7. Zone of the Enders (PAL DVD)
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1/ Start with copying the DVD over to a directory on your hard drive. You will most likely strike trouble attempting to copy the huge ZOE.DAT file. Numerous people have had success by booting into DOS (using a bootdisk), and copying it from the command line. However in my case it didn't work, and had to use Prassi DVD Rep instead (commercial software).
Next, you need to unpack the ZOE.DAT file using a special utility called ZOE.EXE, available from the PS2Ownz website (see introduction). Put ZOE.EXE and ZOE.DAT in a new directory, and run it from the command line using 'ZOE X ZOE.DAT' - it will take a few minutes to complete.
2/ Now have a look at what we've got to work with. There are tonnes of PSS files, although most of them contain only audio & subtitles (no video, ie. they play using the in-game engine for video). We can't do anything with those. The ones that do contain video are:
- All PSS files in the 'Ending' and 'Title' directories
- The PSS files where the fourth character is an 'R', in the 'fa1', 'fa2', 'gl1', 'sh1', 'st1', 'ta1' and 'ta2' directories
Move all of these (video) PSS files out to another directory for the moment, and replace them with the 'Empty.PSS' file contained in the PSS_Plex distribution (rename it to match the filename of each file being replaced).
Total up the amount of space used - the files from the DVD minus the zoe.dat is only 4MB, and the space used by the DAT (with video PSS movies replaced by the Empty PSS) comes to 554Mb. Assuming we're going with an 80min CD again, that means 700-4-554 = 142Mb free for us to use.
3/ Look for ADPCM support. None of the drivers match the known ADPCM drivers. However, I can tell you it DOES support ADPCM. I don't know which driver is supplying the support (if I had to guess I'd say IOP_MAIN.IRX or it's coded directly into the executable). Anyhow, this is great news for us - the sound will take up much less space when compressed.
4/ We are ready to demultiplex the PSS files. Before we do, it should be immediately obvious there is no way we can fit the 1.25gig of movies into 142Mb of space, no matter how much we recompress it. For this reason, I suggest you make a selection of which ones you wish to keep. Here is a list of the files and how they relate to the story, along with my recommendation.
Files Purpose
----- -------
Title\ttlr1001.PSS - 'Attract-mode' - Game intro. Played when you leave the main menu idle for a minute. Identical to fa1r1020.PSS which is used when actually starting the game, so this one is superfluous -> delete
Title\ttlr1011.PSS - 'Attract-mode' - Snips of FMV pieces taken from all the other FMVs in the game -> delete
FA1\fa1r1020.PSS - The game introduction. Shows the order to attack the station -> keep
FA1\fa1r1021.PSS - The game introduction. Introduces the main character Leo, and the frame Jehuty -> keep
FA2\all PSS files - Pointless head shots -> delete
GL1\gl1r2371.PSS - Mission briefing -> keep
GL1\gl1r3001.PSS - Mission briefing -> keep
GL1\gl1r5001.PSS - Pointless cutscene -> delete
GL1\gl1r5101.PSS - Pointless cutscene -> delete
GL1\gl1r5391.PSS - Transition movie -> delete
SH1\sh1r7061.PSS - Soppy heart-to-heart between Leo and Jehuty. I'd delete this one even if I had to room to keep it :) -> delete
ST1\st1r6361.PSS - Viola/Leo face-off. Just a bunch of nasty words -> delete
ST1\st1r6441.PSS - Viola's defeat. -> delete
ST1\st1r6491.PSS - Meeting contact cutscene, minor -> delete
ST1\st1r6501.PSS - A major story cutscene. I won't spoil it, but you'll want this one -> keep
TA1\ta1r2081.PSS - Computer monitor cutscene -> delete
TA1\ta1r2101.PSS - Computer monitor cutscene -> delete
TA1\ta1r2141.PSS - Introducing Celvice. Leo is being an arrogant ass, so -> delete
TA2\ta2r2281.PSS - Rescuing Celvice, nice but we're low on space -> delete
TA2\ta2r2301.PSS - Minor transition -> delete
Ending\edgr7361.PSS - Ending. The two endings are identical except for different ending theme music. The edgr7361 music is more upbeat, so I chose to keep this ending. -> keep
Ending\edgr7362.PSS - Ending. The two endings are identical except for different ending theme music. I chose to delete this one, and hack the rebuilt ZOE.DAT to play the other one (discussed later in step 10/) -> delete
If you've followed my recommendations, there will be a total of 6 PSS files that we will be keeping, coming to a total of 627Mb. Go ahead and demultiplex those 6 files. You will notice that you receive a number of strange files for each PSS, eg:
132,033,724 27/06/01 17:46 edgr7361.m2v
85,557,354 27/06/01 17:46 edgr7361-Alt1.wav
2,028 27/06/01 17:46 edgr7361-Alt7.sub
2,248 27/06/01 17:46 edgr7361-Alt8.sub
2,156 27/06/01 17:46 edgr7361-Alt9.sub
2,280 27/06/01 17:46 edgr7361-AltA.sub
Basically, ZOE uses a unique PSS format, for which I've had to add custom support. Those .sub files are subtitles, which are integrated into the ZOE PSS files. As you will recognize from previous tutorials, the -Alt# refers to separate stream numbers. Alt7 is the English subtitles, Alt8 is French, Alt9 is German, and AltA (hex for 10) is Italian. Because they're so small, I'd recommend keeping them all (to make your rip multilingual).
5/ Now lets see what we've got to work with; the total for all M2V files is 563Mb and WAV files is 218Mb, a grand total of 782Mb. If you're wondering where the extra 150Mb came from, the audio was ADPCM compressed within the PSS files (about 4:1 ratio). This effectively means that when we recompress the audio, it actually only uses about 218/4 = ~60Mb.
6/ Run the MPEG Properties utility, and check one of the MPEG2 video files. It should tell you the bitrate is 6Mb/sec, and resolution at 512x384. Using your sound utility, you should find the WAV files are 44100khz 16bit Stereo.
7/ & 8/ Ok, we've got about 5 times as much data as we can fit onto a CD, so lets bring those files to a fraction of their original size. If we reduce the bitrate for all MPEG2 video files down to 900Kb/Sec, and resample all WAV files down to 16000khz 16bit Stereo, then we should just fit the CD.
A little warning here is neccessary for TMPGEnc users - for some reason, TMPGEnc truncates the MPEG2 videos for this game. I don't know why, but you will lose anywhere from a few seconds up to 15 seconds of video. I had to use DVD2AVI (also available freely at Doom9's site
http://www.doom9.org) to convert the MPEG2 video to an AVI (DivX, aka MPEG4), and THEN use TMPGEnc to recompress the AVI to an MPEG2 Video at the desired bitrate. It's a pain in the butt for sure.
Also, if you check edgr7361.pss, you will find that while it lasts for 8 minutes, the last half (4 minutes) is just a black screen - presumably where the credits roll. We can cut the size of this file in half by removing that black screen portion. After you have run DVD2AVI to convert it to an AVI file, run AVIEdit (free at
http://www.am-soft.ru/). Scroll accross to where the black portion starts (In the PAL version, this is frame 5740) and click to select it. Next, use the scrollbar at the bottom of the screen to scroll to the end of the AVI, and shift-click the final frame. Now hit the DEL key to delete all the selected black frames. Finally, save the AVI under a new name, and use this new AVI to compress to MPEG2 for our PSS file.
9/ & 10/ Rebuild the new reduced PSS files, by multiplexing the M2V/WAV back into PSS files. Make sure you choose 'Zone of the Enders' in the 'Custom Profile' option; it will prompt you to enter the filenames of any of the subtitles files extracted during demultiplex, and will tell PSS Plex to multiplex the audio via a custom method required by Z.O.E.
After the PSS files are rebuilt, copy them back to their original directory, overwriting the Empty.PSS replacements you put there during step 2/.
Rebuild the ZOE.DAT file by running ZOE.EXE again, this time 'ZOE J ZOE.DAT'. Copy the new ZOE.DAT back to the directory where you kept the rest of the DVD-Rip.
One last thing; remember during step 5/ when I mentioned we would hack the rebuilt ZOE.DAT to redirect the edgr7362.PSS (2nd Ending) file to play the edgr7361.PSS (1st Ending) file? Lets do that now. Run ZOE_Hack.EXE (included with PSS Plex distribution). Specify the location of the ZOE.DAT, choose edgr7362.PSS to be redirected, and edgr7361.PSS as the destination, then click Start. It may take a minute to complete.
11/ Now the tough bit. We need to remove the DVD checks from the game. For this, I will (as usual) refer to Gokun's guide, which is based on Paradox's rip.
For PAL version - (this is personally verified)
SLES_501.11 - Offset 00001310 from '02' to '01' and Offset 0000135C from '02' to '01'
CDBIOS.IRX - Offset 00000928 from '00000000' to '01000424'
CDBIOSH.IRX - Offset 00000AFC from '00000000' to '01000424'
For NTSC version - (may be wrong, there are 3 threads about this on PS2Ownz forums!)
SLUS_???.?? - Offset 00001300 from '02' to '01' and Offset 00001350 from '02' to '01'
CDBIOS.IRX - Offset 00000920 from '00000000' to '01000424'
CDBIOSH.IRX - Offset 00000AF0 from '00000000' to '01000424'
12/ Finally, build the CDR image and burn it! (refer Appendix A)
A pretty good result on this one. We only had ~140Mb and we got to keep most of the story!
