tain.totalcodex.net

(crossposted from playmyth forums)

Bungie's holding a promo video contest, and I wanted to do one for Myth (the game that brought me into the Bungie fold, naturally). I have a cursory understanding of the way the Myth file systems work, but little experience modifying it other than the typical Wights-that-throw-chickens in Fear.

What I need to do is get the .smk video files out of the cutscenes.gor file from TFL. All I've been able to do so far is use UnTag to get the tags out, and I've already tried adding the .smk extension to the end of those files, just to see if it would work, which it doesn't.

So, any ideas?

I'm pretty sure the TFL cutscenes can be found on the uDogs hotline in mp4 format (playable by latest Quicktime) so you could just hop on there and ask I guess. Or sift through the files via browser, I'm not sure where they're at but I'm sure that's where I got them from..

It's not a hard feat to get those tag files you've extracted to play in a Smacker player, providing you're on a mac (maybe it's easy on PC too, but i know the steps for the mac platform). Firstly get a little program called ResEdit. Once you have it, use the 'Get File/Folder Info' and find a .smk file that you know DOES play in your smacker player. Check the 4 digit character fields (File and Creator), and copy down what they say. Close the window and then get info on one of your extracted myth cutscenes. Change the File and Creator fields to the characters that the working .smk had, and save the file....

It should now open fine in your smacker player.

If you're a windows machine you can play back or convert the SMK files with the RAD Video Tools
EDIT: it's not very visible but that's a clickable link

Well, I'm on a PC, so I'm out of luck for the ResEdit solution. I've also scoured the udogs site up and down (found plenty of other stuff, like the Kathy Trow video o_O ). Someone on playmyth suggested I get a hex editor and try to rebuild the smk's from their tags, but I'd really rather hold off on that until I'm sure no one has a quicktime or just plain .smk somewhere (you'd think that, being 10 years old, they'd be lying around in plain sight by now )

Thanks for the suggestions though, and at the very least I'll just go hijack a Mac across town in a few days.

I've got them lying around on my HD in quicktime format so pm me or something if you run out of solutions... Did you try the link Melekor offered, just click Rad Video Tools in his post, it will take you somewhere beautiful..

Actually the RAD tools were the very first thing I tried before I even came here, the problem is that I don't have the actual .smk files, I have the tags in which they're embedded, and the RAD tools do nothing to extract the files from those tags. Once I have the .smks, then the RAD tools become quite useful

Thanks for the offer, pm-ing you now

The tags from cutscenes.gor are 'modified' SMK files. They have a Myth header added onto them. Basically, there's 64 bytes of 'garbage' at the beginning of the smk files which prevents the Smacker player from recognizing them as 'true' SMK files.

Fixing the files is rather simple. Get yourself a Hex editor. (I use HexEdit but there's several others. Most are free.) Open the extracted tags in the Hex Editor, delete the first 64 bytes. (Delete everything until the ascii word 'myth'.) The beginning of the file should begin with ascii 'SMK2'. Save the file, make sure it has a .smk extension and try to open it in Smacker player.

Sassafras wrote:(crossposted from playmyth forums)

What I need to do is get the .smk video files out of the cutscenes.gor file from TFL. All I've been able to do so far is use UnTag to get the tags out, and I've already tried adding the .smk extension to the end of those files, just to see if it would work, which it doesn't.

So, any ideas?

I see I didn't quite read your first post correctly. Since you already have teh tags out, Killswitch has the right answer. Just shave off the first 64 bytes and you're good to go.

Yep, got it to work, awesome, thanks folks!

Bungie isn't running the competition.

But yeah, I was going to ask the same question. Or get bored and forget about doing it because my computer lags so much during Fraps recording.

-TGP-

me=moron, so l'm hoping someone could give me a step by step on this one. doesn't have to be elaborate, just a quick list would be brilliant.

l have the .gor file ready and l downloaded/installed the radgames tools exe. the op mentioned untag, which l haven't been able to find; or, rather, l got so many google hits for 'untag' that l don't know which one to go to. if someone could tell me where to find it and whether it's absolutely necessary l would appreciate it.

thanks.

nascent wrote:the op mentioned untag, which l haven't been able to find; ... if someone could tell me where to find it and whether it's absolutely necessary l would appreciate it.

thanks.

Try one of these:

Untag for Mac
Untag for Windows

There are other apps out there that do the same thing as Untag. There's Tag Extractor (for M2, Mac), Myth Extractor (for TFL, Mac), and a slew of others.

List of PC Tools
List of Mac Tools
(Any PC ppl wanna jump in here and say which tools to use for extraction?)