Bink Video!

Compressing with Bink

RAD Video Tools Help Options:

Bink is our latest video codec. It can scale from a tiny Nintendo DS up to the latest and greatest game consoles and PCs. It is used in hundreds of games every year.

Compressing with Bink is so easy - just highlight the file that you want to compress, and then hit the "Bink It!" button. The Bink compressor window will pop up, looking something like this. Click on the screenshot for help, or use the following links to get right to the help topic you need.

Bink Button Audio Options Video Options Compression Options Output File

Bink Compressor

Output file settings:

Enter the filename that you'd like to compress to in this field. You can use the Browse button to choose from a directory with your mouse. Use the "automatic overwrite" switch when you don't want Bink to ask you if you want to overwrite the destination filename. Note that Bink doesn't overwrite the destination filename until compression has been completed, so if you choose to overwrite a file accidentally, you can save it by cancelling the compression before it is finished.

Compression settings:

Overall data rate options:

Keep peak data rate under a:

How many frames to preview during bandwidth allocation (2-64): This option controls how many frames Bink pre-analyzes to see if bandwidth can be borrowed for more difficult frames. For example, imagine an all black screen that suddenly flips to a full screen picture - Bink can steal the bandwidth from the easy-to-compress black frame and give it to the full screen picture frame (while never exceeding the peak data rate). This feature greatly improves Bink's output quality. Note that the higher the number that you choose for this setting, the more memory Bink will use while compressing. A good rule of thumb is to use 12 for CGI videos, and 8 for live video.

Compress video as grayscale: This option tells Bink to process the movie in grayscale, which gives you faster playback and better compression for grayscale movies.

Include input video's alpha plane: You can use this option to tell Bink to include the alpha plane from the original video. The alpha plane is a method of supplying transparency and translucency information. There are three options available: "include alpha plane and leave unchanged", "include alpha plane and convert to pre-multiplied alpha", and "include alpha plane, convert to pre-multiplied, filter, and then convert back to non-premultipled alpha".

You almost always want to use pre-multiplied alpha so that filtering behaves correctly, but Bink doesn't know if you have already converted to premultiplied format. These options let you set the exact alpha mode that your programmer or engine is using.

Key frame control:

Scaling compression: This option lets you use scaling compression to really shrink the size of your files. Most codecs use scaling compression internally, but Bink (and Smacker) allow you to control it explictly. Scaling compression takes a, say, 640x480 video and compresses it at 640x240 - then, at runtime, the Bink player stretches the video window back up to 640x480.

Hint Window: The hint window allows you to set specific data rates for each individual frame in the movie. With Bink's new preview mode, you won't have to use this window much, but if you've got a stubborn video file that just won't compress the way you'd like it to - you can always use the hint window to override with precise settings.

You enter data into the hint window in this order - Start frame, End frame, Data Rate, Peak Rate, Key frame? (0=no, 1=yes), Contrast adjustment, Smoothing adjustment, black clamp adjustment, brightness adjustment, and gamma correction. You separate each number with a space, and you can enter multiple lines by pressing Control-Enter.

Video settings:

Frame rate control:

Frame range: Use this option to control what sections and pieces of the input file are actually processed. The "Start" and "End" fields let you set the beginning and ending frame numbers of the range to convert. Note that even if you use the "Adjust (adds/removes frames) to" feature, these fields use the original, "un-adjusted" frame numbers. The numbers are inclusive, so, for example, a start frame of 5 and an end frame of 6 would make a two frame output file.

Frame size (cropping): The left, top, "Width", and "Height" options tell the RAD Converter to process only a sub-rectangle of each video frame. This is a handy tool for making cropped versions of your videos. If you are both cropping and scaling, the cropping takes place after the resize.

Frame Scaling (resizing): The "Width", and "Height" options specify what size to resize the input video frames to. The "scaling type" button allows you to choose the method of resizing: high-quality (bi-cubic interpolation - usually the best quality, but sometimes a little fuzzy), medium quality (bi-linear interpolation), and low quality (where the pixels are just dropped or duplicated). Usually, you should just stick with high-quality mode.

Contrast increase: This filter allows you to increase the contrast of a video. Increasing the contrast will make the blacks blacker and the whites whiter. This almost always improves compression because it will make "almost black" pixels fully black. The contrast range is 0 (no contrast increase) to 127 (maximum increase). A good default value is 8.

Smoothing percentage increase: This filter allows you to smooth out the video. Smoothing a video blurs the pixels together giving smoother and easier to compress video frames. The smoothing range is 0 (no extra smoothness) to 100 (maximum blur). A good default value is 3 percent.

Black clamp: This filter hard clamps the pixels to fully black when each of the color values are below the specified value. This is another way to force "almost black" pixels to become fully black. It's especially good for video captured titles. For most video, however, the contrast control is the best way to get black pixels looking nice and dark. The clamp range is 0 (no clamp) to 255 (all colors forced to black). A good starting value is 20.

Video de-noising: This filter will clean up video by reducing by running a de-noise filter across the image. It's a good way to increase compression when you have poor quality input files.

Video de-interlacing: This filter will clean up interlaced video that was captured from a TV source. De-interlacing video isn't a perfect process - there is no one right way to de-interlace video, so we provide several different techniques. The first is simple "blend" mode - this causes the even and odd fields of the video to be blended together. You can also select to weight either the even or odd fields more heavily with the "even and odd lines" radio buttons. The other de-interlacing techniques just use the even or odd fields by themselves - to do this, just select even or odd without the checking "blend".

Brightness adjustment: This filter lets you increase or decrease the brightness of the input video frames. The brightness control is a percentage where 100% is the existing brightness, 10% is 10 percent of the existing brightness (or 10 times darker), and 200% is twice as bright.

Gamma correction: This filter lets you increase or decrease the gamma of the input video frames. Gamma is kind of like non-linear brightness - that is, the entire spectrum isn't all brightened by the same amount. The gamma correction range is from 0.0 (completely dark) to 1.0 (the existing level of gamma) to above 1.0 (which brightens the pixels). Gamma correction is usually used to adjust a Mac-authored movie that plays too dark on a PC. A gamma of 1.4 is usually about right for converting the gamma of a Mac input file to the same level of PC brightness.

If you have a movie that looks good on the PC and you want to use it on a TV (like, through a game console), then you need to adjust the gamma (or the movie will be too bright and washed out). Use a factor of 0.88 to covert from PC gamma to TV gamma.

Audio settings:

Compression level: This option controls how much audio compression Bink applies. Bink's powerful audio codec is capable of up to 10 to 1 compression in perceptually lossless mode (which basically means you can save a ton of space in your audio tracks without hearing any compression artifacts). Quality level 4 is perceptually lossless on most files, and many files can even use a setting of 5 or 6. Settings of 9 and higher get pretty noisy.

Convert to rate/format: These settings let you convert the sound format as it is compressed into the Bink file. They are there for your convenience, but for maximum quality, you should always start with original high-quality recordings. The RAD Converter can convert a 22 Khz file up to a 44 Khz file, but it can't make it magically sound any better that the original 22 Khz

Bink Tips: