BIK

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Bink-video-logo.png
Valve "Open Your Mind" intro (2007 - 2011), which was created using Bink.
vgui_movie_display on elevator screens in Portal 2 Portal 2, which uses Bink video.

BIK files are the video files created using Bink Video codec, a part of RAD Video Tools (developed by Epic Games Tools, formerly RAD Game Tools).

The startup videos that play on all Valve and third-party games (since the Source 2007 Source 2007 update) are .bik videos. They are also used in the menu backgrounds in Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Alien Swarm, Portal 2 and the elevator screens in Portal 2. Prior to Bink being added to Source, previous games or older versions of those games used AVI files instead. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, which runs on beta version of Source 2004, was the first Source game to utilize Bink video for its startup video.

The original version of Bink (retroactively Bink version 1.0) by today standards, are less efficient when it's come to compression (having large file sizes while resulting in lower quality, lower framerate), and is much more complicated when it comes to converting files, such as AVI or MP4 to BIK, only to ended up causing audio/video de-sync or other issues. On some systems, the MP4 to BIK process may fail with "Unable to open file". Bink 2 was later created as a successor to Bink 1.0, which has massive improvements over Bink 1. Furthermore, there are alternatives to Bink video, such as WebM, which is open-source, and does not require licensing.

Note.pngNote:Newer versions of RAD Video Tools (since late 2010s), no longer requires QuickTime to be installed in order to convert MP4 to BIK.

This is a list of some Source games or ports upgraded to Bink 2, or have switched to, or use other file format instead:

See also

Todo: Expand on this more

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