Playing the Alpha Centauri and expansion WVE videos

[Buster's Uncle]

I think as long as no one uses it in a commercial game, no one is in danger of anything worse than a cease and desist letter.  We're too small a target to be worth going after.  I wouldn't worry.

[Matt the Czar]

Is there really a way to encode?
(Idea: Email.)
I think in the credits there was a list of the video crew.  Email them

[Buster's Uncle]

It ought to be pretty simple if someone could crack the format problem - never heard of it, don't have anything but the game that'll open it.  The video crew may not have had anything to do with that end.


YOU email.  Seriously; that's how things get done.

[gwillybj]

...
Trouble is, CP won't work under XP. Not even in compatibility modes,
...

In case anyone happens to read this thread and note that comment:
I run CvrPlay.exe on my XP system as-is, no compatibility mode needed.
I don't do it very often, though, because I tend to move the image too fast: makes me dizzy.

[jopower]

Hey, it's been soooome time since I started this thread and if I hadn't been checking the Rolodex for some little visited sites, might've been forever.
THANK YOU FOR KEEPING AGING TOPICS OPEN! 

All I can say is, WOW, you guys are way over my code level!     Thanks for all the usable helps and tips. Weather or not we ever see much of WVE conversions and inventions -- like maybe to BIK, et al -- I'm happy to see this discussion got somewhere.

One other possible way to manipulate these odd files is with Audacity-like programs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audacity_(audio_editor) Audacity records what you're playing as an internal loop back to whatever format you wish. Yes, Audacity is for audio only. I haven't extensively looked for a video equivalent yet. Perhaps one of you have a thought. But I'd hope it was as easy as Audacity... but for this hiccup:

Windows 8 and 10... what planetoid will we be on with them??     Lesson: keep a nice cozy Win 7 or XP box in action in case you really want to do some real prestidigitation (just as many still keep a Win98SE box). 

[Fibonacci]

No idea whether this is too little too late, but VLC player has the following info:
Stream 0
    Type: Video
    Codec: Electronic Arts TQI (TQIV)
    Display resolution: 320x240
    Buffer dimensions: 320x256
    Fram rate:15
    Decoded format: Planar 4:2:0 YUV
    Orientation: Top left
Stream 1
    Type: Audio
    Codec: EA ADPCM Audio (ADEA)
    Channels: Stereo
    Sample rate: 22050 Hz
    Bits per sample: 16

Looking up TQI I found https://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php/Electronic_Arts_TQI and https://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php/Electronic_Arts_Formats looked interesting.

[Daemonjax]

Just thought I'd add to the discussion:

mplayer can play wve files.

http://mplayerwin.sourceforge.net/downloads.html

The main benefit of doing this is for fullscreen video play... or if you experience crashes during video play... or just want to be able to pause the videos ingame. 

If using pracx, you can override the uvplayer15 executable and run a batch file running mplayer, like so:

[Alpha Centauri.Ini]
MoviePlayerCommand=c:\playwve.bat

and then the batch file:

[c:\playwve.bat]
@echo off
"c:\mplayer"\mplayer.exe "E:\Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri\movies"\%~n1.wve -fs

The %~n1.wve shouldn't be necessary... just %1 should work, but it doesn't... for me... last time I checked... but I didn't dig too deep.

EDIT: Even if not using pracx, I suppose you could create an executable using autohotkey (easier than c++ anyways) that runs mplayer in much the same way as the batch file, and stick in it your movie folder (rename existing uvplayer15.exe first).  Dunno, didn't try.

I'd rather watch grainy fullscreen videos than grainy small videos.  Maybe it's just me.

[Mart]

I remember someone wrote (here on the forum?), that the player is embedded actually into exe. Some time ago I tried to play videos in SMACX with other formats, but a 'silly' problem of getting the player window on top of SMACX was not solved. Maybe this is why SMACX has the player embedded, so Windows is happy.


Converting any video to WVE file would be great though. We could then use original player and have new videos in game.
With this Electronic Arts TQI format known, this would be possible.