Thread: ripping movies off of PS2 games

What I do for "ripping" really isn't the term ripping.

The following I use for Machinamations I work on as well as other project such as screenshot comics.

I have a PC along with a Video capture card. The console is connected to the video capture card. Console resolution tends to be TV resolution which is between 320 x 240 up to 640 x 480 max resolution, unless you have progressive scan on the game itself which allows you to view the game at 1024 x 768 on higher definition TVs like HDTVs or plasma TVs.

I have the console connected to the PC itsef, then I use a video capture program to capture it into a good HDD. I get sound by connecting the SOUND (white cable) and Audio cable (red cable) into my external attachment for Audigy Platinum EX. The yellow (video cable) is connected to my video capture card.

In the Video capture controls you have to set a resolution. You can go a little higher than normal. The following are figures about resolutions.

Twice the resolution = Four times more Pixels, which = 4 times more the size. Capturing works that you capture a game at 29.97 Frames per second, meaning you are going to capture 30 screenshots per second. You can make all frames JPG at low resolution to save space, but kills quality or you can take a lot of space and get good to perfect Quality. one frame can be anywhere from 900K - 3600K as a bitmap and you are taking 30 frames per second. Multiply that by 60 and that is what it takes. A PS2 disk is 320 x 240 resolution most of the time, blown up to fit your screen and dual layed means it is a 10GB DVD Disk. Xenosaga itself was around 5 - 6GB Animation and the rest was the game itself.

About processors. When it comes to encoding and playback it is important to use Pentium 4 processors. Forget Any other Pentium or AMD processor out there. The reason is that Encoding video at high quality uses a lot of resources and power and you need speed for this.

When Video was encoded, it traditionally took large machines to do it, each with their own processors. Playback is encoding, done in reverse, called Decoding. When you use a Pentium 4, what you have is the instruction set in the processor to carry out this task. AMD processors are created for different things and have their worth somewhere else. Without the instruction set on the processor, what you have is just a video card doing work and combined with processor speed, but no stable instruction.

Anyway, continuing on. Make sure you have the cables connected perfectly, then in the capture program you have to set the sound source to be where those cables connected to. You have several qualities you can choose. The highest quality of sound right now is 96Khz @ 1411 bitrates @ 32 bit sounc (There is such a thing right now) The standard now tends to be 44 - 48khz @1411 bitrates @ 16 bit (Music CDs). Obviously this will make your file size bigger, but you can have the sound be MP3ed and inserted automatically through the program. Like I mentioned earlier, failure to tell the program what yuor input devices are or failure to have the drivers working will make it so you capture with no sound.

Finally, Now capture can begin. This will use a lot of power. The following should be done.

1) Unless your capture is that of an Online game, close your internet connection down as bandwith can attack capture.

2) Do everything in your power to shut down every CPU consuming program and browsers and make sure you RAM is around 512 minimun if doing a capture and 1 - 2GB if doing a FULL CAPTURE. You don't want Virtual memory or a slowdown when doing a capture

3)Set your PC to performance rather than appearance and have fresh RAM when doing this.

*note: Having an optimized PC will save you a lot of grief

Following these will prevent your framerate from dropping while capturing.

Finally. Make sure your refresh rate is as highest it can go for the resolution and monitor you have.

Capturing begins in most programs by taking you into a screen where you choose quality. Do not capture in extremely high resolutions, specially video games since video games are low resolution games and you will see a bad screen of how a game would look on a PC to expose at high resolution and how much rendering they lack.

You can pick a low resolution and M-JPG it or MPG it. One saves space for quality. Low space and lower quality(80%) vs a lot more space (around 4 - 10x more) for max quality are your choices.

When you start make sure you have an empty drive or folder to put this in. Finally, make sure you play the game you are playing, reach that scene or area and begin capture before it starts. End capture when you are finished and edit out the extra time you put at the beginning and end.

I capture normally and I edit as well.

You can download programs that will rip PS2 movies but not all of them are perfect as there are 12 versions of the PS2 so far and things changed later on.

I used to rip, but it got problematic as well changing files over and losing out a bit so then I started doing capturing what I wanted and it comes out nice when you are done if you do it right.

512 minimun if doing a capture and 1 - 2GB if doing a FULL CAPTURE. You don't want Virtual memory or a slowdown when doing a capture

Blast...

Wouldn't this be against the copyright of the game. Ripping info from it just for the movie?

Originally Posted by Kamui Shirou

Wouldn't this be against the copyright of the game. Ripping info from it just for the movie?

I'm thinking not if "you don't sell/share it and only watch it yourself". But I could be wrong cuz you're taking a copyrighted work as a whole and taking out bits out of context so to say....Dunnos.

Wow, that's a lot of work to record!! >.< My computer would crumble under the stress...

as long as u own the game and stuff then u can do whatever u want to your game without trying to sell it. also, video capturing is not my thing. if only there is someone good with ps2 ripping skills.

For the copyright thing, if you add in your video the copyright label (like the compagny name, name of the game, bla bla bla) at the start, This could do the trick.

The legal laws says that every person is entitled to have a backup of any software bought. In other words, you can BURN any DVD or CD. However The law also states clearly that you are not to distribute in any way or median any copyrighted material.

You are able to do something for personal use. The second I start distributing it, Im liable.

Hassum, if you completely optimize your PC, you can do a capture on 256MB of RAM, but you must really be careful on what you do as you will push it. Memory is cheap these days, its not hard to find.