Scali
Veteran Member
That video quality actually looks very nice. What were the minimum machine specs for this kind of video?
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Video player for a 286
- Thread starter Xacalite
- Start date
That video quality actually looks very nice. What were the minimum machine specs for this kind of video?
vwestlife
Veteran Member
That video came with OS/2 2.1's Multimedia Presentation Manager/2 (MMPM/2). It is 320x240 at 24fps so I suspect it would require a high-end 386DX or a low-end 486 with a good video card (such as IBM's own XGA2 card for MCA PS/2s).
Trixter
Veteran Member
Ultimotion was not promoted widely by IBM; it saw some use in OS/2 but I don't recall ever seeing a VFW codec you could use to make your own videos. A shame, since I would have loved to play with it. The target spec was a fast 386 or better. From the official spec: "The "nominal Ultimotion movie" is defined as 320 x 240, 15 frames per second at a 150KB per second date rate. This movie can be played on at least a 25 MHz 80386 microprocessor." This is competitive with Cinepak, although I can't verify if it ever outperformed it in quality without a compressor for it. However, it may have outperformed it because it used a normal colorspace, whereas Cinepak's optimized-for-speed-over-quality colorspace always altered the color. You can compare how Cinepak's colorspace looks a little off in the video link I posted a few posts ago.
Ultimotion was an interesting combination of techniques that used parts of DCT, VQ, and bitstream coding.
Ultimotion was an interesting combination of techniques that used parts of DCT, VQ, and bitstream coding.
krebizfan
Veteran Member
IBM did release Ultimotion for Windows. However, that didn't happen until late 1994 by which time other methods had been firmly established. IBM also did a poor job telling anyone about its existence; one needed to call IBM's Multimedia Office in order to find out where the download of the Ultimotion kit for Windows was.
Trixter
Veteran Member
Sadly, the dev kit only includes a decoder, not an encoder.
Hopefully someday someone will unearth an Ultimotion encoder. I think there is one included in versions of OS/2, but finding that out would take more time than I have motivation.
Hopefully someday someone will unearth an Ultimotion encoder. I think there is one included in versions of OS/2, but finding that out would take more time than I have motivation.
kyodai
Experienced Member
Thanks Trixter for the comparison video - Indeo looks pretty good. And thanks VWestlife for the IBM video - didn't even know that. Shame as I was a fanboy who bought an original OS/2 Warp package (And was a bit disappointed afterwards).
Well to me the first time i really saw Video on a PC was when my friend bought "Terminator 2" for DOS. That game came with tiny video sequences in the Intro and between levels that are unimpressive today, but were quite the rage back in the days (The actual game was a bit lame...)
The first "new" CD-ROM game i bought for a whooping 120 Deutschmarks in a store was "Iron Helix" which had nice video but was also disappointing as a game. Also "7th guest" was rather disappointing.
After all FMV only seemed to make sense for adventures like "Under a killing moon" or "Return to Zork". I think the first action game with FMV that i played AND enjoyed was Hardline in 1996... ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNmbFJswras )
I liked Video CDs back in the 1990s, before DVD took off. Somehow Video CD was never really popular in Japan, but in Hong Kong you could get pretty much every movie on it. These were MPEG-1, but with the ATI All-in-wonder and a Pentium-II these played back perfectly. Kinda the poor mans DVD before the DVD was invented. I think MPEG-1 was under-rated. Back in the days Video CD was pretty cool, only annoying part being to swap the discs for longer movies, but cool kids like me of course has a CD changer drive in their PC...
I remember a fried playing Rebel Assault on a 386 and it worked pretty flawlessly on that machine. I wonder what video codecs they used for that.
Well to me the first time i really saw Video on a PC was when my friend bought "Terminator 2" for DOS. That game came with tiny video sequences in the Intro and between levels that are unimpressive today, but were quite the rage back in the days (The actual game was a bit lame...)
The first "new" CD-ROM game i bought for a whooping 120 Deutschmarks in a store was "Iron Helix" which had nice video but was also disappointing as a game. Also "7th guest" was rather disappointing.
After all FMV only seemed to make sense for adventures like "Under a killing moon" or "Return to Zork". I think the first action game with FMV that i played AND enjoyed was Hardline in 1996... ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNmbFJswras )
I liked Video CDs back in the 1990s, before DVD took off. Somehow Video CD was never really popular in Japan, but in Hong Kong you could get pretty much every movie on it. These were MPEG-1, but with the ATI All-in-wonder and a Pentium-II these played back perfectly. Kinda the poor mans DVD before the DVD was invented. I think MPEG-1 was under-rated. Back in the days Video CD was pretty cool, only annoying part being to swap the discs for longer movies, but cool kids like me of course has a CD changer drive in their PC...
I remember a fried playing Rebel Assault on a 386 and it worked pretty flawlessly on that machine. I wonder what video codecs they used for that.
Trixter
Veteran Member
Scali
Veteran Member
The first game with good FMV sequences I recall is the original Need for Speed, which is from 1994.
Here is the intro sequence (from the SE version, but mostly the same): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcGa8tTlx54
And here are the car videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtPFZ48osPo
This ran fine on a 486DX2-66, probably on lower-spec machines as well. Fun thing is that you can play these movies with FFMPEG. It's some sort of EA-specific format I believe.
Here is the intro sequence (from the SE version, but mostly the same): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcGa8tTlx54
And here are the car videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtPFZ48osPo
This ran fine on a 486DX2-66, probably on lower-spec machines as well. Fun thing is that you can play these movies with FFMPEG. It's some sort of EA-specific format I believe.
Cimonvg
Experienced Member
hello
my first game with video sequences were "Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom" (feb.96) , kind of cool even though i remember the video and audio slowly not syncing with longer video-clips ??
/cimonvg
my first game with video sequences were "Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom" (feb.96) , kind of cool even though i remember the video and audio slowly not syncing with longer video-clips ??
/cimonvg
Doug Shiro
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2014
- Messages
- 1
Hey fellas...I saw mention of DMPEG v1.1 in this thread and I actually REALLY need it, despite how slow/unwatchable it may be.
I'm attempting to play some MP3s on a 286 and I feel as though my MP3-converted MPGs at 1fps 64x64 blank image files with regular mp3 sound quality would work just fine.
A bit of a clunky process, but it would only be a one-time conversion of appropriate audio. Anyway, if anyone has that application DMPEG, I would really appreciate it! Thanks.
I'm attempting to play some MP3s on a 286 and I feel as though my MP3-converted MPGs at 1fps 64x64 blank image files with regular mp3 sound quality would work just fine.
A bit of a clunky process, but it would only be a one-time conversion of appropriate audio. Anyway, if anyone has that application DMPEG, I would really appreciate it! Thanks.
dmpeg11.zip can be found in this bundle - http://www.tankraider.com/userup/1366370256.zip
Stone
10k Member
I have a copy of DMPEG10.ZIP if that's of interest.
Trixter
Veteran Member
DMPEG doesn't play any audio at all, only MPEG-1 files. Same with the Xing player.
If you want to play "video" on a 286, you have several options, but they'll require work. Animation programs like GRASP lets you play short loops on any computer. Autodesk Animator "flic" files (*.FLI) play back on a 286 as well if your framerate expectations are reasonable (like, 160x100 @ 10fps is possible). .FLI files can be combined with audio in some cases; track down the Sound Blaster multimedia demos, I think they're just .FLI files with .VOC files that play from the sound card while the .fli is playing.
64x64 1fps is more of a slideshow than a video -- what is your use case? What are you trying to achieve?
Wow, there are a ton of video players in there, including a few I'd never heard of. I think the OP should explore every single one of these before heeding my advice.
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