Bink / Smacker

bum · Post by **bum** » Sat Nov 22, 2003 10:08 pm

http://www.radgametools.com/bnkmain.htm

im surprised that no-one has ever mentioned bink or smaker. i read about them on the site and they seem prety damn good, esspecialy bink. ive also got some video's that are in bink (half life 2 gameplay) and they look prety much perfect

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Sat Nov 22, 2003 10:32 pm

For one thing, its a proprietary file format, you can't just open the videos up in Windows Media Player and watch them. Also I seriously doubt that the quality is equivalent or better than what we already are using.

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Sun Nov 23, 2003 1:51 am

Expanding on the "proprietary file format" problem:

To even play back Bink, you need their proprietary player. This player is either "free*" or licensable; it either whores out RAD Game Tools or it doesn't, depending on if you license the product. This sucks.

Sure, you have to download new software to support some of the new formats, e.g. OGM and Matroska, as well as any new codecs. However, those software packages are usually small plugins that work with the software you already have. You can choose to download another player that has built-in support for those container formats too, if you wish. Not so with Bink. It's "GET OUR PLAYER OR NO CONTENT FOR YOU MUAHAHAHA". That's not a choice I want to make.

This also sucks. It sucks more cock than Asia Carrera at a Vivid Video stockholder's meeting. There exist perfectly usable, and usually superior, Free or free* options out there, e.g. XviD.

On the plus side, Bink Converter sometimes works for converting Quicktime files, though it sometime also sucks at that. I tried to get it to read several 23.976fps Quicktime files and it kept thinking that they ran at 23.19fps. Stupid software.

So, uh, yeah, that's why a lot of people don't use it, I guess. Sorry, I go off on tangents like this every now and then.

* Free vs. gratis: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Sun Nov 23, 2003 1:56 am

trythil wrote: This also sucks. It sucks more cock than Asia Carrera at a Vivid Video stockholder's meeting.

Heh, on second thought, I think I got a little carried away there.

Rozard · Post by **Rozard** » Sun Nov 23, 2003 2:00 am

trythil wrote:
trythil wrote: This also sucks. It sucks more cock than Asia Carrera at a Vivid Video stockholder's meeting.
Heh, on second thought, I think I got a little carried away there.

Yeah. I don't think it's possible to suck anymore than that.

azulmagia · Post by **azulmagia** » Sun Nov 23, 2003 4:03 am

trythil wrote:
trythil wrote: This also sucks. It sucks more cock than Asia Carrera at a Vivid Video stockholder's meeting.
Heh, on second thought, I think I got a little carried away there.

Note to self: Buy multiple shares of Vivid Video stock as soon as I can afford it

Tab. · Post by **Tab.** » Sun Nov 23, 2003 4:36 am

trythil wrote:fdjksl

Yeah, but how's the quality? The damn encoder wouldn't convert for me and I was too indifferent to bother going out on a limb to make it go.
It's wavelet.. so it can't be too bad.

ErMaC · Post by **ErMaC** » Sun Nov 23, 2003 4:47 am

From everything I remember about Bink it causes nasty ass color banding.

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Sun Nov 23, 2003 10:10 am

At the highest quality setting Bink video for the release of HL2's 1024x540 videos were absolutly perfect, and they claim to get better proformance out of Bink at about 8mbit then Mpeg gets. And I -do-belive this.

However, I also belive something else! I do not only belive, but I well know my 500mhz gets full frame rate while playing back 1024x540 Mpeg-2, while playing back the HL2 demo videos I got 4 frames per section.

Well, obviously, 4fps isn't that enjoyable, so I would have to fire up radtools and convert the Bink videos to 640x(whatever) Divx files just so I could enjoy them for what they were.

So while Bink is more efficent, it also has a shockingly high CPU load. However, I'll tell you that the propritary thing isn't much of an issue since bink videos can be encoded into their own EXE file for playback. (But Bink really has no good player yet)

This is why I like Mpeg-1.

NicholasDWolfwood · Post by **NicholasDWolfwood** » Sun Nov 23, 2003 11:39 am

What about Mac and Linux users, Izumi? The propreitary format of Bink and Smacker can't be played back with mplayer