Originally posted by sandwich:
All that stuff should be easy as pie. As far as I know, the command briefing ANI format didn't change from FS1 to FS2 (actually, now that I think of it, they are at different resolutions - FS1 ANI's are square-ish, while the FS2 ANI's are "wide-screen"... hmmm). Voice is no prob, though. 
The .ani format hasn't changed a bit. As sandwich noted, the size and shape of the FS1 command briefs is a bit different than that of the FS2 animations, but I've already tried it out and they work without a problem. Ditto for the FS1 briefings, debriefings, in-mission voice overs - they can all be ported over without a hitch. The cool thing is that those of us who have FS1 and a tiny bit of expertise with VPVIEW would never have to download a big 30MB+ package of FS1 command briefs or sound files.
For that matter, porting the entire FS1 game over to FS2 wouldn't require too much technical knowledge at all. Converting FS1 missions over to FreeSpace 2 involves the simple matter of extracting them from the proper .vp file and changing their extension to .fs2. Sure, they won't have any background to speak of, some of the briefing icons will be out of place, and there won't be any flashy beams, but those would be easy matters to "correct", assuming we'd want to edit the mission in the first place. In theory, even the menu and main hall graphics could be carried over, although that'd be a slightly bigger task. Still, imagine playing FS1 with the FS2 music. Or...if you're one of those really oldskool types, playing FS1 with the FS1 music in FS2. Okay, so that sort of defeats the original purpose

, but I'm just spewing ideas here.
If only we had enough determination to get such a project done...
*cough*