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

[firewood5304]

## how to encode for meteo gba

findings: meteo ONLY works on windows or in a windows vm

findings: meteo accepts `mpeg1video` streams with `mp3` audio.

using ffmpeg:

### video with sound

``` shell
ffmpeg -i "video.mp4" -vf scale=360:-1 -c:v mpeg1video -qscale:v 5 -c:a mp3 -format mpeg "out.mpg"
```

### video without sound

``` shell
ffmpeg -f lavfi -i anullsrc=channel_layout=stereo:sample_rate=44100 -i "video.mp4" -ss 17:00 -t 5:00 -vf scale=360:-1 -c:v mpeg1video -qscale:v 5 -c:a mp3 -shortest -format mpeg "out.mpg"
```

Spoiler: May not be interesting to everyone

If you are really interested in the quality of this technique and want to see some DEMO roms: burnedtree5304 itch.io overwalk

 

[jamespoo]

does changing the bitrate do anything i never get a smaller file size only if i change the fps

 

[LordTwibill]

TIL you can convert videos into GBA ROMs. Science has truly gone far.

Good work OP.

 

[Morawake]

What does SPED do, and why is it set to 1.33?

What does Aspt do? Does it crop the video or stretch it?


FYI Dithering can increase file size and you can run multiple instances of the program at once.

 

[TuckToonsNetwork2]

I'm making a GBA Video rom of Doug: Volume 1. Can somebody help me? It has episodes 2 and 3.

 

[notmrman]

I've been having trouble with compressing a movie onto a 32mb rom.. i got the video down to 27mb before realizing that it lost the msmpeg encoding. After converting it back to msmpeg it went up to 227mb. Is there a way to compress it without losing the msmpeg encoding? I've been trying for 2 days now.

Post automatically merged: Oct 11, 2022

I've been having trouble with compressing a movie onto a 32mb rom.. i got the video down to 27mb before realizing that it lost the msmpeg encoding. After converting it back to msmpeg it went up to 227mb. Is there a way to compress it without losing the msmpeg encoding? I've been trying for 2 days now.

 

[Succeroni]

Whenever I try to flash the video onto the cart I get the error:

Write failed at 0x2000
Aborting...
Expected Data: 0xFF7E
Data adress: 0x7000
Flashing Failed.

Does anyone know how to fix this? Thank you in advanced.

Post automatically merged: Nov 5, 2022

Whenever I try to flash the rom onto the cartridge, I get the error:

Write failed at 0x2000
Aborting...
Expected Data: 0xFF7E
Data adress: 0x7000
Flashing Failed.
Does anyone know how to fix this? Thanks in advanced.

 

[spakel]

Thank you for the tutorial

Merci pour le tuto

 

[StickMan64]

Hi, I recently figured out a way to bypass the 32mb limit specified by Meteo. This means that users can render higher quality videos at the expense of cartridge compatibility. The resolution limit has been disabled too, meaning that you can also specify a lower resolution than the minimum. I wrote up a guide on how to do it below, and provided the patch file and the modified exe in my own forked repo. I have also sent a pull request to the original repo posted in the OP for people who want to check it out.

I'm trying to run a full-length movie on my EZ Flash Omega DE using this modified version, but no matter how compressed I make it, the cart says the file is too big. I've heard that the EZ Flash Omega DE supports the official 512mb movie roms, but it doesn't run these unofficial versions I've made. Is there something I'm missing? I'd rather not chop the movie into parts if I don't have to. The roms run fine in mGBA, so I know it's not an issue with the roms themselves.

 

[Sterophonick]

I'm trying to run a full-length movie on my EZ Flash Omega DE using this modified version, but no matter how compressed I make it, the cart says the file is too big. I've heard that the EZ Flash Omega DE supports the official 512mb movie roms, but it doesn't run these unofficial versions I've made. Is there something I'm missing? I'd rather not chop the movie into parts if I don't have to. The roms run fine in mGBA, so I know it's not an issue with the roms themselves.

Omega DE requires those be written to NOR, and those unofficial ones are not likely to work because the official ROMs used a custom ROM bank controller which is not used by Meteo. You'll need to compress your videos to at or under 32MB

 

[StickMan64]

Omega DE requires those be written to NOR, and those unofficial ones are not likely to work because the official ROMs used a custom ROM bank controller which is not used by Meteo. You'll need to compress your videos to at or under 32MB

I've been trying to compress a movie into under 32mb, but every compression-based ffmpeg command I've found has the opposite effect, making the video take up more space. I tried multiple commands from this thread:



Unfortunately, none of them have worked for me. They all make the movie take up more space. I'm wondering if it's possible to compress a movie so it can be converted with the modified METEO

 

[Sterophonick]

I've been trying to compress a movie into under 32mb, but every compression-based ffmpeg command I've found has the opposite effect, making the video take up more space. I tried multiple commands from this thread:



Unfortunately, none of them have worked for me. They all make the movie take up more space. I'm wondering if it's possible to compress a movie so it can be converted with the modified METEO

You're gonna wanna focus on compressing it using the settings in Meteo.

 

[StickMan64]

You're gonna wanna focus on compressing it using the settings in Meteo.

I've tried using METEO's built in settings, but the smallest I can make the rom is 134mb. Also not mentioning the fact that the audio is removed when I try to compress it further in METEO. Also, my file started out as an mkv and I used ffmpeg to convert it to an avi, and that lowered its file size from around 1.3GB to around 550mb, so that's a start

 

[Sterophonick]

I've tried using METEO's built in settings, but the smallest I can make the rom is 134mb. Also not mentioning the fact that the audio is removed when I try to compress it further in METEO. Also, my file started out as an mkv and I used ffmpeg to convert it to an avi, and that lowered its file size from around 1.3GB to around 550mb, so that's a start

Okay, at thay point, your video is  wayyyy too long. I would split it into parts, I'd recommend 15 minute chunks, gives you six files for a 90 minute movie.

 

[StickMan64]

Okay, at thay point, your video is  wayyyy too long. I would split it into parts, I'd recommend 15 minute chunks, gives you six files for a 90 minute movie.

Okay. In that case, I'm dropping this. When I learned I could make larger files, I thought I could put a whole movie in one rom. Unless the EZFlash Omega DE starts supporting 512mb roms anytime soon, then I'm not gonna work amy further.

 

[CosmicCatofVoids]

Do you still happen to have this patch? I am working on doing this all right now? hope all is well!

I spent the night creating patches for Meteo generated ROM's to make use of the 256mbyte GBA multi-carts. The patch will allow the dpad Left and Right to skip 32mbyte video's (almost like chapters on a DVD player) and it'll also start the next 32mbyte video automatically. You can now fit a full movie in pretty good quality on a single GBA bootleg. Split over two the quality is a great deal better.

The 256MB bootlegs are structured as 8 x 32mbyte 'blocks'.

It appears I cannot post a link due to my account status? If you find the 256M GBA multi cart in my store it'll get you to the patches and info.

Post automatically merged: Feb 4, 2023

Wow, now we got BennVenn making stuff to facilitate this nonsense even further! Great stuff!

Do you have this patch still?

 

[FAST6191]

Do you still happen to have this patch? I am working on doing this all right now? hope all is well!

Post automatically merged: Feb 4, 2023

Do you have this patch still?

Still looks available on
https://bennvenn.myshopify.com/prod...es-sram-save-backorder?variant=39273652158567
Attached here as well.

 

[SylverReZ]

Still looks available on
https://bennvenn.myshopify.com/prod...es-sram-save-backorder?variant=39273652158567
Attached here as well.

This will come a lot in handy

 

[iDarkness]

Hello! Can someone help me? I tried to do everything that this tutorial said but everything that I do just gives me this error:

Input file error (4)
Error: 0x80040217

I tried to use a lot of diferently convertors and I tried to use diferentlys videos too but nothing is working, I even tried to do in diferently computers and still nothing. Can someone help me to solve this please?

 

[KaptainK]

Thanks! I actually put the entire mario movie on GBA. if you don't believe me then...