Question about possiblity of merging "Metro Exodus" patch files into main files
 

Hi all,

I've been having a look at the title "Metro Exodus" and was curious if anyone had tried to merge the patch files into the main (content_...vfsX) files to try and reduce the input of the title.

It's occurring to me now that some of the patch files may be titled as patch files but may be main files for the 2 major DLC installments, I'm honestly clueless.

I understand a decryption/unpacking tool by Razor was in development for a time and that other unpacking tools for the title, such as the "MetroEX" tool exists but I'm unsure as to whether someone has attempted to merge these into the main files.

Why merge them? A lot of the files will be removed when srep runs (since similarity with the original files).

Only big files such as videos you can rip from the original archives and keep the new ones from the patch (since the original ones will be never used).

I assumed srep wouldn't be able to do anything with the modified files as I assumed srep can only work with identical duplicates, looks like I'll have to start reading some theory literature! I'll have a look for any video files though!

It Seems i finally can have a student...

This time of the year i am busy with these projects

1) drastically reduce wem quality for good on titles (100% success so far)

2) drastically reduce overall quality of game rippable files, completely delete old unused files which as you said correctly srep cannot dedup. (70% done almost there)

3) Rip movie files and lower quality then import them back on (100% done)

so far i have managed the following without ever compromising visuals or sound :)

Packed
Immortal Fenyx Rising > 13.8GB
Divinity - Original Sin > 7.4 GB
Divinity - Original Sin II > ~ 13 GB it's almost complete
Onimusha - Warlords > 2.0 GB
Mega Man X - Legacy Collection > 1.75 GB
Mega Man Zero - ZX Legacy Collection > 1.9GB
Call of Cthulhu > 7.4 GB
Resident Evil 2 > 13.8 GB
Resident Evil 3 > 13.6 GB
Those 2 can be done together with astonishing ratio 30% or more
Resident Evil HD > 3.8GB
Resident Evil Zero > 5GB

These projects sound fascinating! I remember seeing .wem files when attempting to encode video/audio for "Batman: Arkham City" but unfortunately had little luck with this.

How drastically is the the sample rate and bit depth of each track reduced to see results? I don't know anything about audio compression, sorry if thats a silly question.

Do you have a specific method to determining which files are unused in a title, or is this a case-by-case or engine specific method? I attempted to figure out which files were unused in the title "Silent Storm: Sentinels" as it uses a fair amount of files from the title "Silent Storm", but I was unable to figure out which, if any, could be removed.

Sorry if I sound silly but what exactly do you mean by movie files? I wasn't aware video files could have lossless compression applied to them, with significant compression ratios. It'll be interesting if this project could be applied to the Batman Arkham City, Origins & Knight titles, as the video files in these titles takes up a good portion of the install size.

Your current listed lossless compressions are incredible to say the least! I'm especially amazed by your ratios with the Divinity Original Sin games as well as the Mega Man collections!

Movie Files cant be packed with lossless algos as of now;

With that said you can drastically reduce their size considerably about 50% or more without your eye noticing the difference at all

Here is a paradigm of 2 identical files
lossless is ~125mb and lossy is ~25 mb
Can you tell the difference?
Lossless: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18O_...Qr0ZcEFTu/view
Lossy: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QmL...OyM23xcru/view

So far i have managed to reduce these types of Movie files
*.usm
*.mp4
*.webm
*.wmv
*.bk2
*.bik

what type does batman use i can help easily :D

I'll take your word on it, the Google Drive links don't seem to be working for me (Page not found error). May I ask what program you use to encode the videos? I've personally been using Adobe Media Encoder 2020.

Check gdrive problem solved :D

Adobe Media Encoder doesnt do the tricks i want it to do i am using
ffmpeg RAW exe and i use CMD to make it dance as i want it to do :D

I will post you how to encode video on batman series :D

I tried using ffmpeg but I wasn't able to control the bitrate in the output for some reason and it ended up encoding the input to a ridiculous, borderline unwatchable quality.

Thank you so much for offering to help with the batman series, any help would be greatly appreciated!

edit: Just watched the uploaded videos and holy shit! That really is mind blowing how small the difference is to my eye, I was not expecting such a small drop in quality for such incredible gains!

if you watched to gdrive then your eye can see difference, while input to a game engine however the change to eye perception is very small :D

Batman is cake it uses usm files i will have you a working script today and instructions how to do it :D

I have my personal mumble server for voice chat maybe i will consider it to public so we may interact

Thank you so much man, I'm honestly at a loss for how generous you're being with your time, I hope one day I'll be able to contribute something to this community to repay you everyone else's contributions and the help I've received so far.

Uploading Video and project files that shows how to encode videos

usm videos to be spesific :D
Enjoy

No, the files do not have to be completely identical...

@panker1992 please message me those videos too (that's if you planned to send them privately in the first place). I do not want to miss out on what you've been working on.

I have made a Thread on how to do it with video, videos are public you can check them on the forum :D


ffmpeg.exe -i "input.webm" -c:v libvpx-vp9 -b:v 2000k -c:a copy -c:s copy -y "output.webm"
all files from Total War Remaster from 3.7GB of videos down to 1GB> Total Repack Size = 14.8GB