What is Bink Video?
Bink Video is a proprietary video file format(extension .bik) developed by RAD Game Tools and used primarily in computer games. It is super, super fast, uses massively less memory than other codecs, and is optimized for each platform specifically. Bink is available for all game platforms and includes a great audio codec with multi-channel and multi-language support.
Bink Video includes its own video and audio codecs, supporting resolutions from 320×240 all the way up to high definition video. It is bundled as part of the RAD Video Tools along with RAD Game Tools' previous video codec, Smacker video. It has been used in many games for Windows, Mac OS, Xbox 360, Xbox, GameCube, Wii, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS, and Sony PSP.
It is a hybrid block-transform and wavelet codec capable of using 16 different encoding techniques allowing it to compress any type of video. The codec places emphasis on lower decoding requirements over other video codecs with specific optimizations for the different computer game consoles it supports. The format was reverse-engineered by the FFmpeg project and Bink decoding is supported by the open-source libavcodec library.
Features of Bink Video
- Bink videos look amazing!
Bink can scale its data rate from 1200 kps for 1280x720p videos down to 75 kps for Nintendo DS videos. Bink will always make the best possible video for your data rate. - Bink's SDK is simple and powerful
Your game is always in control - there are no callbacks or other difficult-to-debug constructs. Using Bink is like using a codec that you wrote yourself. - Bink is completely self-contained
it needs no special system software, it needs no other audio codec, it needs no other surrounding architecture. Just one small library and you are good to go - there are no external installation or dependencies. - Bink is super, super fast
In some cases, up to 10 times faster than other modern codecs. It's fast enough to use for in-game videos, as well as cut-scene videos. - Bink uses as little memory as possible
In some cases, up to 16 MB less than other codecs. You don't have to worry about a simple video codec hogging all your memory. - Bink runs on every platform
You can use the same API and data files on 14 different platforms. - Bink runs on most game engine middleware natively
Epic supplies pre-written Bink support for the Unreal Engine, for example. - Bink has a VBR psycho-acoustic based audio codec capable up to 15:1 compression built-in
You don't need to license another codec for your audio. - Bink can play many audio tracks at once
this allows the playback of 5.1 and 7.1 sound tracks (on supported platforms) as well as optional language tracks where you can turn on and off a language based on the system setting. - Bink runs on every game platform and is customized to take advantage of each one
It uses SPUs on PS3, VMX on Xbox360, SSE 2 on x86, massive assembly optimizations on Nintendo DS, etc. - Bink includes sound support for every platform it supports
We have 16 different modules for sound playback on the various platforms. - Bink is super robust
The fact that it ships in so many games makes it better and better - it just doesn't crash. Bink can also handle bad input data - it just keeps chugging along until the input data gets better again.
Changes from Bink 1.99l to Bink 1.99m
- Fixed a bug on Windows and Xenon where if you started a Bink async thread and immediately closed it, you could deadlock.
- Added markup to support the upcoming Telemetry version that supports SPU.
- Worked around a bug in Xaudio, where it would crash if there were no audio devices on the system.
- Fixed a threading issue in the yuv converter, where the final 8 lines on an all black frame could turn greenish.
Bink Vieo Tools
Free Bink Converter
- PAD Video Tools is a total free Bink Video Converter/Player that can help you convert your BIK video to AVI, WAV, FLC, BMP, GIF, JPEG, TAG, TIFF, PCX, PNG file. With this completely free application, you can also compress your movies with our true-color Bink codec or Smacker codec(.bik or .smk files).
Bink Video Converter gives you the full solution to convert BIK video to all kinds of video & audio formats. You can convert BIK to MP3, AVI, WMV, WMA, WAV, MP4, H.264, MOV, RM, Xvid, DivX, 3GP, MKV, MPEG, WebM, VP8, ASF, MOD, TOD, VOB, AVCHD, MTS, 3GPP, MPEG-4, M4A, AAC, AC3, OGG and more. Then you can play the fantastic videos and music embedded in game on your media players and portable media devices anywhere and anytime.
Mac Bink Video Converter is specially designed for Mac users. For users of Macair, MacPro, Macbook, iMac, Macintosh, you can convert the charming videos and music embedded in game in .bik format to common video & audio formats like AVI, MP3, WMV, WMA, WAV, MP4, H.264, MOV, RM, Xvid, DivX, 3GP, MKV, MPEG, WebM, VP8, ASF, MOD, TOD, VOB, AVCHD, MTS, 3GPP, MPEG-4, M4A, AAC, AC3, OGG and more. Then you can put them on your portable player like iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, PSP, Android Phone, etc.
Bink Player - To play Bink Video, you need a Bink Player or media player that supports .bik video. After 2 days searching and trying, I get Bink Video Player list that can play BIK file very well.
Bink and Smacker - Developed by RAD Game Tools, Bink and Smacker are a pair of video and audio compression codecs used by many game development studios. The freeware utility RAD Game Tools is not only useful for compressing to the Bink format, but also as a general media file converter.