Unknown POL Image Format

[Gamesoul Master]

Alright, I'm asking you guys because after an extensive search of the internet, I have found nothing on this except a couple (literally, 2) people asking the same thing. Either nobody really cares about this, or there's a really simple way that is somehow eluding me. And since we have such a diverse group of people here, skilled in many different things, I have hopes that maybe somebody here has some information or help for this.

The PlayOnline Viewer has downloadable wallpaper images for use in the PlayOnline Viewer. If you manage to find the folder they're contained in on the hard drive, you see instantly that they are (supposedly) .png format. However, every program I have tried to open them with tells me it has an unknown header or format and can't open it at all. I had wanted to make a couple wallpapers for my roommate who absolutely loves FFXI out of a couple of these, but I find myself unable to do so.

At first, I was going to do it the hard way and simply use the Print Screen command to capture the image manually and make a file out of it that way, but the POL doesn't have any method of actually viewing the whole background without crap on the screen. And besides that, I'd rather just do a straight conversion anyway.

So my question is... Does anybody know a program that can open these files or at least convert them? Or maybe there's somebody fluent in hex-editing picture files that could tell me what's different about these so I can modify them accordingly to be opened in a program. I am including this file, which is a random picture from the folder of downloaded wallpapers. I of course have no idea which picture it is, since I have no means to open it.

Any help or insight on this would be greatly appreciated.

[kiru]

I'm not really big into these things, but here is what I've found out:

Like you noticed it is no Png-File. Well... that's pretty much all.


Ok, I've added an correct header(png) for your file etc. but it's no good at all. There should be an header in this file so chances were slim anyway.

If you look at this file you'll see just garbage, this of course doesn't really help either...

[Deleted]

My guess is that it's a png file, but compressed with some unknown method that only the PlayOnline Viewer understands.

Just a guess though.

[Gamesoul Master]

It sort-of bugs me that Square-Enix would go to so much trouble to make this picture format unreadable when it's just... a picture. Writing a new image format for it was a complete waste of time, because if somebody really wants the picture, they can get it. I really don't want to go through *that* much trouble if possible.

@mika: I was thinking the same way, but of course that leaves me pretty much at the same point, as I'd have no idea what they compressed it with (As stupid as this sounds, I did try opening it in every compression program I have, out of desperation... XD).

[kiru]

Hm, even more compressed? Well it may be, but then again it's size is pretty big(around 100kb) so it must be quite a big picture(if it's a normal png that is) and compressed even bigger...

Ah and you don't need to zip an .png image. You won't get anything out of it by doing that. If you look at the size of the .rar and the .png you'll notice that the .rar is even a little bigger.
This however kinda speeks for something high compressed like .png... (i.e. a zipped .jpg is smaller than an unzipped one)

[Gamesoul Master]

No, what I tried doing was opening the .png file as if it was already an archive (just to see if WinRAR or 7-Zip might notice if it was simply a compressed .png). It was pretty much certain that it wouldn't simply be a compressed .png file, but with no image viewer/editor being able to view the file, I've started trying stupid unlikely things like that, just to rule out all the dumb possibilities... lol.

Edit: Gah, that damn POL is too fast for me. It has a feature where it enters gallery mode after a specified amount of idle time. At that point, the wallpapers will cycle through untarnished. I had hoped I could hit Ctrl+PrintScrn fast enough to capture it before it goes away from keyboard activity (of pressing Shift), but it was too fast. I did manage to get a few picture to show up when I put them in the Screenshots folder to view them that way, but not the ones I wanted unfortunately.

Hmm... I just got myself an idea though. Maybe if I use the StickyKeys feature to keep Shift active, I can capture with just hitting PrintScreen when the pictures come up. It can't be *that* fast... right?

[Deleted]

Do you honestly think that 100kb is big? Surely 100kb isn't all that much for a wallpaper.

Anyways, perhaps there is some encryption in place there.

[Gamesoul Master]

100 KB for a wallpaper that is about 800x600 (as a rough estimate) would be about right for a somewhat highly compressed .jpg of the same size (my .jpg images of that size usually average 200-300 KB). Since .png is supposedly a lossless compression for images, 100 KB is indeed quite a pathetic size for such a thing.

[Deleted]

That's what I thought as well. My current wallpaper from InterfaceLIFT is 850kb, and that's not even close to what some of the stuff I have had were.

Anyways, no luck on this side to figure out anything regarding this mysterious image format.

It's really annoying when companies do this. Same with pc games that have all the movies and musics packed with some proprietary method just so no one can use them outside of the game.

[patrickp]

It's really annoying when companies do this. Same with pc games that have all the movies and musics packed with some proprietary method just so no one can use them outside of the game.

even more annoying when the protection methods aren't properly implemented and cause crashes and other problems even for legitimate users.

[kiru]

Uh well, the size depends on the filter used. You can make heavily compressed pictures if you have the necessary knowledge. Or at least that's what I've read about it. (I think...)

www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngintro.html <--Read the things about "Compression Filters".

[Gamesoul Master]

Yeah, I see from that article that it's possible, but here's the problem. These images from the POL Viewer are quite different... some are very complex, and some have a lot of data that could be efficiently stored to save such space. But most all these files are close to the same size. To be using such an advanced form of compression, the differences would become greater and greater as compression increases (since the complex images will stop shrinking fairly quickly, while the simpler ones will continue compressing).

Basically, these sizes are far too small for those complex images to be compressed to this small of a size with the simple ones being the same.

And yeah... this is *quite* annoying. My friend owns this game, and I'm pretty sure that in this case, since I legally own the game and all content associated with it (or at least have rights to possess all of it), the types of laws in effect allow me the right to do with what I please with these images as long as it's only personal use (at least for something like making a desktop image), though it probably includes not modifying the original content (which in this case could only technically be the image itself, since the files on my computer are not original and are in fact copies of their originals).

I'm also very much tired at the moment and could be missing something here (or just be off-base in general), but the point is... I have the legal right to view these images outside of the POL Viewer, and Square-Enix decided to *not* let us exercise this right by making these files impossible to read by any conventional image viewer.

[patrickp]

Yes, I think that, in many countries, 'fair use' would entitle you to use pictures etc you rip from the game for personal use.

As far as the POL viewer is concerned, I guess it would depend very much on on the contents of its licence. But if that doesn't specifically prohibit viewing the pictures other than with the viewer then, again, for personal use - why not?

[xalos9]

Another example of DRM used to take away legal rights and guard them using laws like the DMCA.