TrekkiesUnite118
Established Member
So encoding Cinepak Videos can be a bit cumbersome. While Cinepak encoders are a dime a dozen, finding one that will produce something that the Saturn likes while still looking decent is a bit more challenging. AviToSaturn while useable, tends to produce sub-par results, and always garbles the audio requiring you to remux it with FFMPEG. So the best process at this time is to instead use the old Mac tools and go through the official encoding pipeline Sega and other developers used. So here are the steps.
You will need the following:
Encoding your video:
And that's it. You should now have a Saturn compliant Cinepak file in decent quality. You can now try it in your game or try it in MadRoms CPK Viewer application that was included in the Cinepak libraries linked above.
Note: MovieToSaturn can sometimes throw fits and will give you an error. Usually this means there's something it doesn't like about your file. The best I can tell you is to just try exporting it again. I've had it throw a fit on one file, then when I re-exported it with the same settings it was happy with that one.
You will need the following:
- VirtualDub Software on the OS of your choice.
- A classic Macintosh Environment on OS 7, OS 8, or OS 9. In this guide I'll be using SheepShaver to emulate a Macintosh OS 9 Environment.
- Sega's Cinepak libraries. (These can be found here: Dezaemon 2 Save Game Manager Vol. 2 and CPK Viewer Source Codes) The tool we want in particular is MovieToSaturn.
- QuickTime 2.5 and Quicktime 4 or higher.
- You'll need to get your Macintosh set up with either OS 7, 8, or 9. Make sure it's a Power PC Macintosh as the 68k ones don't support certain functions.
- Install Quicktime 4 if it's not already installed. This will allow you to open and play uncompressed AVI files.
- Copy the Movie Player application from Quick time 2.5 onto your Macintosh. This is the last free version that allowed you to export/convert videos.
- Copy the MovieToSaturn application onto your Macintosh.
- Optional - Install the Japanese Language pack (this is useful for translating errors MovieToSaturn can throw.)
Encoding your video:
- Obtain a good quality raw video file. - If you have access to higher quality versions of your video file, use them. You want to avoid using the original Saturn files if at all possible as then you'll be compressing something that was already compressed which will give poor results. Garbage in Garbage out basically.
- Downscale your video to the desired resolution in VirtualDub. Do any other kinds of editing here. (Adding subtitles, fancy effects, changing Framerate, etc.)
- Next you want to set your Audio compression setting to "Direct Stream Copy". Set your Video Compression settings to "Uncompressed".
- Note: If your raw video is in a more modern codec, uncompressed may result in a frame format that Quick Time can't understand. If this happens try converting your raw file into an older format first. A good way to preserve quality is to use MPEG-1 and set the bit rate to a very high value such as 8000kbps or higher.
- Save your Video as an AVI file.
- Copy your new video file over to your Macintosh Enviroment.
- This step is REQUIRED. If you don't do this and try reading from your PC's mounted drive, you will get audio errors.
- Open QuickTime Movie Player and select "Open".
- Select the file you wish to encode and select "Convert"
- Click File, and select "Export"
- Make sure "Movie to Quicktime Movie" is selected in the Export drop-down.
- Click "Options".
- Under "Video" click the "Settings" button.
- In this window, select "Cinepak" for the codec and "Millions of Colors" for the color depth. (256 Colors is also allowed.)
- Adjust the quality meter to the desired settings. Medium is a good starting point, though you can usually get away with setting it to Best.
- Set the frame rate to your videos Framerate.
- Set your desired Key frame interval.
- For best results set this to the total number of frames in your video. This will have the encoder decide on it's own when to insert key frames and it generally makes a better decision than you. Only play with this if you find certain spots of your video are getting garbled.
- Set the bit Rate to the desired value. The max the Saturn can do is 300KB/s. However you need to take audio into consideration. So play with this to find a desired value. 200-275 seems to be safe from what I've tried. Adjusting this can also help get the size just right if you need to fit into a specific size.
- Click "Ok"
- Under "Sound" click the "Settings" button.
- Select "None" for compressor, and select the desired Rate, Size, and Channels. Both 8-bit, and 16-bit are allowed, as are Stereo and Mono. Common rates on Saturn are 8000, 11025, 16000, 22050, and 32000. Note: If you want to use ADX encoding then you'll need to use the FILM Muxer: GitHub - TrekkiesUnite118/SegaSaturnFilmMuxer: Remuxes Sega Saturn FILM files from Audio and Video sources
- Click "Ok"
- Uncheck "Prepare for Internet Streaming"
- Click "Ok".
- Type the desired name for your new MOV file, and click "Save".
- Your video will now start encoding. This can take some time as Mac OS 7-9 wasn't really a fast OS, and the machines are pretty slow by todays standards.
- Once the file has been saved, open up MovieToSaturn and select the MOV file you just created.
- Click "Open"
- Click the bottom right button that has the border around it:
- Wait while it turns your MOV file into a CPK file. When finished you should see a window like this:
- Move your file off of your Mac and back to your original Dev system.
And that's it. You should now have a Saturn compliant Cinepak file in decent quality. You can now try it in your game or try it in MadRoms CPK Viewer application that was included in the Cinepak libraries linked above.
Note: MovieToSaturn can sometimes throw fits and will give you an error. Usually this means there's something it doesn't like about your file. The best I can tell you is to just try exporting it again. I've had it throw a fit on one file, then when I re-exported it with the same settings it was happy with that one.
Last edited: