#Restore Bink Videos for your Project (WIP Guide, Testers Welcome)

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viscid prism
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Many of the games Remix works with have highly compressed video files in the form of Bink compression. I have trained a custom AI restoration model that allows you to restore .bik videos for your game, and this guide will walk you through using it.

Bink Setup

First things first, we need to convert those .bik files to a usable format for processing.

  1. Locate your game's .bik files. Make sure the drive has at least 30 GB of space
  2. Download this program and place it in the folder.
  3. Double click the .exe
  • It will automatically re-encode the .bik files to a lossless format (FFV1) and put them in a new subdirectory called ffv1_converted
  1. Now you can move onto setting up Vapourkit!

Vapourkit Setup

Vapourkit works on any modern GPU, but an Nvidia GPU is preferred.

  1. Download Vapourkit (It's free, just enter $0)
  2. Download the DeBink model here
  3. Open Vapourkit, and go through the setup process
  4. Configure based on your GPU:

  • If you have an Nvidia GPU:

    • Click DirectML in the top left if it is blue. Make sure it's gray.

  • If you have an AMD or Intel GPU:

    • Make sure DirectML in the top left of the GUI is blue. If it isn't, click it.
  1. On the right side under Filters, Press Add Filter, then AI Model
  2. Press Import Model
  3. In the top left of the window, click Browse File and select the DeBink model you downloaded
  4. Set the following options:
  • Model Type: TSPAN
  • Shape Mode: Dynamic
  • Precision: FP32
  • If you have an Nvidia GPU, paste this into the text area (overwriting the existing text):
    --minShapes=input:1x15x100x100 --optShapes=input:1x15x720x1280 --maxShapes=input:1x15x1080x1920 --saveEngine=OUTPUT_PATH --builderOptimizationLevel=5 --useCudaGraph --tacticSources=+CUDNN,-CUBLAS,-CUBLAS_LT
  1. Press Import Model

After that's completed, download this template and load it by pressing Open in the top right

  • This will automatically choose all of the right settings for you.
    Then load and process your videos!

After this you will have your restored video!

Add it into the game

Some games (depending on their implementation of Bink) can handle higher bitrate videos. Others cannot. You won't really know if your game can do this until you try.

To re-encode your video in Bink for the game (high quality):

  1. Download RAD Video Tools: https://www.radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm
  2. Install and open it.
  3. Select your restored video file
  4. Press Bink It!
  5. In this window, press Bink on the right
  6. It should provide a good, high quality output
  7. Then, all you should have to do is move this new .bik file to the game folder where the old file was! Make sure the name is the same as the old one too. Run the game and see if it works 💚
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the overall guide is complete, but i need testers to make sure it works as expected

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here is a sample of what it can do

dusky prism
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OMG! I'll try this on the Heretic 2 smacker video (8-bit pallete rgb predecesor to bink). I have exceptional realistic expectations of this.. which are.. to be utterly awestruck by the results.

On a more serious note, conversion to ffv1 worked well 🥳 , now to get back to my RTX gpu at home.. :nervously_twiddling_my_fingers:

viscid prism
dusky prism
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I did get an error for the tensor model and could not use it, but it's getting late for me right now, I'll post logs tommorow

viscid prism
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i'm just really happy that you were able to get through all the steps without issue

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that was my main concern. that it'd be too difficult to follow or that i missed something

dusky prism
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Nah, the descriptions/steps we just right, no issues there. good job!

viscid prism
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i'll mess around with the clips you sent

viscid prism
dusky prism
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Thanks Kim, you are the best ❤️ !
I got that RoQ_nRoll model imported and now I'm tinkering with the Deband params.
Honestly I did not expect these videos could be salvaged at all 😆

  • I got Tensor model working, it turns out I had to adjust the minimum input resolution; so I think you may want to add a note to check and adjust that param in case the source video is less than, I think, 240x240.
  • For the video encoder I changed -crf to 8 (I made a guess this increases quality ?). Yesterday I was a bit confused whether the default params are sufficient, or what I could quickly change to increase bitrate/quality.

Otherwise working with the tool and doing the configuration has been pretty smooth, and I am impressed with the results.

viscid prism
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i will definitely add the note about tensorrt engines. i meant to tell you yesterday but forgot

reef gate
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So
I waited for over an hour.

and the app just crashed.

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I was doing an upscale with the 2x_bndl_animefilm_v1.5_FDAT_fp32 model

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to begin with, the progress was at 90% when I last saw the program window.

viscid prism
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🤔

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i'm working on a new version of vapourkit that resolves the GUI lag and stability issues

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here's the latest build of it if you'd like to try it

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i can't say for sure that that's why it crashed, but it probably contributed

viscid prism
# reef gate 💀

given that FPS, i have a feeling you were running the model in directml mode. tensorrt mode is much faster

viscid prism
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@dusky prism btw if you're still using this tool, the updated version above is much much better

dusky prism
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Thanks I’ll try it

reef gate
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maybe it doesn't work well for the 2070S.

viscid prism
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🤔 that's really weird

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i was getting around 3-5 FPS on a 1650m

viscid prism
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oh, never mind. i missed the model name that you mentioned

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2x FDAT is quite slow