Higher Quality Cutscenes Mod

[Havoc]

Munch's Oddysee has been updated with patch 14, which includes the cutscenes available below (props to Oddworld for including them officially!). So if you have Patch 14 or later there's no need to download the 1.03GB download below.

However, the NNEDI3 downloads greatly improve on them by upscaling the cutscenes 2x (2.6GB) and 4x (8GB) using the NNEDI3 neural-network upscaler (which gives much better quality than any built-in upscalers), skip to the "1 (one) added bonus" section below for more info!

I noticed that the cutscenes in MunchPC were pretty low quality, acquired the Xbox cutscenes and compared them... what a quality difference!

Unfortunately we can't use the Xbox cutscenes directly as they're in a different format (.BIK), and Bink files cost $$$ to implement & view them ingame, so now the PC versions use WMV files :)

We can convert them though, ffmpeg supports BIK input files and it looks like this is what was used for MunchPC's cutscenes too, but I guess someone forgot the magic "-qscale 0" switch to make the output much higher quality..

So convert them I did, and it's funny how much of a difference that one switch can make...

Old: https://i.sli.mg/4d4VBn.png
New: https://i.sli.mg/2rCpk6.png

Another comparison: https://i.sli.mg/E7MxPn.jpg
And another: https://i.sli.mg/8LTUh4.jpg

(One could argue that these screenshots were taken "in-motion"... but then remember that the new screenshots are also taken "in-motion" too, with no blockiness!)

I managed to convert all the cutscene files except two - the videos played for Abe's "All-A-Ya!" gamespeak option, ffmpeg didn't like the BIK files for that and made half the video white for some reason, so you'll have to settle for the versions that come with MunchPC.

Note that while these use the video from the Xbox cutscenes, the audio comes from the MunchPC WMVs. So if the videos changed at all between Xbox->PC the audio might not be in sync (or might just be plain wrong).
I haven't had the time to check them all, I'm not even sure if they'll all play properly ingame, so bug reports are welcomed if anyone comes across any problems.

Download here (~1.03GB): EDIT: Note that as of Update 14 MunchPC has cutscenes that are equal to/better than these ones! Downloading these cutscenes is now unnecessary, but see the NNEDI3 upscaled ones below for even higher quality cutscenes!
https://mega.nz/#!oFcmjDRC!Rb-DJtyuQmm6WTiW4CjWL9RorbEgamI3jnFZeeUIt68

Extract this zip into your MunchPC movies folder, replacing all the existing ones. If you want to go back to the originals simply verify game cache on steam to redownload them.

1 (one) added bonus! (NNEDI3 upscaled cutscenes)

As a bonus I've also made a version that uses some AviSynth magic to upscale them, using the NNEDI3 neural-network upscaler (which is a pretty high quality upscaler, much better than any built-in ones)
This gives us cutscenes at 4x the original resolution, making them 2560x1920 - which almost look like they were actually rendered at that resolution, bar a few small artifacts.

This comes at a cost of disk space though, the upscaled cutscenes total around 8GB! So I've done another NNEDI3 upscale at 2x (1280x960) for people who don't want to download 8GB of cutscenes (or for those whos machines can't handle the 2560x1920 videos)

Again these upscaled versions are based on the Xbox versions BIK files, except for the two that wouldn't convert properly, so for those I upscaled the MunchPC versions instead..

Torrent download: http://www97.zippyshare.com/v/l1guuung/file.html
This contains both x2 and x4 upscales, your torrent client should allow you to download just the one you want.

I'm not really sure how well this'll work, or if it'll work at all. I'll keep trying to seed for as long as I can, but I don't really have the best upload speed so other seeders would be greatly appreciated :)

Direct download:

4x (2560x1920) upscaled version (~8GB):
https://mega.nz/#!Yd0h2CDD!gXsNzCnicEzJNxzgJEoW8sXd2XqAGoZsMsZzb-xlNKM
Missing 4x upscaled MunchFree.wmv (~400MB):
https://mega.nz/#!xAlA2D7C!I2V9rvEAjsDkYm2p_CDZ_ZO_LDFo2SNvgS2paT9DfXI


2x (1280x960) upscaled version (~2.7GB):
https://mega.nz/#!QUs0nbqa!0D_ma1pXuiGMWLyu_PIUX7AmckwakXlNX0wiBs4n0cI
(no missing files in this one ^^)

NOTE: MEGA sometimes has issues when files are larger than your browsers cache size, you can avoid these issues by installing the MEGA extension below (should be safe, I've tested the Chrome extension personally and had no issues, if you're worried you can always remove the extension after downloading, personally I kept it installed incase I run into any other MEGA files in the future)

Firefox: https://mega.nz/#firefox
Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mega/bigefpfhnfcobdlfbedofhhaibnlghod?hl=en

Fin

Enjoy :) and if Oddworld wants to add these higher quality videos in an update, feel free! (not like you really need my permission or anything :))
I only ask a small favor, if you get around to it.. please fix the camera inversion options for controllers, I hate playing inverted :( (EDIT: they fixed it! Glory to the great developer that is Oddworld!)

And for anyone interested in how these files were made, I've put up a github repo with the scripts I used: https://github.com/emoose/MunchPC-HQ-Cutscenes-Tool-Pack
This includes scripts for converting BIKs along with scripts for upscaling via NNEDI3.

EDIT: Small request...

I saw mentions of a PS3 version of Munch in a different thread, if anyone has the files for it could you check what the resolution of them are?

Using ffmpeg you can open a command-prompt window and run "ffmpeg.exe -i inputfile.bik" and it'll give you all the info about the file, simply copy (or screenshot that) and post here with the info, if they're better quality I'll try converting those over too.
I think bik files play in VLC too, you should be able to open the Media/Codec information page which'll say the resolution.

[Oddworld Admin]

Looking into this just now. Thanks. :)

[Havoc]

No problem :) You've done a great job with the new port so far, the cutscenes are probably the only main thing holding it back, hope this helps :)

I'll be working on getting the NNEDI3 upscaled to 1280x960 versions done soon, depending on how big they are it might be worth using them instead, hopefully they won't be 8GB like the 2560x1920 versions :P

Like I said it almost looks like they were actually rendered at that resolution, NNEDI3 really is a great upscaler. (if anyone reading this is on Windows you can install madVR which can apply it to any video you watch, you just need a good GPU for it otherwise it won't be able to upscale in real-time..)

[Havoc]

4x upscaled version uploaded, anyone willing to download the 8GB zip and try it out please let me know how it goes! (For people with low-spec machines they might not play properly, I'm rocking a 4 year old GTX 680 with i5 3570k and they seem to play fine for me, as I said let me know how it goes for you)

EDIT: Doh.. I left out one file from the 4x upscaled upload, MunchFree.wmv, I'll upload it seperately once the 2x version is done since I don't want to spend another 3 hours uploading a new zip :P

2x version is uploaded also.

[Nacery]

I think I will stay with the x2 as is a significal improvement over standard ones. x4 is overkill maybe.

[Oddworld Admin]

Originally posted by Havoc:

No problem :) You've done a great job with the new port so far, the cutscenes are probably the only main thing holding it back, hope this helps :)

The cut-scene quality we were already looking at, and the devs are currently re-encoding, but we'll point them to this thread.

Nice work :)

[Pablo]

This is awesome . The only thing that is a "problem" is the dowload limit with mega =( , I really want the 4x res movies , but after a 13% it tells me that i have reached my download limit =( i need to wait for barely 7hs , i think i will have to wait .

[Pablo]

i got the 1gb files and they look great , thank you , i will try the 8gb videos and see if there is a difference or not .

So basically we can upscale any video with this method, that includes abe's classic games videos also ?

[Oddworld Admin]

Heads up that we updated the repo last night with an improved set of cut-scenes. We've not tried Havoc's above, but if anyone's on the fence, we won't stop you trying both... :)

[machine4578]

Originally posted by Oddworld Admin:

Heads up that we updated the repo last night with an improved set of cut-scenes. We've not tried Havoc's above, but if anyone's on the fence, we won't stop you trying both... :)

are you sure you didnt try Havoc's ~1.03GB cutscene download?? because your new movie files that download from steam now match his 100%(all files are crc32 match). :)

great work Havoc!!!

[Havoc]

Originally posted by machine4578:

Originally posted by Oddworld Admin:

Heads up that we updated the repo last night with an improved set of cut-scenes. We've not tried Havoc's above, but if anyone's on the fence, we won't stop you trying both... :)

are you sure you didnt try Havoc's ~1.03GB cutscene download?? because your new movie files that download from steam now match his 100%(all files are crc32 match). :)

great work Havoc!!!

Hehe, that could just be a result of using the same ffmpeg settings, I don't mind though :)

Since the new cutscenes are equal to or better than the ones I made I'll edit my post to reflect this, great work Oddworld :)

Also major thanks for fixing the inversion options, once again proving Oddworld is one of the best dev companies that actually listen to their fans :D

[morgoth322]

The problem was a lame encode from the biks file to wmv.
@Oddworld Admin at least you could thank Havoc for his encode.

[Havoc]

Originally posted by Pablo:

:100:

This is awesome . The only thing that is a "problem" is the dowload limit with mega =( , I really want the 4x res movies , but after a 13% it tells me that i have reached my download limit =( i need to wait for barely 7hs , i think i will have to wait .

Hmm, there shouldn't be any limits with MEGA, I think they have issues with certain browsers though when files are larger than the browsers cache size.

If you're on Firefox or Chrome you can download a MEGA extension that bypasses the browser cache so you can download larger files:

Firefox: https://mega.nz/#firefox
Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mega/bigefpfhnfcobdlfbedofhhaibnlghod?hl=en

These extensions are safe, I've tested the Chrome one myself and had no issues. If you're worried you could always remove them after downloading the file, personally I kept it installed incase I run into any other MEGA files in the future.

Originally posted by Pablo:

So basically we can upscale any video with this method, that includes abe's classic games videos also ?

Depends on the format of the videos, and sometimes on the games programming. Not sure if the classic Abe games would work since the game runs in 640x480, but maybe the programming allows higher resolution videos, I'm not sure.

Also I'm not sure what format the Abe videos are in, I think it might be a PlayStation-unique format, so ffmpeg might not support them.

For other games it could work though, but like I said it mostly depends on those two: the format of the video and the games programming.

[Oddworld Admin]

Originally posted by Havoc:

Originally posted by machine4578:

are you sure you didnt try Havoc's ~1.03GB cutscene download?? because your new movie files that download from steam now match his 100%(all files are crc32 match). :)

great work Havoc!!!

Hehe, that could just be a result of using the same ffmpeg settings, I don't mind though :)

Since the new cutscenes are equal to or better than the ones I made I'll edit my post to reflect this, great work Oddworld :)

Also major thanks for fixing the inversion options, once again proving Oddworld is one of the best dev companies that actually listen to their fans :D

As far as we know, the devs used their own encoding, but that does sound like something we should check... Bear with us...

[Havoc]

If any others have problems with MEGA let me know, I could always try making a torrent of the cutscenes instead, I think I have a decent enough connection to seed it for a while, but of course any other seeders would be appreciated.

(and despite what some people might think, torrents aren't just used for illegal downloads, plenty of legal files are shared on torrents, such as Linux distributions and other free software. I even heard Steam itself works via torrents, not sure how correct that statement is though :P)

EDIT: I've made a torrent here: http://www97.zippyshare.com/v/l1guuung/file.html
It contains both x2 and x4 upscales, your torrent client should allow you to download just the one you want.

I'm not really sure how well this'll work, or if it'll work at all. I'll keep trying to seed for as long as I can, but I don't really have the best upload speed, so other seeders would be greatly appreciated :)

Included is the following readme:

These cutscenes are NNEDI3 upscaled, high quality cutscenes for LEGALLY PURCHASED copies of Munch's Oddysee PC.
The x2 package is upscaled to 1280x960
The x4 package is upscaled to 2560x1920
Drop the ones you want to use into your MunchPC movies folder.

Note: You only have permission to use these cutscenes if you have a legal copy of Munch for PC.
If you don't have a legally purchased copy, you really should buy one. On Steam MunchPC is really cheap, and the developers are great guys who deserve the money.
I mean what other kind of developer updates and improves a game that's over 10 years old? These kinds of developers are a rare breed, and deserve our support!

For info about these cutscenes see http://steamcommunity.com/app/15740/discussions/0/360670708795867768/
Tools used to create them can be found at https://github.com/emoose/MunchPC-HQ-Cutscenes-Tool-Pack

[Oddworld Admin]

Just to confirm: the devs used the files Havoc created. So, er, thanks!