[Asylum 4K] All Cutscenes in 4K!

Overview

Every cutscene, upscaled to 4K with Gigapixel AI. ALL LOCALIZATIONS ARE SUPPORTED. ENGLISH. ESPAÑOL. DEUTSCH. FRANÇAIS. ITALIANO.

Introduction

Hello everyone,

After weeks of messing around with RAD Video Tools[www.radgametools.com], getting frustrated by the Bink format and most importantly figuring out an efficient way to undertake this project, I am finally able to present you my results.

This guide includes every single cutscene from Arkham Asylum, upscaled to 4k.

Every single frame of every cutscene was upscaled individually through the use of an AI.

What seems simple and straightforward on the surface actually involved weeks of planning, figuring out the tools for the job, looking at compression, file types, compatibility with Bink and fixing broken frames.
A single cutscene could take me anywhere from 10 hours to a full day to process. There are 34 in total. Each of them with their own kinks and problems.

I took my inspiration to create this ‘mod’ from Very Thick Boy (my Contributor in this project) who did all of the work extracting and preparing each cutscenes’ audio, allowing us to support every localization natively, just like the original video files did. He actually created a guide on how to use RAD Video Tools to replace cutscenes in the game, and I just applied my idea from there. His guide was the only documentation on how to work with Arkham cutscenes that I could find on the internet.

I would also like to thank everyone in the ‘GraphicsProcessingUnity’ Discord, which is dedicated to modding the Arkham games and Nier: Automata. Everybody there has been very supportive. They shared my excitement for this project from the start and provided ideas of their own.

You can expect all of the original cutscenes, except the legal notes and the start up splash screen, enhanced to look like they were created in native 4K. Every cutscene is still exactly the way it was in its original 720p state, down to the last pixel. Except, that this pixel is now three times bigger.
This comes at a cost, however. Normally I would’ve been able to compress the files to a nice 5GB size with modern compression methods. But this is not possible for this project thanks to the forced Bink file format. So see the Installation tab for more information on that.

We recommend using the Asylum Reborn HD Texture Pack to get the full Batman: Arkham Asylum experience. This mod comes with full 4K textures, tweaks to Depth of Field, FOV, Anisotropic filtering and more, along with some really well done Reshade presets.

I also wrote the BmLauncher replacement for Asylum Reborn. See my Github Repository[neatodev.github.io] for more info.

If you decide to use my upscaled cutscenes and you like them, please consider giving this guide a good rating. This took more time, money and GPU power than you would think.

Download & Installation

As mentioned in the introduction, file size might be a problem for you.
I managed to compress the files to a 14.8GB 7zip file, but it’s just above 15.4GB uncompressed.

Linktree (includes two download options):
[link]
Alternatively, download via the Nexusmods page:
[link]

The Installation is very straightforward.

Just drag the ‘BmGame’ folder into the main folder of your game.

In case you would like to backup the original cutscenes, go into the BmGame/Movies folder and rename or move all .bik files, except nvidia.bik, utlogo.bik, Black.bik and baa_logo_run_v5_h264.bik.

Cutscene Audio *OPTIONAL DOWNLOAD*

These are not required for the mod to work. These are just separate audio files for those who are interested.

Google Drive:
[link]

Comparison Screenshots

Additional pictures are only available in the uncompressed Google Drive Link. Spoiler warning!

As stated in the introduction bit, these frames are exactly the same as their original counterpart, just in 4K and with zero loss in sharpness or visual fidelity.

It is very important to note that I had to compress the original upscaled frames to a JPEG to meet Steams requirements for file size (<2MB). The original files are anywhere from 8-12MB in size. For this reason, and the very obvious compression and loss of the original color profile. I created a zip file that I uploaded to Google Drive, containing all of the original pictures:

[link]

720P

4K

FAQ

No, we didn’t. As stated in the introduction, you get all of the cutscenes exactly as they were.
Every little issue you might notice has always been present, and are not a result of our upscale.
Although, we actually fixed a frame in the Harley Intro cutscene that originally had a grappling hook prompt in it.
So if you notice something weird, feel free to watch the original cutscene and you will certainly find the same oddity there as well.

We are currently planning to work on City next. The game uses a different file format and different encoding from Bink. We are currently figuring all of that out. If we figure it out, we can (and will) easily work on the Origins cutscenes as well, because they rely on the exact same procedure.
We don’t have plans for Knight.

Yes. We are currently in the early stages of doubling the frame rate (30 -> 60) for each cutscene. This will require a lot of time though.

I used RAD Video Tools to convert all existing cutscenes into AVI files, then I extracted each frame with FFMPEG. For the Upscale itself, I used Topaz Gigapixel AI. Then, I put all the frames back together with FFMPEG and created an MP4 with Handbrake. Finally, I used Davinci Resolve to create the best possible Quicktime (MOV) file I could.
Why Quicktime? Because Bink is very picky with which codecs it will accept.