Silent Hill 2 [PC] FMV Widescreen Enhancement Pack v1.0.7z

*** Silent Hill 2 [PC] FMV Widescreen Enhancement Pack v1.0 ***
by NeoGAF's angular graphics

This pack does not contain the game, only video files replacement for a better experience on HD Widescreen screen.
Drop the data folder to your C:Program Files (x86)KonamiSilent Hill 2 (or equivalent) directory and overwrite. :)

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Users have figured out how to have Silent Hill 2 run at a 16:9 widescreen ratio by patching the game's executable with a new resolution and FoV, but unfortunately this makes the prerendered FMVs look stretched.

In my quest to re-encode them to an aspect ratio that will look right on widescreen monitors, I've discovered the PC version's FMVs suffer significantly in quality compared to the other versions:

- PS2: PSS (MPEG2), 512x384 (wrong aspect ratio, it gets corrected during playback), 29.9x fps, interlaced

- Xbox: SFD (MPEG1), 640x384, 29.9x fps, progressive. As far as I can tell these are the PS2 version's FMVs, deinterlaced and resized to the correct aspect ratio and thus they include additional compression artifacts. Furthermore the deinterlacing is not exactly the best it could be since there are ghosting artifacts.

- PC: BINK, 640x384, 29.9x fps, progressive. These are the Xbox version's FMVs, re-encoded. Ewww. Even more compression artifacts!

- Xbox 360 HD Collection: BINK, 1280x720 (wrong aspect ratio, the game displays them incorrectly stretched), 29.9x fps, progressive. These have more ghosting artifacts than the Xbox/PC version, so they likely are PS2 encodes, resized. In any case they are of worse quality compared to the PS2 assets carefully upscaled.

Likewise, regarding the audio quality, the FMVs that sound best are the PS2 ones. Basically every other version seems to be a re-encode (or re-re-encode) of PS2's assets.

Since I've gone to all this trouble to compare all versions, of course I decided to change my main source from the PC's terrible FMVs to the PS2 ones.

Using a bunch of avisynth plugins I've deinterlaced them and upscaled them to a resolution of 1280x to the best possible quality. Most of them have been touched up with mild de-haloing, noise reduction, antialiasing and sharpening filters before the upscaling process, mostly so that any unwanted artifacts don't get enhanced as well. In no way have I tampered with their colors, contrast and their overall look. In fact for a couple of clips that I thought the filters would do more harm than good, I disabled them. This has made them a bit softer, but it has improved their quality in other ways. Also this made them easier compressible by BINK, which was the process' final step.

In detail, there are four types of FMVs and all of them have been remastered, albeit in various ways: 1) Opening FMV, 2) Story FMVs, 3) Credit FMVs, 4) Trailer FMVs

1) For the Opening FMV, I decided to use "The Art of Silent Hill" DVD as the source for the video and one of the audio tracks, because it seems to be the best quality source available. For the other audio track, I used the one from the PS2. Some very minor denoising has been applied to the video (it is supposed to have a film grain effect).

2) For the Story FMVs, I used the PS2 version as the video and audio source, except for one FMV ("water"), where due to issues I had to use the second best quality source, the Xbox version. The FMVs of this category had the aforementioned filter enhancements applied to, some, of them.

3) For the Credit FMVs, I used the PS2 version for the video, but I didn't upscale them to 1280x in order to keep their size down. For about half of them, I've used the Silent Hill 2 Soundtrack CD as the audio source, so they sound as good as they possibly could. For those FMVs that I couldn't easily use the Soundtrack CD, I used the PS2 audio, which isn't bad at all.

4) For the two Silent Hill 3 and one Silent Hill 2 Trailer FMVs accessible through the menu, I used the "Lost Memories - The Art & Music of Silent Hill" and "The Art of Silent Hill" DVDs as a source. I didn't upscale those either. My encodes look significantly better than the ones shipped with the PC version, as those were full of interlacing artifacts.

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Overall, I feel that the FMVs now look and sound as best as they could.. arguably better than they ever did.

Dedicated to: Team Silent