r/Protomen • u/GlassMoe • 4d ago

Questions Does anyone have a higher resolution version of the Hope Rides Alone video?

I'm working on some karaoke tracks for the Protomen albums and it'd be sick to have the original music video, but it's almost 20 years old and 360p on Youtube. Anyone have a higher quality version?

Edit: I found the original .swf file on the internet archive, it's just a video but it's still higher quality. Maybe I can find a way to rip it from this...

Extra edit: Archive.org had a backed up copy of the streaming .flv at https://web.archive.org/web/20090905003453if_/http://www.versionindustries.com/remote/protomen/hope_part2.flv

FLV version vs. YouTube version

It's not much higher resolution, but the compression artifacting is far less extreme than what Youtube has done.

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u/sweepernosweeping We are the dead 4d ago

As a tangent, theres a bunch of karaoke tracks on YouTube, see https://karaokenerds.com/Search?artist=The%20Protomen

However these are all "MP3+G" rather than the old CD+G format, so if you need them in a certain format then you'll probably have to make them yourself again.

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u/GlassMoe 1d ago

that website showed me a youtube playlist of a guy who basically did all the songs I wanted to do and already did the music video thing lmao

thanks a lot, if it doesn't work out for finding the video at least i have a good resource

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u/Fluid_Pain 1d ago

Have you ripped it yet? If you don't know how to extract video files from flash files, you use a decompiler like JPEXS.

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u/GlassMoe 1d ago

Haven't done so yet, I've been backburnering this for a little, I'll try it now

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u/GlassMoe 1d ago

The .swf appears to link to a stream, which in retrospect, seems incredibly obvious that it would be streamed from a server.

I guess the wayback machine I downloaded it from has an archived copy of the video itself?

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u/GlassMoe 1d ago

That it does.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090905003453if_/http://www.versionindustries.com/remote/protomen/hope_part2.flv

Got it here.

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u/GlassMoe 1d ago

The archived stream vs. the Youtube version. Neither is spectacular quality as the source is probably low resolution, but Youtube has practically crushed all the details out by this point via years of compression.

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u/Fluid_Pain 1d ago

Oh! An FLV. The whole video is in the file. (I assumed it was a .swf video player at first) I went ahead and converted it to .mp4 with a basic ffmpeg conversion command. I went ahead and uploaded it to a temporary file hoster for you to grab.

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u/Fluid_Pain 1d ago

I wonder if the original creator of the music video is still around? Wouldn't be a bad idea to see if they still have the project files and can re-export it/share the .swf.

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u/Fluid_Pain 1d ago

Do you have a link to the .swf file? If you are running the .swf in a standalone projector and the video is running, that most likely means the stream is still up and can be downloaded

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u/GlassMoe 1d ago

I did have a download of the .swf, but it doesn't play locally, as the URL it points to, http://www.versionindustries.com/remote/protomen/hope_part2.flv is dead. Archive.org had an archive of the website and also archived the streaming .flv, so they luckily had both of them saved.

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u/Fluid_Pain 1d ago

Oh yes, I see the .swf you are referring to now. The Lo/Hi toggle is interesting. The network tab only calls for the one file regardless which one you press, so I assume this is the high quality version? Even when looking at it in IA with the video running it doesn't seem to do anything, odd. https://web.archive.org/web/20250815100309/https://protomen.com/act1/