Created WIP Manual: Recovering corrupted movies (markdown)

James Groom 2023-10-03 16:32:56 +10:00
parent 8537a7b05b
commit 346ead8bb2
1 changed files with 45 additions and 0 deletions

@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
> **IMPORTANT**: These wiki pages are a **draft of the end-user manual for EmuHawk**.
> The manual will not live here forever; once it's finished, each new release will include a copy in the download.
>
> This page was **written for release 2.9.1** and will not reflect more recent changes.
> The information also may not be accurate to older versions.
> Unless specified, all functions are available on every supported OS.
If you're reading this, the worst has happened:
EmuHawk/TAStudio isn't able to open your movie anymore, and you didn't [have backups enabled](#TODO).
The cause (and solution) is that `.bk2` and `.tasproj` movies are actually `.zip` (Deflate) archives.
You can use standard tools to read and edit them.
- On GNU+Linux:
If `ark`/`file-roller` is unable to open an archive,
you can pass `-F` to `zip` (Info-ZIP) to attempt recovery (pass twice to "try harder"). For example:
```sh
zip -FF corrupt.bk2 --out recovered.bk2
```
- On Windows:
[7-Zip](https://7-zip.org) may recover files upon opening a corrupt archive. You should make a backup first.
Extracting the contents and creating a new archive should result in a movie that can be loaded.
Don't forget to change the file extension afterwards.
If your `.tasproj` is definitely readable but still does not load in TAStudio, then close EmuHawk, open up the archive,
and delete the file called `GreenZone` (not `GreenZoneSettings.txt`, though that should be safe to delete too).
> Note: This does not apply to `.bk2` movies as they do not contain a `GreenZone` file.
>
> The `GreenZone` is the cache of savestates that let TAStudio instantly jump near any frame you seek to.
> For unknown reasons, it often gets corrupted, and this accounts for most cases of unreadable movies.
>
> The rest of a `.tasproj`'s contents are described in [the TAStudio project spec](#TODO).
If the movie still won't load, you may be able to manually recover your inputs from the archive.
The files `Input Log.txt`, `SyncSettings.json`, and `Header.txt` together should be enough to recreate the movie.
- Quick method:
Open `Input Log.txt` and copy the inputs (the part between `[Input]` and `[/Input]`),
then open TAStudio and paste them in.
- Thorough method:
Start a movie recording and immediately save and close it.
Open the new movie in 7-Zip/Ark/etc. and replace its copies of `Input Log.txt`, `SyncSettings.json`, and `Header.txt`
with the ones from the corrupted movie.
Once it's saved, re-open it in EmuHawk.
> The 3 files mentioned here, along with the rest of a `.bk2`'s contents, are described in [the BizHawk Movie v2 spec](#TODO).