support IConfigHNMSplitter and IConfigROQSplitter, respectively to configure the usage of external soundtrack. To support the playback of the external APC/MP3 soundtracks for HNM/ROQ movies, HNM/ROQ splitters employ pass-through input and output pins (in addition to regular file stream input and video output pins). These are push-model pins: the input pin passes the media samples directly to the output pin, and the output pin implements IMediaSeeking using pass-through seeking object which passes calls upstream. When HNM/ROQ splitter filter decides to use external APC/MP3 file, it adds correspondent file source filter, APC parser or MPEG-1 splitter (and Fraunhofer MPEG Layer-3 decoder if it finds one) to the graph it belongs to. Here's the table of the media/format types accepted by the filters on the input/output pins: ========================================================================== APC parser Input: MEDIATYPE_Stream/MEDIASUBTYPE_APC Output: MEDIATYPE_Audio/MEDIASUBTYPE_CIMAADPCM/FORMAT_CIMAADPCM ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Continuous IMA ADPCM decompressor Input: MEDIATYPE_Audio/MEDIASUBTYPE_CIMAADPCM/FORMAT_CIMAADPCM Output: MEDIATYPE_Audio/MEDIASUBTYPE_PCM/FORMAT_WAVEFORMATEX ========================================================================== ========================================================================== CIN splitter Input: MEDIATYPE_Stream/MEDIASUBTYPE_CIN Audio Output: MEDIATYPE_Audio/MEDIASUBTYPE_PCM/FORMAT_WAVEFORMATEX Video Output: MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_CINVideo/FORMAT_CINVideo ========================================================================== ========================================================================== CIN video decompressor Input: MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_CINVideo/FORMAT_CINVideo Output: MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_RGB8/FORMAT_VideoInfo ========================================================================== ========================================================================== FST splitter Input: MEDIATYPE_Stream/MEDIASUBTYPE_FST Audio Output: MEDIATYPE_Audio/MEDIASUBTYPE_PCM/FORMAT_WAVEFORMATEX Video Output: MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_FSTVideo/FORMAT_FSTVideo ========================================================================== ========================================================================== HNM splitter Input: MEDIATYPE_Stream/MEDIASUBTYPE_HNM Audio Output: MEDIATYPE_Audio/MEDIASUBTYPE_CIMAADPCM/FORMAT_CIMAADPCM Video Output: MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_HNMVideo/FORMAT_HNMVideo ========================================================================== ========================================================================== HNM video decompressor Input: MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_HNMVideo/FORMAT_HNMVideo Output: MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_RGB555/FORMAT_VideoInfo MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_RGB565/FORMAT_VideoInfo ========================================================================== ========================================================================== ROQ splitter Input: MEDIATYPE_Stream/MEDIASUBTYPE_ROQ Audio Output: MEDIATYPE_Audio/MEDIASUBTYPE_ROQADPCM/FORMAT_ROQADPCM Video Output: MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_ROQVideo/FORMAT_ROQVideo ========================================================================== ========================================================================== ROQ ADPCM decompressor Input: MEDIATYPE_Audio/MEDIASUBTYPE_ROQADPCM/FORMAT_ROQADPCM Output: MEDIATYPE_Audio/MEDIASUBTYPE_PCM/FORMAT_WAVEFORMATEX ========================================================================== ========================================================================== ROQ video decompressor Input: MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_ROQVideo/FORMAT_ROQVideo Output: MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_YV12/FORMAT_VideoInfo ========================================================================== ========================================================================== VQA splitter Input: MEDIATYPE_Stream/MEDIASUBTYPE_VQA Audio Output: MEDIATYPE_Audio/MEDIASUBTYPE_PCM/FORMAT_WAVEFORMATEX MEDIATYPE_Audio/MEDIASUBTYPE_CIMAADPCM/FORMAT_CIMAADPCM MEDIATYPE_Audio/MEDIASUBTYPE_WSADPCM/FORMAT_WSADPCM Video Output: MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_VQAVideo/FORMAT_VQAVideo ========================================================================== ========================================================================== WS ADPCM decompressor Input: MEDIATYPE_Audio/MEDIASUBTYPE_WSADPCM/FORMAT_WSADPCM Output: MEDIATYPE_Audio/MEDIASUBTYPE_PCM/FORMAT_WAVEFORMATEX ========================================================================== ========================================================================== VQA video decompressor Input: MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_VQAVideo/FORMAT_VQAVideo Output: MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_RGB8/FORMAT_VideoInfo MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_RGB555/FORMAT_VideoInfo ========================================================================== ========================================================================== MVE splitter Input: MEDIATYPE_Stream/MEDIASUBTYPE_MVE Audio Output: MEDIATYPE_Audio/MEDIASUBTYPE_PCM/FORMAT_WAVEFORMATEX MEDIATYPE_Audio/MEDIASUBTYPE_MVEADPCM/FORMAT_MVEADPCM Video Output: MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_MVEVideo/FORMAT_MVEVideo ========================================================================== ========================================================================== MVE ADPCM decompressor Input: MEDIATYPE_Audio/MEDIASUBTYPE_MVEADPCM/FORMAT_MVEADPCM Output: MEDIATYPE_Audio/MEDIASUBTYPE_PCM/FORMAT_WAVEFORMATEX ========================================================================== ========================================================================== MVE video decompressor Input: MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_MVEVideo/FORMAT_MVEVideo Output: MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_RGB8/FORMAT_VideoInfo MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_RGB555/FORMAT_VideoInfo ========================================================================== ============================================================================ DISCLAIMER ============================================================================ This software comes with NO WARRANTY. You use it at YOUR OWN RISK. The author of this software may not be kept responsible for any damage caused by any usage of this software. This software is meant only as an addition to the wonderful games whose sound/music/speech/video files it deals with. It's NOT meant to lower those games value IN ANY WAY. The creators of the supported games ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE for this software and they should not be contacted in case of any problems related to this software.
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