Extract FLIC video from Bink Video Player program

October 6, 2023 1:36 PM

I have an exe named "Bink Video Player" with a "Bink Video" icon, which plays a single looping video and does nothing else. Right-clicking the exe and choosing "Properties" shows that its "Description" is "RAD Video Tools." I have reason to believe it was created from a .fli or .flc file. Can I extract that original file somehow?
posted by one for the books to Technology (4 answers total)

I don't know anything about decompiling something like that to pull the video resource directly but as a fallback option, if you are using Windows 10+ you can probably make a screen recording using the Game Center tools, and on most systems you should be able to rig OBS (a free video production utility you can download) to capture the video and audio from a specific window and save it as a new video file. (In my experience anyway, the creators of the .exe would have had to do some fancy footwork to avoid the video capture functions of both of those utilities and it's very likely they didn't bother.)
posted by range at 1:40 PM on October 6, 2023

It sounds like it's a compiled Bink file -- so the video format is the proprietary Bink video format, not a FLIC. Due to being compiled into a standalone player, I could not find any way to decompile or 'extract' the video from it in any useful way.
posted by AzraelBrown at 2:26 PM on October 6, 2023

Best answer: the Bink FAQ suggests that this is something the official Bink tools can do:

- How can I extract the original Bink from an EXE compiled Bink or Smacker file without recompressing it?

Highlight the EXE file, and hit "Mix in Sound". For the sound input name, enter '-' (a single minus sign), and then enter -1 for the track number (a track number that can't exist in the Bink file). Then hit Mix - the mixer will then copy the Bink file out of the EXE file.

posted by BungaDunga at 2:49 PM on October 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

The standalone player executables just have the .bik file appended to the executable so you can extract them by finding the "BIK" signature and cutting from there to the end of the file.

In python it would be:

dat=open('player.exe','rb').read()
open('out.bik', 'wb').write(dat[dat.find(b'BIK'):])

VLC will play .bik files once they are extracted.
posted by samj at 2:08 AM on October 7, 2023 [3 favorites]