Dungeon Master: Swoosh Construction Kit

DM2 Mac: How to read videos: Introduction

Dungeon Master 2 Macintosh videos are using the Moov extension and specific Apple QuickTime^wiki format 1.x (or 2.x?) for Mac. The Cinepak^wiki (cvid) and Animation (rle) codecs are used for the video stream. Such format can contains QuickTime Video, QuickTime Sound, QuickTime Data objects, and can be spread into multiple files. Mac platform deals well with multiple files for one movie, but Windows not: consequently, it is unreadable as-is on this platform.

More technical details:

QuickTime Mac/Windows difference: http://www.macdisk.com/quickten.php3
Apple QuickTime File Format: http://developer.apple.com/standards/qtff-2001.pdf [mirror: qtff-2001.pdf ]

We will see here how to:

1.Extract video data and resources from source archive
2.Convert Apple Mac video (MooV) to Apple PC video (mov)
3.View "old" Apple PC video
4.Convert "old" Apple PC video into modern Video format
5.Summarize DM2 moov settings

1.Extract video data and resources from source archive

The goal of the extraction step is to be able to obtain the data and the resource files for each Moov video.
Depending on the tool used to extract them, the resource will be named .MooV.rsrc or .MooV.[R] or ...
When dealing with the resource file, we will speak about .MooV.rsrc in the remaining part of the document.

1.1.From CD image

1.1.1.Choice 1: Installation on emulator

Basilisk + HFV Explorer

1.1.2.Choice 2: Direct extraction from image

Mount the image using DaemonTools

1.2.From hqx archive

Stuffit expander

1.3.From sit archive

Stuffit expander

2.Convert Apple Mac video (MooV) to Apple PC video (mov)

2.1.Rename original files

The tool, used to convert the files from Mac to Windows format, requires to have naming convention:

<file>.moov
<file>.moov.qtr (qtr stands for "QuickTime Resource")

Consequently, a renaming step is needed:

<file>.MooV => <file>.MooV

<file>.MooV.rsrc => <file>.MooV.qtr

2.2.Flatten the files

A free utility has been developed by www.macdisk.com to flatten Mav video files.

QT-Flattener (Windows installer): http://www.macdisk.com/en/qtflat.exe [mirror: qtflat.zip (800 Ko) ]

So, run QT-Flattener, change search filter form *.mov to *.moov, select one file (.MooV) and launch the conversion.
The selected video file is now converted to QuickTime Windows mov format:

<file>.MooV
<file>.MooV.qtr => <file>.MooV.mov

You can optionaly renamed it for better clarity:

<file>.MooV.mov => <file>.mov

3.View "old" Apple PC video

After the conversion process, a QuickTime Windows file is available.
But, it is an old QuickTime Windows format and finding a modern tool able to read it is not so simple, but still possible.

Players OK NOK

VLC player 1.1.4 X

Winamp 5.572 X

Media Player Classic 6.4.9.0 X

4.Convert "old" Apple PC video into modern Video format

The difficulty to find a modern player able to play such format means that another conversion step will be safer.

Again, VLC player can do the job:

Media: Convert / Save:
Choose for example H.264 (video) and AAC (sound) in a mp4 contener.

<file>.mov => <file>.mp4

Now, every modern players are able to play these 15-year-old videos!

5.Give it to the World

Ok, so, if the World is narrowed to YouTube, here is the process to follow...
Create an account on this service ( youtube.com ), and just add your video.
Voila! Anybody is able to see it without having to bother about installing anything.

Here is my youtube channel: youtube.com/user/GreatStoneEx

And the DM2 Mac videos inside:

    credits.moov (en)
    ending.moov (en)
    swoosh.moov (en/jp)
    title.moov (en)
    ending.moov (jp)
    story.moov (jp)
    title.moov (jp)

Credits

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History

1.0 (05 December 2010): initial release.