VideoNow Python codec

This is a quick and dirty, awful Python 3 set of scripts that are designed to encode, mux, decode and demux videos for Hasbro's VideoNow Color player.

Modules

• FFmpeg

• pillow

Usage

Setup

# Install the Pillow image library.
python3 -m pip install pillow

# Create folder to store video frames.
mkdir frames

Encoding

# Extract frames, cropped to the appropiate resolution and frames per second.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter:v scale=w=216:h=160:force_original_aspect_ratio=increase,crop=216:160,fps=18 frames/%05d.bmp

# Convert into the proprietary bitstream. This is painfully slow.
python encodeframes.py frames input_video.raw

# Extract audio in the appropiate format.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -f u8 -ac 2 -ar 17640 -acodec pcm_u8 input_audio.raw

# Mux the video and audio.
python3 mux.py --video input_video.raw --audio input_audio.raw --output input_muxed.wav

# Demux the video and audio.
python3 demux.py input_muxed.wav

You'd be left with a WAVE audio file, containing the video and audio.

Decoding

# Extract video frames from raw video file.
python3 dumpframes.py input_video.raw frames

You'd left with the video frames in bitmap format, which can then be re-encoded into a readable video file.

Bitstream documentation

An up-to-date version can be found in my website.