TGQ File

What are TGQ files and how to open them

Are you having problems opening a TGQ file or are you simply curious about its contents? We're here to explain the properties of these files and provide you with software that can open or handle your TGQ files.

What is a TGQ file?

A .TGQ file is an Electronic Arts TGQ Video file.

Electronic Arts TGQ Video files are used in older video games made by Electronic Arts (EA), especially in the mid-1990s, to store full-motion video cutscenes and intro or logo animations. These files pair compressed video frames with associated audio and are written into EA's game data archives or resource folders. The format is not for editing; its main purpose is playback during gameplay or when running the game on compatible platforms. This file is the packaged result of that work: video+audio in EA's TGQ codec.

Games on PC and the Sega Saturn create these .TGQ files when building the game, using EA's proprietary encoding tools. During gameplay the game engine or media subsystem reads them, decoding both video frames and audio streams, to show cinematic scenes. The video component is compressed using EA's TGQ video codec; the audio portion generally uses EA's custom audio formats such as 1SNx or EACS depending on the title.

TGQ video files hold frames at a fixed rate of 15 frames per second. Video frames are divided into 16×16-pixel macroblocks, each macroblock made up of four 8×8 luma blocks and two 8×8 chroma blocks under a 4:2:0 chroma subsampling scheme. Each frame begins with an 8-byte header holding width, height, and a quantizer value, followed by per-macroblock data of varying lengths that encode motion vectors or transform coefficients. Transform coefficients use DC and/or AC coding with run-length or Huffman/VLC-based compression, with a custom dequantization table computed per frame. An inverse discrete cosine transform is applied to reconstruct image blocks.

Files usually start with the ASCII bytes "1SNh" at the very beginning, and "EACS" at offset 8 ("EACS" commonly appears in audio blocks).

How to open TGQ files

We have identified one TGQ opener that is compatible with this specific type of TGQ file.

Programs that open Electronic Arts TGQ Video files

Last updated: August 13, 2026

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