Con este programa, aunque no estarn directamente en AVI.
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PSS Plex v1.0.0001 ReadMe.TXT
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What is a PSS file?
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A PSS file is essentially an MPEG2 System stream. It is a means of storing both video and audio information so that it may be played back in realtime; in simple words, it is used for the FMV in PS2 games. The video stream portion is an ISO standard MPEG2 Video stream. The audio stream, on the other hand, uses a proprietary Sony format, generally stored in two different ways - uncompressed PCM, and compressed ADPCM.
What is PSS Plex?
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This tool is a MPEG2 demultiplexer/multiplexer, customised to be able to cope with the unique audio stream of PSS files, and a range of minor technical differences between PSS and a standard MPEG2 program stream.
It will allow you to split a PSS file down to its component parts, an MPEG2 Video file, and a WAV Audio file (called 'demultiplexing'). This isn't new - Hurricane has already released two tools PSSPlay and PSS2WAV which both essentially demultiplex. The main feature of PSS Plex though is that it will also rebuild a PSS file, from an MPEG2 Video file, and (optionally) a WAV audio file (called 'multiplexing').
I wrote this tool mainly with DVD rips in mind (although it may also have some PS2DEV uses)- namely, I was playing Warriors of Might & Magic and got ticked off that the story was pretty much ripped out (as is common with DVD rips). What this tool will allow you to do is demultiplex a PSS file down to its component Video & Audio files, so that you can downsample them to a smaller size, then multiplex back into a PSS file of a much smaller size; hopefully, fitting on the game CD-R.
Usage
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Select 'Demultiplex' or 'Multiplex' from the main screen, and you will be taken to a screen to fill in the name of the source file(s) and destination file(s).
For demultiplexing, just hit start. If all goes ok, you will get a M2V (MPEG2 Video) file, and a WAV (Audio) file. In some cases you may find you get multiple WAV files (often ending in '-Alt1', '-Alt2', etc) - these are alternate sound streams, often used in multilingual games.
For multiplexing, you will have a few additional options:
'Use Sound Compression (ADPCM)' - For games that support ADPCM, it will compress the audio.
'Sound Stream Number' - Generally, most games will use stream 0 for an audio track. However, some games that have multilingual support will use streams 1 or higher for alternate language soundtracks. You will know this is the case if demultiplexing produces filenames that end with '-Alt#', where # is the stream number.
'Use Custom Profile' - In some cases, the PSS format used by a particular game may be radically different than normal. This option tells PSS Plex to handle the multiplex to a game's custom requirements. Currently the only option available here is for Zone of the Enders (details on this option are in the tutorial doc).
A tutorial is provided with this distribution to step you through creating DVD-rips with PSS files, for a few different games.
About PSS and sound streams - what you need to know
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Most games, certainly all the early ones, support uncompressed (PCM) audio only. As you can probably guess by the term 'uncompressed', these audio streams can be quite large. To make matters worse, they ignore the frequency specified in the PSS file and are hardcoded to use 48000khz 16bit stereo. This means that while PSS Plex deals with downsampled WAV files just fine, the PS2 will still try to play them back at the hardcoded rate - so you cannot reduce the quality of the audio to save space on the CD, and must leave them unaltered. Hopefully one of the smart hackers/crackers out there will be able to find out where this hardcoded value is stored, and tell us how to change it :). A good place to start would be Ring of Red, the only game I've found that uses a lower rate (24khz), suggesting that it is possible to change. (I tried copying the drivers from this game over the drivers of the game I was ripping, but it had no effect. I believe the frequency is hardcoded within the executable itself).
There are a few games out there that use compressed (ADPCM) audio. This provides approximately a 4:1 compression ratio, which is obviously great for us DVD rippers. In addition, they seem to actually use the frequency specified in the PSS file, so we can downsample them too! To determine if a game supports ADPCM, look in the drivers directory (usually \IRX or \MODULES). The following are known ADPCM drivers:
SCDRERT.IRX/SHDRERT.IRX - Official Sony ADPCM drivers, I found them in Donald Duck Quack Attack.
KOEIADS.IRX - KOEI's custom ADPCM driver. Used in Kessen (woohoo) and Dynasty Warriors 2.
DCS.IRX - Midway's custom ADPCM driver. Used in Gauntlet Dark Legacy.
I've found various other games using ADPCM drivers for sound effects, but the drivers weren't linked to the PSS audio routines, so they can't be used.
Limitations
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* Uncompressed PCM sound restrictions - see previous section. Annoying as hell!
* The PS2's PSS drivers can be fussy at times. The bitrates and resolutions supported can vary - some experimentation may be required. Do not expect your first attempt to necessarily succeed.
* PSS isn't a 'set in stone' format - I've seen a number of variations out there while testing. PSS Plex caters to the common majority, although I will try and add custom profiles where needed (like Zone of the Enders)
* While it can demultiplex multiple streams, it will only multiplex a single stream. I've put this on my ToDo list, but it's low priority - you shouldn't really need more than one :) (nor would you have the space, anyhow)
Help me out...
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-> Need someone adept at PS2 debugging to figure out how to remove (or alter) that damned hardcoded audio frequency for uncompressed PCM.
-> You can post me bug reports, but I probably won't be able to do much since PSS files are huge and i'm on a modem connection (so you can't send it to me to debug). I'm a registered user on PS2Ownz' Mindphuq forums, you can reach me there.
