Hacking Guide - How to convert YouTube videos to Game Boy Advance ROM files

[Sterophonick]

Hello GBAtemp!

Today I have a guide on how to watch YouTube videos on your Game Boy Advance, using some old, old software!

Step 1: Download the video of your choice in mp4 format using the method of your choice.
Step 2: Use the site linked here to convert that mp4 video to a properly formatted AVI video. https://video.online-convert.com/convert-to-avi

Alternatively, if you can use FFMPEG via the terminal, you can execute ffmpeg -i [input].mp4 -c:v msmpeg4v2 -c:a adpcm_ms -ac 2 [output].avi

Step 3: Download the tools that I have linked here. https://github.com/Sterophonick/mirror-meteo-avi2gba

Step 4: Launch the meteo.exe application. You should see a very dated looking interface. Drag the AVI video file into the box that is labelled "Movie File."

Step 5: On the box labelled "GBA ROM File," click browse and select the destination of your GBA ROM.

Step 6: On the box labelled ROM Title, give the ROM an internal name. This is optional.

Step 7: Click the option labelled "Manual Settings" and you will be given access to a bunch of other options. To make this simpler, I have some "Sweet Spots" for compression.

Great quality: This is the best way to view trailers and clips, but only allows one on a 256 MBit cartridge
Bitrate: 60
Framerate: 15 fps
Settings: No trim, manual resize 240x160, 4x dither
Average maximum amount of minutes: 8 minutes

Nice quality: These settings are best to store multiple trailers and clips, yet still having very nice quality
Bitrate: 28
Framerate: 12 fps
Settings: No trim, manual resize 216x144, 4x dither
Average maximum amount of minutes: 15 minutes

Lesser quality: These settings can hold most episodes, and still looking great for such a long movie
Bitrate: 12
Framerate: 7.5 fps
Settings: No trim, manual resize 204x136, 4x dither
Average maximum amount of minutes: 25 minutes

Compression quality: The longest recording time with still acceptable video
Bitrate: 8
Framerate: 6 fps
Settings: No trim, manual resize 192x128, 4x dither
Average maximum amount of minutes: 31 minutes

Step 8: After converting your file and there are no errors, then drag the created ROM file on top of the "gbafix.exe" program that I included with the meteo.exe file. This will allow the ROM to be able to run on hardware.

Other notes:
- You can include longer videos but it would look crappy, and your friends will laugh at you because it looks so pathetic.
- There are no seat controls. The B button will restart the video.
- If you get the error "Input File Error" after the video is done, then the ROM has reached over the 32MB limit and you need to try again with more compressed settings.
- This WILL NOT work on Linux or macOS using Wine. I got it to process the video successfully on Linux but the ROM was just a black screen, nothing worked. This guide ONLY works on Windows.

Credits: DarkFader, gameboy-advance.net, inside-cap

A demo is included here to show that it really works.

 

[CeeDee]

Pointlessly impressive. Nice work!

Reminds me of the GBA Video cards with episodes of old cartoons on them.

 

[Sterophonick]

Pointlessly impressive. Nice work!

Reminds me of the GBA Video cards with episodes of old cartoons on them.

Ha ha.

 

[FAST6191]

Strictly speaking meteo is paid/copyrighted code and various places frowned upon people redistributing it. Still glad it is still known about.

 

[Localhorst86]

Yeah, I used this software back in the day on my Flash2Advance, just for the hell of it. Not really usefull in any sense, but definately cool.

 

[Plstic]

I just used your settings to convert 2 girls 1 cup and it works pretty good.

 

[Sterophonick]

 

[Sterophonick]

I have noticed that sometimes audio will cut out at random points of longer videos. Does anybody else have this issue?

 

[Plstic]

Im having the issue of videos have invalid checksums.

 

[FAST6191]

If you have a flash cart/emulator that cares about such things (don't know that I ever did have it for meteo but it is common enough within GBA homebrew) then
GBATA
http://www.no-intro.org/tools.htm
Does basic header repair

Flash advance toolkit
http://www.gameboy-advance.net/rom_tools/flash_advance_toolkit.htm
Does for when more advanced header fiddling is needed (in my case I tend to only need it for really old homebrew and the neimod music player advance thing but you might find something else).

 

[Sterophonick]

Or use gbafix

 

[pasc]

Too bad meteo had a size limitation per gba..

PlayYan and gbamp still being the beat option if you really must watch videos on the gba.
(That reminds me.. why doesn't the EZO have some sort of audio / video support, or at least gbm./.gbs support?)

Question to self: would it be possible to encode gbm/gbs files via ffmpeg ?

 

[flatgba]

Too bad meteo had a size limitation per gba..

PlayYan and gbamp still being the beat option if you really must watch videos on the gba.
(That reminds me.. why doesn't the EZO have some sort of audio / video support, or at least gbm./.gbs support?)

Question to self: would it be possible to encode gbm/gbs files via ffmpeg ?

Been wondering the same! Meteo converted files also don't seem to open in EZO but was able to play fine using EZIV.

 

[Sterophonick]

Been wondering the same! Meteo converted files also don't seem to open in EZO but was able to play fine using EZIV.

That's odd. It works fine for me...

 

[SickFizz]

Since the original link in this post expired:
METEO: http://www.gameboy-advance.net/video/meteo_avi-2-gba_video_codec.htm
GBAFIX.EXE: http://gbadev.org/tools.php?showinfo=76

 

[DanTheManMS]

If you're going to bother with this, do yourself a favor and track down a copy of "Meteo 1.4.0.exe" and not the older version linked by gameboy-advance.net (holy crap it's 2019 and we're still talking about gb-a.net, dang...). This later version offers higher compatibility with input video formats, better compression, automatic brightness increase options to accommodate the fact that the original GBA screen was dim as heck, and overall it's better. Still technically copyrighted material however so I can't link it directly here. In this case archive.org might help.

What I *can* offer is some examples of GBA videos I made with Meteo years ago. Prepare for a nostalgic trip down memory road.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ew1l09voz1wc95d/bigjumper2.gba?dl=0 - solid parkour
https://www.dropbox.com/s/az9tckekfrigmmr/copyfloppy.gba?dl=0 - DON'T COPY THAT FLOPPY!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q8pk4syz7v7d70q/I'm on a boat SP.gba?dl=0 - I've also got the Narnia song spoof here somewhere...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tv601v2dh072g4b/tony hawk.gba?dl=0 - this one was one of the very first videos I ever downloaded from WinMX, anyone remember that file-sharing program? After Napster, after Kazaa, before Limewire.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7k830vkd52dtahp/Zelda 05 - E3 04 trailer.gba?dl=0 - people went absolutely crazy when this happened.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5bh4k1ea677gze1/sony_e3_1min.gba?dl=0 - It's Ridge Racer! Riiiiiidge Racer!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jkb9f0sta6tv2ah/xmas.gba?dl=0 - GBA version of this:



EDIT: How can you differentiate a video encoded with the older version and not 1.4.0? With the older version, pressing any button resets the video. In the newer version, every button resets the video except for A, which speeds up the video (unfortunately not entirely in-sync with the audio when you do this).

Every output rom needed to have its header fixed with either GBAfix or GBATA before it could be flashed to my F2A Ultra cart without a garbage title.

Moonshell for the DS alleviated most all problems involved with putting video on the GBA. A specially-modified version of the MPEG2 video standard combined with a much more powerful processor than the GBA resulted in passable video on a portable device. Then the iPhone came along and so did other smartphones and suddenly putting videos on the DS didn't seem so noteworthy anymore. Oh well, I'm rambling. I still have a copy of a video that only works well with Tuna-viDS, never got it converted properly for Moonshell or any other video solution for that matter, a marching band video so the audio/video sync *must* be perfect.

 

[Sterophonick]

If you're going to bother with this, do yourself a favor and track down a copy of "Meteo 1.4.0.exe" and not the older version linked by gameboy-advance.net (holy crap it's 2019 and we're still talking about gb-a.net, dang...). This later version offers higher compatibility with input video formats, better compression, automatic brightness increase options to accommodate the fact that the original GBA screen was dim as heck, and overall it's better. Still technically copyrighted material however so I can't link it directly here. In this case archive.org might help.

What I *can* offer is some examples of GBA videos I made with Meteo years ago. Prepare for a nostalgic trip down memory road.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ew1l09voz1wc95d/bigjumper2.gba?dl=0 - solid parkour
https://www.dropbox.com/s/az9tckekfrigmmr/copyfloppy.gba?dl=0 - DON'T COPY THAT FLOPPY!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q8pk4syz7v7d70q/I'm on a boat SP.gba?dl=0 - I've also got the Narnia song spoof here somewhere...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tv601v2dh072g4b/tony hawk.gba?dl=0 - this one was one of the very first videos I ever downloaded from WinMX, anyone remember that file-sharing program? After Napster, after Kazaa, before Limewire.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7k830vkd52dtahp/Zelda 05 - E3 04 trailer.gba?dl=0 - people went absolutely crazy when this happened.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5bh4k1ea677gze1/sony_e3_1min.gba?dl=0 - It's Ridge Racer! Riiiiiidge Racer!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jkb9f0sta6tv2ah/xmas.gba?dl=0 - GBA version of this:



EDIT: How can you differentiate a video encoded with the older version and not 1.4.0? With the older version, pressing any button resets the video. In the newer version, every button resets the video except for A, which speeds up the video (unfortunately not entirely in-sync with the audio when you do this).

Every output rom needed to have its header fixed with either GBAfix or GBATA before it could be flashed to my F2A Ultra cart without a garbage title.

Moonshell for the DS alleviated most all problems involved with putting video on the GBA. A specially-modified version of the MPEG2 video standard combined with a much more powerful processor than the GBA resulted in passable video on a portable device. Then the iPhone came along and so did other smartphones and suddenly putting videos on the DS didn't seem so noteworthy anymore. Oh well, I'm rambling. I still have a copy of a video that only works well with Tuna-viDS, never got it converted properly for Moonshell or any other video solution for that matter, a marching band video so the audio/video sync *must* be perfect.

Okay, so I found Meteo 1.4.0, but it's all in chinese. Do you know what the very last option is (it's right above the copyright info)?

 

[Sterophonick]

Ok, so I translated Meteo 1.4 and put it on the gitlab page on the original post.

 

[7seven7]

I get this error when I try to do this:
Input File Error
No combination of intermediate filters could be found to make the connection.
I wanna try to get this thing up and running, but I've been getting no luck so far.

 

[Sterophonick]

Did you use the site I told you to (to convert the mp4 to avi)?

That is the only one that I know for sure works properly. Make sure you set the video codec to msmpeg.