Wanted: Someone with a Windows 95/98/ME PC

[SamIAm]

(Sorry to post another ad like this. It's all for a good cause. Mods, you can nuke this later or merge it if you think that's appropriate.)

In our quest to make a playable Zeroigar translation, Esperknight and I want to make sure that the game's MPEGs that we apply English subtitles to and re-encode are of the highest video quality possible. The best way to do this is to extract the video files directly from the game, losslessly convert them to AVIs for subtitle hard-coding, then re-encode them using the (generously donated) GMAKER utils.

Unfortunately, PC-FX CDs usually use a totally custom data storage method that makes it so that we can't just copy out the videos like ordinary files on a CD-ROM e.g. with PSX or Saturn games. Fortunately, some Japanese dude actually made custom extraction tools for the very purpose of ripping PC-FX MPEGs, and there is a single exe file you can run once and automatically get every last MPEG (.mix file) out of Zeroigar.

The trouble is, you have to be running a DOS-based operating system to do it. I was thinking you also had to be using a PC-98, but that's apparently not the case. However, you can't emulate DOS or whatever on a different operating system (like XP) because the newfangled CD-ROM drivers will still cock-block the funky PC-FX image from being read by the extraction tool. The system really has to be booted in DOS or DOS-based Windows.

Esperknight and I don't have any DOS-based PCs, but I bet someone around here does. Here's what you can do:

1. Get ahold of Zeroigar (we can help).
2. Boot up your old system, then insert the Zeroigar disc. Mounting an image with an old version of Daemon tools might work, too.
3. Unzip the tiny little extraction tool on the system's main hard drive, double-click it, and let it do its thing (yes, it's that easy).
4. Bundle up the files it outputs (should be around 15 files and a few hundred MB) and get them back to us.
5. Reap heartfelt gratitude.

Pretty easy, right? Send me a PM if you're up for it. We have the utils to convert the extracted files to AVIs and the hard-subbed AVIs back to PC-FX compatible video, but this step is gumming up the works for us.

Hope you can help! Thank you!

[Arkhan]

I can give this a shot.  I have a zeroigar disc image (no real copy f*ckin expensive).

I won't be able to get to it til tomorrow or monday though.

[SamIAm]

Thanks, man. It looks like BlueBMW is going to give it a shot, hopefully soon, on his Windows 98 system. We'll see how it goes.

[BlueBMW]

I dragged the beast out today.  Hopefully Ill have the results tonight.

[SamIAm]

lol

Awesome, dude. I'm excited to find out how it goes!

[BlueBMW]

Looks like the files extracted ok.  Now the fun part... how do I get the files off the Windows 98 machine!

[Bernie]

Looks like the files extracted ok.  Now the fun part... how do I get the files off the Windows 98 machine!

Take the harddrive out, and connect it to a IDE to USB connector. 

[Arkhan]

^^^^ what he said.

or, plug some USB drive in and hope it works, rofl.

[BlueBMW]

I ended up installing an old cd burner and using that   Files are done and sent to SamIAm

[Arkhan]

yyyayyyyy

[Keranu]

Team work, YES!

[SamIAm]

BlueBMW, I can't tell you how grateful I am for these files. I guess I'll just say how relieved I am after many evenings spent tinkering with all sorts of emulators that this actually worked. Thanks for taking time during your weekend to make this happen. I can't wait to show you some good results!

[SamIAm]

For the curious among you, this is an AVI that I derived from a subtitled PC-FX .mix movie file. In other words, I've already done the steps of the MIX->AVI->hardsubbed AVI->MIX, and now I've taken that last mix file and made it into an AVI again for you to look at. The catch is that there's no sound at the moment (weird sample rate issue), but you can now see exactly how clean the video is going to look.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/32377930/zero01ex.AVI

Note that the subtitles are all starting a little early, but I'll fix that later, along with deciding which font to use.

[Arkhan]

BlueBMW, I can't tell you how grateful I am for these files. I guess I'll just say how relieved I am after many evenings spent tinkering with all sorts of emulators that this actually worked. Thanks for taking time during your weekend to make this happen. I can't wait to show you some good results!

this is why dorks hold onto old computers.  This alone made having an old POS computer worth the space it took up!

[BlueBMW]

Theres a stack of old towers in my closet just for these situations.  The computer I did this on was a slot 1 pentium 2 400mhz  160mb of ram ftw!!!