evilvideo - a better bik converter

evilvideo is a tool for modders of Heavy Iron Studios' EvilEngine games who wish to include custom videos in their mods. Target a particular game and evilvideo takes care of the resolution, frame rate, audio format, and Bink settings that game needs.

It prepares the video with a bundled FFmpeg and compresses it with RAD Game Tools' own Bink compressor, which you install separately. It runs on Windows, and on Linux through Wine.

evilvideo comes as an app, evilvideo.exe, that converts one video at a time, and a command-line tool, evilvideo-cli.exe, that converts many at once.

Supported games

ID	Game	Output
n100f	Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights	640×480
bfbb	SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom	640×480
tssm	The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie	512×480
incredibles	The Incredibles	512×480
rotu	The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer	512×480

Every video is converted to 29.97 fps with 48 kHz stereo audio.

Installing

1. Download and install RAD Video Tools from RAD's Bink download page. They are free for non-commercial use, and evilvideo cannot include them.
2. Download the latest evilvideo-<version>-windows-x64.zip from Releases and extract it anywhere. Keep ffmpeg.exe next to evilvideo.exe and evilvideo-cli.exe.

evilvideo finds RAD Video Tools in their standard install folder. If you installed them elsewhere, click Locate… in the app and pick radvideo64.exe; the app remembers it, and the command-line tool uses it too. The command-line tool also takes --rad <path to radvideo64.exe>.

Using the app

Open evilvideo.exe.

1. Choose a video with Browse…, or drop it on the window. You can also drop a video onto evilvideo.exe itself.
2. Pick the game the video is for.
3. Leave Letterbox checked to keep the video's shape with black bars, or uncheck it to stretch the video over the whole screen.
4. To keep only part of the video, check Trim and enter where it starts and ends, in seconds.
5. Save as follows the video's name with a .bik extension. Change it or use Browse… to save elsewhere.
6. Click Convert. The bar shows the progress, and Cancel stops the conversion. When it is done, Show in folder opens the folder with the new .bik selected.

The app remembers the game, the letterbox choice and where RAD Video Tools are, in %APPDATA%\evilvideo\evilvideo.ini.

Using the command line

evilvideo-cli [options] <input>...

  -g, --game <id>        target game: n100f, bfbb, tssm, incredibles, rotu (required)
  -o, --output <path>    output file (one input) or folder (several inputs);
                         default: next to each input, with a .bik extension
      --stretch          stretch to fill the frame instead of letterboxing
      --trim <from>-<to> keep only this range, in seconds (e.g. 1.5-12)
  -y, --overwrite        replace existing outputs instead of skipping them
      --rad <path>       radvideo64.exe to use (default: saved setting, then the standard install)
      --show-rad         show the RAD Video Tools windows instead of hiding them
  -v, --verbose          also print what each step runs and what the tools report
  -q, --quiet            print only errors and the summary
  -h, --help             show this help
      --version          show the version

Examples:

evilvideo-cli --game bfbb intro.mp4
evilvideo-cli --game tssm --trim 5-35 --output mod\fmv\ clips\*.mkv
evilvideo-cli -g rotu --stretch -o logo.bik "my logo.mov"

• Videos that are not 4:3 are letterboxed with black bars to keep their shape. --stretch fills the screen instead.
• Inputs may use * and ? wildcards. Each output keeps its input's name with a .bik extension.
• Existing outputs are skipped unless --overwrite is given.

If a conversion fails and the reason is unclear, in the app or on the command line, run it again with evilvideo-cli --verbose and include that output in a new issue.

Linux

evilvideo runs under Wine, as RAD Video Tools do.

1. Install Wine from your distribution.

2. Install RAD Video Tools into Wine: wine radtools.exe (the installer from RAD's download page).

3. Run evilvideo with Wine:

   wine evilvideo.exe
   WINEDEBUG=-all wine evilvideo-cli.exe --game bfbb intro.mp4
   

The app's file pickers show Linux files under the Z: drive. WINEDEBUG=-all is optional, but hides Wine's own diagnostic messages. On the command line, use relative paths, or Wine's Z: drive for absolute ones (Z:/home/me/intro.mp4). Unix shells expand wildcards before evilvideo sees them, so quote a pattern only if you want evilvideo to expand it.

In the event that you use a custom WINEPREFIX, ensure you use the same one that you installed radtools.exe with.

If the compression step is significantly slower than expected, limiting Wine to a single CPU may yield faster results.

taskset -c 0 wine evilvideo.exe
WINEDEBUG=-all taskset -c 0 wine evilvideo-cli.exe --game bfbb intro.mp4

macOS

evilvideo should work with a macOS build of Wine the same way as on Linux, but it has not been tested on a Mac yet. Reports are welcome.

License

evilvideo is licensed under the Do What The F*ck You Want To Public License (WTFPL). License terms can be found in LICENSE.

This software uses code of FFmpeg licensed under the LGPLv3. Each release names the exact FFmpeg source it was built from in licenses/ffmpeg-build.txt, with the configure line and the script that built it, ffmpeg/build.sh. The bundled FFmpeg includes dav1d, licensed under the BSD 2-Clause license.