GBA Video Studio is a desktop application for converting and playing video on the Game Boy Advance. It converts any video file into a .gba ROM that plays directly on hardware or emulator, with a full visual editor for trimming, previewing, and configuring every encoding parameter.
⚠️ Designed for GBA developers and ROM hackers who need precise control over video encoding for the GBA hardware.
This README is available in the following languages:
English | Español | Português (BR) | Français | Deutsch | Italiano | Português | Nederlands | Polski
Türkçe | Tiếng Việt | Bahasa Indonesia | हिन्दी | Русский | 日本語 | 简体中文 | 繁體中文 | 한국어
Video to GBA conversion
- Converts any video file into a playable GBA ROM.
- YUV444 color space with VQ codebook compression per GOP.
- Optional Floyd-Steinberg dithering for reduced banding.
- Letterbox, stretch, or custom crop before encoding.
Visual editor
- Load and preview any video file with full playback controls.
- Set start/end markers to encode only a selected range.
- Real-time GBA output preview (240×160) with letterbox and crop applied.
Encoding profiles (presets)
- Six built-in presets: Default, Balanced, High Quality, Low FPS, Fast Encode, No Audio.
- Save, reload, and manage custom user presets.
- Full parameter control: FPS, codebook size, K-means iterations, I-frame interval, motion compensation, and more.
Audio support
- PCM: 8-bit signed mono, any sample rate 6500–44100 Hz. Full seeking support.
- ADPCM: IMA ADPCM 4-bit (~50% smaller), snapped to GBA nice rates. Seeking disabled.
- Volume adjustment and no-audio mode.
Decompilation project integration
- Outputs ready-to-use
video.c,video.h, and binary assets for pret projects (pokefirered, pokeemerald, etc.). - Configurable skip key (
VIDEO_SKIP_KEY). - See
INTEGRATION.mdfor integration steps.
- Outputs ready-to-use
Multi-language UI
- 18 languages supported. Language can be changed at runtime without restarting.
Post-export actions
- Optionally shut down, sleep, hibernate, lock, log off, or quit after encoding completes.
The conversion pipeline is optimized for high-performance video encoding, leveraging parallel processing and memory mapping (memmap) to handle heavy video files without RAM accumulation.
flowchart TD
A([input.mp4]) --> B[1. FFmpeg Pre-Transcode]
B --> C[2. Frame Extraction]
C --> D[3. GOP Processing Parallel]
D --> E[4. Frame Encoding Parallel]
E --> F[5. Audio Extraction & Adapt]
F --> G[6. devkitPro Build]
G --> H([GBA_Video.gba])
style A fill:#2d3748,stroke:#4a5568,stroke-width:2px,color:#fff
style H fill:#2b6cb0,stroke:#3182ce,stroke-width:2px,color:#fff
classDef steps fill:#1a202c,stroke:#2d3748,stroke-width:1px,color:#e2e8f0;
class B,C,D,E,F,G steps;
- Geometry: Optional cropping
$\rightarrow$ hard resize to 240×160 (supports letterboxing or stretching). - Timing: Frame rate conversion to exact GBA-native FPS targets.
- Trimming: Precise timeline seeking via optional start-time parameters.
- Color Space: Extracted directly into YUV444 color space.
- Dithering: Optional Floyd-Steinberg spatial error diffusion for optimal 15-bit color representation.
- Memory Footprint: Frames are streamed directly into a disk-backed
memmapmatrix, ensuring 0% RAM accumulation even on hour-long videos.
- Segmentation: Video is sliced into independent GOPs consisting of one I-frame followed by multiple P-frames.
- Quantization: Trains a localized Vector Quantization (VQ) codebook per GOP using the K-means clustering algorithm.
- Optimization: Codebooks are automatically sorted by structural usage frequency to minimize indexing overhead.
- I-Frames: Encoded using full-frame spatial data combined with the local VQ codebook.
- P-Frames: Temporal compression that only stores delta blocks (changed areas) and motion vectors relative to the previous frame.
- PCM Mode: Crisp, uncompressed mono signed 8-bit audio at your chosen sample rate.
- ADPCM Mode: Compressed 4-bit IMA ADPCM, mathematically snapped to the nearest GBA-friendly playback rate to avoid resampling stutter.
- The asset compiler bundles the encoded video, audio binary, and playback engine components.
- Automatically invokes devkitPro / make to link everything into a bare-metal, hardware-compliant
GBA_Video.gbaROM.
| Parameter | Default | Range | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Target FPS | 9.9546 | 5.97 – 14.93 | Higher = smoother, larger file |
| I-frame Interval | 60 | 1–999 | Shorter = better seek, larger file |
| Diff Threshold | 2.5 | 0.0–50.0 | Lower = sharper, larger file |
| Variance Threshold | 10.0 | 0.0–100.0 | Separates flat vs. texture blocks |
| Color Fallback | 10.0 | 0.0–100.0 | Flat-block fallback distance |
| Force I Threshold | 0.7 | 0.0–1.0 | Scene-change I-frame sensitivity |
| Codebook Size | 256 | 2–256 | Larger = better quality |
| K-means Iterations | 200 | 1–2000 | More = better quality, slower |
| I-frame Weight | 3 | 1–10 | I-frame block weight in clustering |
| Motion Threshold | 6 | 0–16 | Max 2×2 sub-blocks updated per 8×8 MC block |
| Dithering | on | on/off | Floyd-Steinberg, negligible size difference |
| Motion Compensation | on | on/off | Disable for faster encode, larger P-frames |
| Parameter | Default | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Format | PCM | PCM / ADPCM |
| Sample Rate | 18157 Hz | 6500–44100 Hz |
| Volume | 100% | 0–200% |
| FPS | Use case |
|---|---|
| 5.9727 | Minimum size |
| 6.6364 | Very compact |
| 7.4659 | Compact |
| 8.5325 | Moderate |
| 9.9546 | Default — best balance |
| 11.9455 | Smooth motion |
| 14.9319 | Maximum (high motion content) |
| FPS | Video/min | PCM 18157 Hz | ADPCM 18157 Hz | No audio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14.9319 | ~6.0 MB | ~6.9 MB | ~6.5 MB | ~6.0 MB |
| 9.9546 | ~4.2 MB | ~5.0 MB | ~4.6 MB | ~4.2 MB |
| 5.9727 | ~2.5 MB | ~3.3 MB | ~3.0 MB | ~2.5 MB |
32 MB cartridge capacity (approx.):
| FPS | PCM 18157 Hz | ADPCM 18157 Hz | No audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14.9319 | ~4:45 | ~5:00 | ~5:30 |
| 9.9546 | ~6:30 | ~7:00 | ~7:45 |
| 5.9727 | ~9:45 | ~10:45 | ~12:45 |
| Button | PCM | ADPCM |
|---|---|---|
| START / A — Pause / Resume | ✓ | ✓ |
| B — Mute / Unmute | ✓ | ✓ |
| RIGHT — Fast forward 3s | ✓ | ✗ |
| LEFT — Rewind 3s | ✓ | ✗ |
| SELECT — Lock / unlock controls | ✓ | ✓ |
Seek (LEFT/RIGHT) is not available in ADPCM because the IMA ADPCM predictor is cumulative — jumping to an arbitrary byte offset without warm-up would produce corrupted audio.
Built with Python and PySide6 / PySide2 (auto-detected by Python version):
VideoEditor— main window, manages video loading, preview, and export.VideoController— OpenCV-based playback with frame-accurate seeking.PresetManager— built-in and user-defined encoding presets.VideoEncoderCore— GOP-parallel VQ encoder (K-means + motion compensation).AudioEncoder— PCM / IMA ADPCM extractor via bundled ffmpeg (imageio-ffmpeg).Translator/ConfigManager— runtime language switching and persistent config.
Download from GitHub Releases:
| Installer | Python | OS |
|---|---|---|
GBAVideoStudio_Setup.exe | Bundled | Windows 10 / 11 |
GBAVideoStudio_Legacy_Setup.exe | Bundled | Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 |
Download GBAVideoStudio_Portable.7z from GitHub Releases, extract anywhere and run GBAVideoStudio.exe. No installation required.
| Archive | Python | OS |
|---|---|---|
GBAVideoStudio_Portable.7z | Bundled (PySide2) | Windows 7+ |
The portable build registers its location in the Windows registry on first launch so the built-in updater can locate it regardless of where it is extracted.
| Environment | Python | Qt Backend |
|---|---|---|
| Modern | 3.10+ | PySide6 (auto) |
| Legacy | 3.8 / 3.9 | PySide2 5.15.2 (auto) |
- devkitPro — install
gba-devgroup from devkitpro.org (required only for ROM compilation — video conversion works without it)
ffmpeg is bundled automatically via
imageio-ffmpeg— no separate installation required.
git clone https://github.com/CompuMaxx/GBA-Video-Studio.git
cd GBA-Video-Studio
python -m venv .venv
# Windows:
.venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
python main.py- Open a video — File → Open Video or
Ctrl+O. - Set range (optional) — navigate to start frame, press
Ctrl+PageUp; navigate to end frame, pressCtrl+PageDown. - Configure output filters — enable/disable Letterbox, set Crop (
x,y,w,h), click Apply Filters to preview. - Choose a preset — pick from the Preset dropdown (Default, Balanced, High Quality, Low FPS, Fast Encode, No Audio) or tune individual parameters.
- Select output folder — click Browse.
- Build ROM — click Build ROM. Progress and elapsed time are shown in the status bar.
- Done — a popup shows memory usage (ROM / EWRAM / IWRAM). The
.gbafile is in your output folder.
After encoding, the output/ folder contains everything needed to embed the video in a pret decomp project:
output/
graphics/video/ → copy to <project>/graphics/video/ (regenerated each encode)
include/video.h → copy to <project>/include/video.h (regenerated each encode)
src/video.c → copy to <project>/src/video.c (copy once)
INTEGRATION.md
See INTEGRATION.md for the full integration guide, Task API reference, and skip key configuration.
- Settings are stored in
config.iniand persist across sessions (language, output folder, preview mode, max workers, default preset, etc.). - Language can be changed at runtime via Settings → Language — all UI strings update immediately including video info, preset names, and memory table headers.
- Fork this repository.
- Create a feature branch:
git checkout -b feature/my-feature - Commit your changes:
git commit -am "Add my feature" - Push:
git push origin feature/my-feature - Open a Pull Request.
- Ausar's GBA Video Player by ArcheyChen — Architectural inspiration for the video playback. The engine used here features custom bug fixes and critical IWRAM/EWRAM optimizations.
- 8ad ADPCM codec by Damian Yerrick ("PinoBatch") — Conceptual basis for the IMA ADPCM audio support, optimized for better memory performance.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0). Derivative projects must be open source. See LICENSE for details.
If you find this tool useful, consider supporting its development:
