Hi there. Not sure about QTW 4, but can't you use QT 2.x videos, as well ?

From "The Quick Time FAQ" (0.45, 1995):

"Cross Platform Shoes - Converting movies

Macintosh
To convert AVI movies to QuickTime (or vice versa), you’ll want to get a copy of
Microsoft’s Video for Windows Converter.
You can also get it from Microsoft’s WINMM CompuServe forum (), from
the book Desktop Video Studio (see QUICKTIME RESOURCES: PRINT), and from Microsoft’s
free VFW Jumpstart CD (if you don’t mind waiting six weeks) — send email to.

Windows
For PC users that want to convert digital video files between QuickTime and AVI
formats, Intel has a converter called SmartVid that runs under Windows (for ease of use)
and DOS (for easy batch processing).
Another Windows-based QuickTime/AVI converter is TRMOOV.EXE, created by The
San Francisco Canyon Company.
This utility is also available on the CD-ROM included with the book How to Digitize
video (see QUICKTIME RESOURCES: PRINT), and as a sample application with The Canyon
Movie Toolkit, a C++ class library for developers working with desktop video. (Both of
these products may be ordered from Canyon directly at 415.398.9957.)
Adobe’s Premiere for Windows will also allow you to convert between AVI and
QuickTime formats."

It goes on..

"QuickTime & MPEG

Converting an MPEG movie to a QuickTime movie
If you have MPEG playback hardware…
If you have MPEG playback hardware, QuickTime can convert standard MPEG bitstream
files to QuickTime MPEG movies.
Here’s list of requirements that MPEG bitstream files must meet in order for QuickTime
to convert them:
• QuickTime must be able to recognize the file. For this to happen, one of two
conditions must be satisfied — either the file must be of type and have a file
name with a suffix of , or the file must be of type and reside on a CD-ROM.
• The file must contain an unbroken, legal, byte-aligned MPEG-1 systems bitstream.
• The bitstream must begin within the first few kilobytes of the file, and must begin
with a video packet.
• The first video packet must begin with a sequence header, which must not change
within that bitstream.
• The bitstream must extend to the end of the file.
NOTE If the files have been created for Sigma’s ReelMagic board, they’re encrypted
and are not regular MPEG files. So they won’t work."

Jo22 wrote on 2023-02-04, 05:46:

Hi there. Not sure about QTW 4, but can't you use QT 2.x videos, as well ? […]
Show full quote

Hi there. Not sure about QTW 4, but can't you use QT 2.x videos, as well ?

From "The Quick Time FAQ" (0.45, 1995):

"Cross Platform Shoes - Converting movies

Macintosh
To convert AVI movies to QuickTime (or vice versa), you’ll want to get a copy of
Microsoft’s Video for Windows Converter.
You can also get it from Microsoft’s WINMM CompuServe forum (), from
the book Desktop Video Studio (see QUICKTIME RESOURCES: PRINT), and from Microsoft’s
free VFW Jumpstart CD (if you don’t mind waiting six weeks) — send email to.

Windows
For PC users that want to convert digital video files between QuickTime and AVI
formats, Intel has a converter called SmartVid that runs under Windows (for ease of use)
and DOS (for easy batch processing).
Another Windows-based QuickTime/AVI converter is TRMOOV.EXE, created by The
San Francisco Canyon Company.
This utility is also available on the CD-ROM included with the book How to Digitize
video (see QUICKTIME RESOURCES: PRINT), and as a sample application with The Canyon
Movie Toolkit, a C++ class library for developers working with desktop video. (Both of
these products may be ordered from Canyon directly at 415.398.9957.)
Adobe’s Premiere for Windows will also allow you to convert between AVI and
QuickTime formats."

It goes on..

"QuickTime & MPEG

Converting an MPEG movie to a QuickTime movie
If you have MPEG playback hardware…
If you have MPEG playback hardware, QuickTime can convert standard MPEG bitstream
files to QuickTime MPEG movies.
Here’s list of requirements that MPEG bitstream files must meet in order for QuickTime
to convert them:
• QuickTime must be able to recognize the file. For this to happen, one of two
conditions must be satisfied — either the file must be of type and have a file
name with a suffix of , or the file must be of type and reside on a CD-ROM.
• The file must contain an unbroken, legal, byte-aligned MPEG-1 systems bitstream.
• The bitstream must begin within the first few kilobytes of the file, and must begin
with a video packet.
• The first video packet must begin with a sequence header, which must not change
within that bitstream.
• The bitstream must extend to the end of the file.
NOTE If the files have been created for Sigma’s ReelMagic board, they’re encrypted
and are not regular MPEG files. So they won’t work."

Heya, thanks for the instructions. Sadly SmartVid and TRMOOV both just change the container between AVI and MOV, and since Sorenson won't work in AVI, I can't use those two to make a MOV with Sorenson video streams.

Does Director use the installed QuickTime runtime, or does it reimplement things itself? If it's the former you could try carefully upgrading to later versions of QT, hopefully bringing in new features - Wikipedia says 5.x brought MPEG-1 support, which I'd think should be easier to handle than Sorenson.

Also - what's stopping you from using the same old QuickTime version that the game's based on to reencode stuff? Export to a very large, un-/barely compressed format file after subtitling, then crush it down to final size/format in a VM. Not the smoothest workflow, maybe, and pretty much impossible to automate, but it's only 24 videos so not too bad.

helkaluin wrote on 2023-02-15, 05:19:

Heya, thanks for the instructions. Sadly SmartVid and TRMOOV both just change the container between AVI and MOV, and since Sorenson won't work in AVI, I can't use those two to make a MOV with Sorenson video streams.

I don't see why you wouldn't be able to put sorenson into an AVI. I just tried it with ffmpeg and it made a file which worked in VLC. I made a couple of attempts to convert from that to MOV using TRMOOV. It seems to freeze at the end with MP3 audio but succeeds with uncompressed PCM audio. Then VLC claims it can't playback flv1 video even though it played it back fine when it was in the AVI so who knows.

bakemono wrote on 2023-02-15, 18:13:

helkaluin wrote on 2023-02-15, 05:19:

Heya, thanks for the instructions. Sadly SmartVid and TRMOOV both just change the container between AVI and MOV, and since Sorenson won't work in AVI, I can't use those two to make a MOV with Sorenson video streams.

I don't see why you wouldn't be able to put sorenson into an AVI. I just tried it with ffmpeg and it made a file which worked in VLC. I made a couple of attempts to convert from that to MOV using TRMOOV. It seems to freeze at the end with MP3 audio but succeeds with uncompressed PCM audio. Then VLC claims it can't playback flv1 video even though it played it back fine when it was in the AVI so who knows.

The problem is to make stuff that is playable with old Quicktime 4, not modern VLC.

helkaluin wrote on 2023-02-18, 05:37:

The problem is to make stuff that is playable with old Quicktime 4, not modern VLC.

I understand that, but I am questioning your claim that "Sorenson won't work in AVI" because FFMPEG can definitely make an AVI that contains svq or flv1 (which are both called "Sorenson" in the documentation at least). If you then use TRMOOV to convert from AVI to MOV, do you not have something that will play in quicktime?

bakemono wrote on 2023-02-18, 11:15:

helkaluin wrote on 2023-02-18, 05:37:

The problem is to make stuff that is playable with old Quicktime 4, not modern VLC.

I understand that, but I am questioning your claim that "Sorenson won't work in AVI" because FFMPEG can definitely make an AVI that contains svq or flv1 (which are both called "Sorenson" in the documentation at least). If you then use TRMOOV to convert from AVI to MOV, do you not have something that will play in quicktime?

Oh! That's my bad --- it's the ADPCM that ffmpeg doesn't like putting into an AVI. SVQ1 is fine, technically, but somehow when I play it with Quicktime 4 it just shows a white video...

In the end I just gave up and fed a -c:v rawvideo -c:a pcm_s16le AVI to Quicktime Pro 4 and encoded with Quicktime itself. Less headache than figuring out how to coax modern ffmpeg into spitting something old Qt can read. 🙈

elszgensa wrote on 2023-02-15, 13:28:

Does Director use the installed QuickTime runtime, or does it reimplement things itself? If it's the former you could try carefully upgrading to later versions of QT, hopefully bringing in new features - Wikipedia says 5.x brought MPEG-1 support, which I'd think should be easier to handle than Sorenson.

Also - what's stopping you from using the same old QuickTime version that the game's based on to reencode stuff? Export to a very large, un-/barely compressed format file after subtitling, then crush it down to final size/format in a VM. Not the smoothest workflow, maybe, and pretty much impossible to automate, but it's only 24 videos so not too bad.

It does use the Quicktime runtime, and so the game does run with Quicktime 6 instead of 4, but in-game it sill refuses to play MPEG-4 videos, which Qt 6 supports by itself.

At the end I just fed a rawvideo/PCM AVI to Quicktime 4 itself and encoded there, as you suggested 😀

Hi. I'm sorry for hijacking this thread, but you seem to be the only one who could possibly help me. I've been considering for the longest time to start my own translation project featuring a different japanese game that is also made in Director 6, but I have no clue what tools should I use to extract the text. Would you be so kind as to give me a few pointers?