Hacking Guide - How to convert YouTube videos to Game Boy Advance ROM files
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i tried doing it but it said input file error. the site you sent will not convert bigger files and i need to buy premium
i tried doing it but it said input file error. the site you sent will not convert bigger files and i need to buy premium
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i tried doing it but it said input file error. the site you sent will not convert bigger files and i need to buy premium
waitwaitwait, so you mean to tell me the GBA has been out for over 20 years, the modding community has grown incredibly, and to this day the best way to convert a video to a GBA ROM is using a piece of software older than some of us here that barely works in the modern day?
did I get that right? Because I feel like I shouldn't have
did I get that right? Because I feel like I shouldn't have
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Yes, you got that right.
The software works, it's just... egregiously finicky as a result of its age. It does not work with modern codecs such as h.264 and requires a specific audio and video codec to function correctly. I assume other AVI players of this time were just as finicky about codec support.
There was another codec used in a handful of commercial games, the Caimans GBA Video Codec, but this was strictly limited to commercial games and is not available to the public, and even then, if the tools were public, it would likely still be picky because of its age.
The little GBA is a 16MHz ARM7 processor that can't even divide without a software method from the BIOS and a few hundred kilobytes of RAM, and 32 megabytes of storage for most practical purposes (sometimes even more like 16 for ones you want to use).
Full motion video then is and has always been a proof of concept tech demo rather than anything to take seriously, and will almost certainly be the case going forward.
It uses old school (even then it was being nudged out of the door) VfW (video for windows) means of interacting with the video sub systems rather than have to include its own decodes (mplayer/ffmpeg were doing good stuff by this point but also dubious to include in a piece of commercial software like this) or directshow. However as redo for raw video and audio tends to work and for the maybe 12 minute max clips that is nowadays hard drive space you might even miss on the pie chart I doubt anybody is going to care. Outside that the ffdshow program that was once a staple of video codec packs* (people nowadays going in for self contained stuff like VLC, which finally made itself reasonably speedy/not bloated or at least had general computer resources rise to the occasion) did used to work well. Not to mention most people were probably used to conversion nightmares at the time -- if you wanted your little anime show to watch on the bus you might well have been landed with real video, quicktime or MKV when that was for most purposes a one way effort, with the latter often even sporting soft subs you might have had to hardcode. Never mind if you were down with winny (Japanese p2p file sharing software) and what you would have got there (nice MPEG2 transport stream most likely). Mention of Real and Quicktime has got me feeling all dirty so I am off to have a shower to see if I can scrub the sin away.
*might have been more the ffdshow tryouts but it also lost its vfw options at one point in some builds.
Full motion video then is and has always been a proof of concept tech demo rather than anything to take seriously, and will almost certainly be the case going forward.
It uses old school (even then it was being nudged out of the door) VfW (video for windows) means of interacting with the video sub systems rather than have to include its own decodes (mplayer/ffmpeg were doing good stuff by this point but also dubious to include in a piece of commercial software like this) or directshow. However as redo for raw video and audio tends to work and for the maybe 12 minute max clips that is nowadays hard drive space you might even miss on the pie chart I doubt anybody is going to care. Outside that the ffdshow program that was once a staple of video codec packs* (people nowadays going in for self contained stuff like VLC, which finally made itself reasonably speedy/not bloated or at least had general computer resources rise to the occasion) did used to work well. Not to mention most people were probably used to conversion nightmares at the time -- if you wanted your little anime show to watch on the bus you might well have been landed with real video, quicktime or MKV when that was for most purposes a one way effort, with the latter often even sporting soft subs you might have had to hardcode. Never mind if you were down with winny (Japanese p2p file sharing software) and what you would have got there (nice MPEG2 transport stream most likely). Mention of Real and Quicktime has got me feeling all dirty so I am off to have a shower to see if I can scrub the sin away.
*might have been more the ffdshow tryouts but it also lost its vfw options at one point in some builds.
Just wanted to ask a question in a thread from years ago but do you have a way to fix a diff issue?
Input file error (4)
The source filter for this file could not be loaded
What does this even mean lmao
Post automatically merged:
Just wanted to ask a question in a thread from years ago but do you have a way to fix a diff issue?
Input file error (4)
The source filter for this file could not be loaded
What does this even mean lmao
Post automatically merged:
Just wanted to ask a question in a thread from years ago but do you have a way to fix a diff issue?
Input file error (4)
The source filter for this file could not be loaded
What does this even mean lmao
Speculating as it has been a while.
The meteo program uses a now very old means of interacting with video systems (as in when meteo/the GBA was current the VfW method was available but not one people were advised to use). It does not include any decoders of its own and thus relies on your PC to have them, which basic Windows will not and most people if they play video at all tend to use something like VLC which does include its own decoders.
You have two options/approaches.
1) You kick it like it is the days of old and go on https://www.free-codecs.com/ , http://www.oldversion.com/ , http://www.doom9.org/ , https://www.videohelp.com/ and the like to find VfW versions of whatever your chosen video file uses.
You might get away with a VfW option of ffdshow tryouts, though you will likely have to configure things individually for some aspects. https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow-tryout/
Hopefully you have a fairly similar selection of videos (if ffdshow tryouts do the deed there might be some more leeway) else you will be spending a lot of time with things like https://www.headbands.com/gspot/ to figure out what it is you have first.
2) You take your video file and convert it first into something with a VfW compatible code you have installed. The easiest way for most here is to just make it a raw video and audio in a plain boring AVI format -- if it is a 2 hour film in 4K it is going to be very large but if it is a max 12 minute clip in some kind of SD resolution then no great issue, not to mention it dodges the issue of having to recompress the video (it is called lossy compression for a reason).
For this sort of thing I always liked virtualdub (raw being options for video and audio in the dropdown menus) but something more modern might be appropriate here. I don't know what handbrake and the conversion within VLC support for this sort of thing these days.
The meteo program uses a now very old means of interacting with video systems (as in when meteo/the GBA was current the VfW method was available but not one people were advised to use). It does not include any decoders of its own and thus relies on your PC to have them, which basic Windows will not and most people if they play video at all tend to use something like VLC which does include its own decoders.
You have two options/approaches.
1) You kick it like it is the days of old and go on https://www.free-codecs.com/ , http://www.oldversion.com/ , http://www.doom9.org/ , https://www.videohelp.com/ and the like to find VfW versions of whatever your chosen video file uses.
You might get away with a VfW option of ffdshow tryouts, though you will likely have to configure things individually for some aspects. https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow-tryout/
Hopefully you have a fairly similar selection of videos (if ffdshow tryouts do the deed there might be some more leeway) else you will be spending a lot of time with things like https://www.headbands.com/gspot/ to figure out what it is you have first.
2) You take your video file and convert it first into something with a VfW compatible code you have installed. The easiest way for most here is to just make it a raw video and audio in a plain boring AVI format -- if it is a 2 hour film in 4K it is going to be very large but if it is a max 12 minute clip in some kind of SD resolution then no great issue, not to mention it dodges the issue of having to recompress the video (it is called lossy compression for a reason).
For this sort of thing I always liked virtualdub (raw being options for video and audio in the dropdown menus) but something more modern might be appropriate here. I don't know what handbrake and the conversion within VLC support for this sort of thing these days.
If anyone knows precisely why the AVI conversions specifically made on the site indicated work and not any AVI video converted by other methods, I'd be interested.
Last edited by VirgileVILE,
I would go back to the post above.
Meteo is a very basic program when all is said and done and relies on your system having the installed files to handle what you want.
Without checking then the site probably provides a very basic/standards compliant avi file (there were various extensions, hacks and bodges done to it for various things* that VLC, mplayer, MPC and whatever will cut through without issue or indeed even enjoy perks from but tend to trip up the basic decoders/splitters the vfw aspects of windows might enjoy) using if not uncompressed formats then ones still present in whatever you are likely running (Windows does have some basic things installed, software patents *spits* stopping it from working well out of the box). What modern things will offer here I don't know, and one of the reasons I still noted virtualdub (and probably virtualdubmod) above as it was capable of playing with/to things there where other things might have dropped it as legacy cruft.
*strictly speaking there are 2 gig size limits, no multiple audio tracks, no subtitltes/closed captions, no real variable framerate options (more a trouble when converting from DVD that might have say 30fps for CGI but 24 for film possibly done as a pulldown), often lots of trouble with variable bitrate audio (usually saw things become desynced), limited codec support (H264 is kind of not really supported) and much more for basic AVI. While today most enjoy MKV and other things that play on anything with most of those features then back when AVI still was the standard for most. Anyway enough of the horrors of the early days of video on computers and embedded hardware.
If I was to investigate then https://www.headbands.com/gspot/ is the traditional tool to tell you what formats you avi file contains, virtualdub might tell you a bit more. You then get to replicate that. Most file conversion sites will probably be running a version of mplayer/ffmpeg on the backend somewhere (free, super powerful, super wide support, linux based, command line/similar interactions, fast enough and quite reliable means it is the choice for this sort of thing, and fly by night conversion software).
Meteo is a very basic program when all is said and done and relies on your system having the installed files to handle what you want.
Without checking then the site probably provides a very basic/standards compliant avi file (there were various extensions, hacks and bodges done to it for various things* that VLC, mplayer, MPC and whatever will cut through without issue or indeed even enjoy perks from but tend to trip up the basic decoders/splitters the vfw aspects of windows might enjoy) using if not uncompressed formats then ones still present in whatever you are likely running (Windows does have some basic things installed, software patents *spits* stopping it from working well out of the box). What modern things will offer here I don't know, and one of the reasons I still noted virtualdub (and probably virtualdubmod) above as it was capable of playing with/to things there where other things might have dropped it as legacy cruft.
*strictly speaking there are 2 gig size limits, no multiple audio tracks, no subtitltes/closed captions, no real variable framerate options (more a trouble when converting from DVD that might have say 30fps for CGI but 24 for film possibly done as a pulldown), often lots of trouble with variable bitrate audio (usually saw things become desynced), limited codec support (H264 is kind of not really supported) and much more for basic AVI. While today most enjoy MKV and other things that play on anything with most of those features then back when AVI still was the standard for most. Anyway enough of the horrors of the early days of video on computers and embedded hardware.
If I was to investigate then https://www.headbands.com/gspot/ is the traditional tool to tell you what formats you avi file contains, virtualdub might tell you a bit more. You then get to replicate that. Most file conversion sites will probably be running a version of mplayer/ffmpeg on the backend somewhere (free, super powerful, super wide support, linux based, command line/similar interactions, fast enough and quite reliable means it is the choice for this sort of thing, and fly by night conversion software).
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Hey crew, I've been attempting all these methods mentioned in the thread and still keep getting the "Input file error (4)" — so naturally, assuming something is up with the file type even though I've tried .AVI, .MPEG, etc...I've tried an insane amount of varying tests with different codecs, etc. and keep running into the error.
Any advice for a lil noobie like me? Thank you in advance!
**EDIT / UPDATE
I noticed on another post from GameboyAdvance(dot)net (sorry I can't post links currently) that if the video doesn't have sound, it won't work. My MP4 that I was converting didn't have audio which explains the input file error I kept getting. I added some music and now it works! Just wanted to document this for others in the future.
Any advice for a lil noobie like me? Thank you in advance!
**EDIT / UPDATE
I noticed on another post from GameboyAdvance(dot)net (sorry I can't post links currently) that if the video doesn't have sound, it won't work. My MP4 that I was converting didn't have audio which explains the input file error I kept getting. I added some music and now it works! Just wanted to document this for others in the future.
Last edited by youbringfire,
This may or may not help. Back in the days of METEO, I used computer programs like AllToAVI and SUPER (C) to transcode my videos into short segments that could be converted to GBA format. It was a weird time. I remember there was something called the "K-Lite Codec Pack" that claimed to install everything needed, but it was a crapshoot as to whether it worked or not.
Just a sample of the ones I was able to convert:
Just a sample of the ones I was able to convert:
Last edited by DanTheManMS,
Wow! Today I decided to look into this topic wondering if any attempts at modernizing this area has been made in the last couple of years and you mentioned Super from back in the day! Yeah! That was a very reliable tool I used for all sorts of conversions though when I last looked at the software a few years ago it might have appeared more sketchy. It always had that allure on some level but as a teen it proved to be very useful without having to understand anything too technical. Drag n drop heaven (or was it browse?). Just cool to hear others used it too. I kind of hoped to see something similar to mplayer or a port of it from gc maybe made available or attempted but honestly the hardware is probably too different on so many levels hence why nobody really bothers with this front. I had Zoolander on the gba. Was funny to see.
Don`t worry,guys! I Got This on new year on our life 2023/24,I made on Itch.io website a full Gba video series with all you want to watch with your friends or any nostalgic people who are missing the good old time sake gba Videos when you watch as a kid on long time trip with your family bored with nothing to watch just the road,so i made on Itch.io website a full of gameboy advance videos all with joy and tears!
HazelbemmyGBA itch.io
#GbaNeverDie
And Here is the Bonus
HazelbemmyGBA itch.io
#GbaNeverDie
And Here is the Bonus
Last edited by Hazool,
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realtimesave:
@SylverReZ NIntendo pretty much has to release a new console by next year in order to keep making moneys imo+1 -
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realtimesave:
they need to have a strong line up on the launch titles too. I think they should move metroid prime 4 to the next console because by now it has been quite a while and there's no release date scheduled yet
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realtimesave:
lol there's a guy selling mig switch in usa on ebay for $200/ea he's definitely going to get nailed with dmca by tomorrow
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realtimesave:
well as far as metroid prime 4 is concerned, the next system probably is similar enough to the current gen they can probably easily just slap it onto a next gen cart and call it good
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