No, in the first post I detail how to make the video work with Microsoft Video 1 compression, 160x120, 256 colors with no audio. All the instructions for that are in the first post. Videos played in that format work very well and play at an acceptable framerate on a real 286 PC.

Last night, I did a few calculations, and I figured out that the average framerate in each fullscreen mode for MSV1 video on the 286 was:

8.5 fps for fullscreen mode, plus zoom by 2
12 fps for fullscreen mode, no zoom by 2.

In my opinion, both framerates are very watchable. I just added an 8KHZ audio track to a MSV1 video. I am gonna test that on a Virtural 286 PC, and then once I get a proper sound card, I will test on real hardware. If it works properly on a VPC, I will leave it here. If anyone has a real 286 with a Sound Blaster or PCM capable sound card, I would like to see a video with audio tested on that.

Also, I haven't found a DOS player that plays AVI's on a 286. They all require a 386. On my machine, Win 3.1 isn't all that slow and the videos play great under the Windows environment.

Fake or real?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wraAawslLKs

video-software including stuff for a 286
http://www.tankraider.com/userup/1366370256.zip

dr.zeissler wrote on 2020-03-20, 15:39:

Fake or real? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wraAawslLKs […]
Show full quote

Fake or real?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wraAawslLKs

video-software including stuff for a 286
http://www.tankraider.com/userup/1366370256.zip

That is real.

Jo22 wrote on 2020-03-20, 14:53:

Old PC Hunter wrote on 2020-03-19, 21:45:

Jo22 wrote on 2020-03-19, 21:28:

I love this thread. ^^ […]
Show full quote

I love this thread. ^^

Fun fact: A 286 (10 or 12MHz) was the original CPU in the Multimedia PC specs (MPC v1.0) before it got revised to a 386SX (16MHz).
See Re: New Project - Early 1991 i486 Build

Also, Video for Windows v1.0 also runs on a 286 still, v.1.1 requires 386 and higher.
A super rare copy can be found here Re: Software for my 286/8 1MB ET4000 SBpro
- The thread also includes PV, an EGA/VGA/VBE shareware viewer for FLI/AVI/MPG and various picture formats.

QuickTime 1.x (maybe 2.1.2 too) can run on a 286, as well.

The video player CGAView can display videos on a 286, if it has EGA/VGA.. 😉
(Please don't confuse it with my CGAView or CGAView X Bload-Utility)

Edit:@derSammler I just wished that 8088Corruption got updated/ported to V20Corruption, as well. Or at least gets support for 8MHz clock speed.
Replacing the 8088 by a NEC V20 was a real-world scenario. By the time Adlib/SB 1.0 was around, abaout everyone tried
to get rid of that nerve-killing slowliness of the PC/XT. That's why Turbo-XTs got so popular: Fast&Cheap.

Do you have a copy of Quicktime 1.x by any chance? Thanks for your contributions and fun fact! 😉

Hi, yes, I've posted it in another thread.. I think it was this one: Re: WFW 3.11 using all available ram?

I tried your variant of Quicktime, and when I open mplayer.exe now, the Video For Windows player, it always is crashing to due to general protection errors in different DLL's and EXE's. Here's an example:

Quick update for those with the EMU386 emulator running on your 286 system:

Do not run that emulator along with Video For Windows 1.0. While running it earlier, the playback FPS of my video dropped by at least two frames.

Also, I did attempt playing my video with audio on my real 286, as the audio shouldn't make a difference, but it would refuse to play. Back to the drawing board...

Old PC Hunter wrote on 2020-03-20, 15:51:

I tried your variant of Quicktime, and when I open mplayer.exe now, the Video For Windows player, it always is crashing to due to general protection errors in different DLL's and EXE's. Here's an example:

Sorry to hear! 🙁 I'll double check on one of my 286 PCs as soon as I can.
Currently, the hobby room (attic) is a mess and I need to tidy up in order to be able to set up a currently boxed PC.
Anyway, there's sonemthing more to try. AAPlay for Windows. It's definitely compatible with a 286 and can display FLi/FLC animations.
(FLI was low-res, fixed. At 320x200 I believe. FLC could be any resolution, say 800x600 or even higher.)
Here are some sample videos of my own, which I took, since FLI animations are not exactly the most popular topic at youtube. 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydEdC_QiV-U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFB2M9l9g8c

Edit: The samples were taken with a 286-16 PC running Windows 3.0/3.1.
The Hercules graphics slowed things down quite. A VGA subsystem would quite make a difference here.

I did do some modifications to my systems requirements list in my post with the instructions on how to get a 286 playing video. Through testing with a PCEM emulator, I found a 286 running at 6 MHZ can even play back video at a watchable rate. It is quite a bit slower than a 10 MHz 286, but in my opinion, with the smaller fullscreen window, the video is still watchable. With the 2x zoom option enabled, the video becomes slow and not too watchable on a 286-6.

dr.zeissler wrote on 2020-03-20, 15:39:

Fake or real? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wraAawslLKs […]
Show full quote

Fake or real?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wraAawslLKs

video-software including stuff for a 286
http://www.tankraider.com/userup/1366370256.zip

Since you have a 286-8,dr.zeissler, I tested a 286-8 in PCEM with 4 MB memory, and a Tseng ET 4000AX 1 MB video card. The playback results with Microsoft Video 1 video at 160x120, 15 frames per second, 256 color, and no audio in Video For Windows 1.0 running under Windows 3.1 were pretty decent. I'd estimate around 7-8 fps on fullscreen with the 2x zoom option, and 11 fps with fullscreen enabled, no 2x zoom. For comparison, the intro for Sonic CD runs at 7 FPS in 16 color at a low resolution.

leileilol wrote on 2020-03-20, 06:43:

American Laser Games was banking on that back in the day. They've tuned their codec and data for 1x speed and 286s for their DOS ports. Most of the video kept being half-resolution in lots of chunks. It's noticeably visually worse than even other 1993 CD-ROM FMV games.

You mean this, right? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0ieq5ejdzs

Grzyb wrote on 2020-03-21, 03:20:

leileilol wrote on 2020-03-20, 06:43:

American Laser Games was banking on that back in the day. They've tuned their codec and data for 1x speed and 286s for their DOS ports. Most of the video kept being half-resolution in lots of chunks. It's noticeably visually worse than even other 1993 CD-ROM FMV games.

You mean this, right? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0ieq5ejdzs

Yes, that is what leileilol means.

Cool necro.

I went and played around with this a good bit, never would have figured it out myself. I can confirm this both works under Windows 7, and is easy enough it must be the simplest way of bridging multimedia worlds.

I did play around with CRAM, aka Microsoft Video 1 codec, and it's really inefficient. At 320x180, it needed 400-500Kb/s to avoid blockiness. Encoding at around 100Kb/s a second was possible, but the output was fully potato and didn't improve much even if given 200 or more Kb/s. Which makes sense, in the wild I've seen it used on early 90s MPC 1 titles at 160x120 WITH heavy blockiness artifacting. This format was intended to play back on a 386SX/16 per the MPC spec, and is the source of the postage stamp video meme of yore.

I also played around with RLE, and it doesn't seem to use a video compressor per say but rather just RLE encodes the video. Compression is maybe 60%, or about as good as Microsoft Video 1 if it's given enough of a data rate to avoid visual breakup during motion.

Cinepak, though still very early technology, is still a whole generation ahead of Video 1. If you've ever seen the Windows 95 CD-ROM bonus videos, you've seen Cinepak. My 386/40 can play back goodtimes.avi at full frame rate, and that packs 320x240 at 15 frames per second into around a 125KB/s data rate. Artifacting is obvious, but it's softer than Video 1 and mostly becomes apparent when zooming the video. If you have a faster 386 and 16-bit video, I definitely suggest trying Cinepak before resorting to Video 1.

Surprisingly, MPEG 1 video does work on a 386/40! I found an early copy of Xing Player for Windows 3.1 from 1994 on a multimedia shovelware CD-ROM, along with some early 160x120 MPEG videos. They play back full frame rate on this 386DX/40 and look really sharp. I plan on creating some test MPEG videos and seeing if a higher resolution is possible. And if files will play back at all -- I believe I read something to the effect that early Xing MPEG video players may not understand modern encoder output.

radiounix wrote on 2020-08-31, 18:28:

Cool necro.

Dude, the last post here was barely half a year ago! 😁

radiounix wrote on 2020-08-31, 18:28:

Surprisingly, MPEG 1 video does work on a 386/40! I found an early copy of Xing Player for Windows 3.1 from 1994 on a multimedia shovelware CD-ROM, along with some early 160x120 MPEG videos. They play back full frame rate on this 386DX/40 and look really sharp. I plan on creating some test MPEG videos and seeing if a higher resolution is possible. And if files will play back at all -- I believe I read something to the effect that early Xing MPEG video players may not understand modern encoder output.

Yes, I second that. MPEG-1 wasn't that bad, actually. Just watched a commercial made VideoCD (StarTrek IV) and it looked fine.
Even on the big screen (BD Player). In fact, it aged better than some VHS cassettes that I've got. 😀

Jo22 wrote on 2020-09-01, 11:42:

Yes, I second that. MPEG-1 wasn't that bad, actually. Just watched a commercial made VideoCD (StarTrek IV) and it looked fine.
Even on the big screen (BD Player). In fact, it aged better than some VHS cassettes that I've got. 😀

The biggest problem with MPEG1 VideoCDs wasn't so much the coding standard or the CDs capacity, but rather the fact, that their potential was severely limited by constraints that made stand-alone players cheaper.
The biggest and most annoying ones were the narrow key frame interval, the constant bit rate and the aspect ratio.
A well-encoded MPEG1 video on a CD ROM for PCs can look significantly better.

Benedikt wrote on 2020-09-01, 12:19:

The biggest problem with MPEG1 VideoCDs wasn't so much the coding standard or the CDs capacity, but rather the fact, that their […]
Show full quote

Jo22 wrote on 2020-09-01, 11:42:

Yes, I second that. MPEG-1 wasn't that bad, actually. Just watched a commercial made VideoCD (StarTrek IV) and it looked fine.
Even on the big screen (BD Player). In fact, it aged better than some VHS cassettes that I've got. 😀

The biggest problem with MPEG1 VideoCDs wasn't so much the coding standard or the CDs capacity, but rather the fact, that their potential was severely limited by constraints that made stand-alone players cheaper.
The biggest and most annoying ones were the narrow key frame interval, the constant bit rate and the aspect ratio.
A well-encoded MPEG1 video on a CD ROM for PCs can look significantly better.

Thanks for the information! 😀 This makes me wonder - how compared it to CD-i ?
From what I remember, CD-i was designed to work with the Philips players,
which were MC68000 based and used the advanced CD-RTOS software.
Edit: http://www.icdia.co.uk/faq/cdifaq3.html
Edit: There's also a Win9x driver for CD-i format, so someone doesn't have to load old MSCDEX (CDFS can't do it).

Jo22 wrote on 2020-09-01, 12:47:

Thanks for the information! 😀 This makes me wonder - how compared it to CD-i ?

Skimming through it, CD-i appears to be just yet another constant bit rate format, i.e. one with very similar limitations.
I don't see any aspect ratio support beyond 4:3 and 16:9, either.

Found something.
http://www6.uniovi.es/hypgraph/video/architec … ForWindows.html

derSammler wrote on 2020-03-19, 20:59:

Even the IBM XT with CGA can do full-motion video with sound:

http://www.oldskool.org/pc/8088_Corruption

And that was done in 2004 already. 😉

Oh, wow I had not seen this, thank you for sharing.

The later demo 8088 Domination is even more advanced.

Benedikt wrote on 2020-09-02, 16:25:

The later demo 8088 Domination is even more advanced.

This is amazing mate, just amazing ...

Is there a way to directly transcode a yt-video to a format a 286 can play in dos ?
320x200 or better 160x100 256color pal 15fps with or without sound (better with).

Interesting. I remember a developer for the Master System console was able to encode videos to run on its original Z80 4Mhz cpu with the limited storage of those consoles.
From my old similar test with music, I was impressed to listen some MP3 encoded @ 56Kbits 16Khz on a 386DX@40Mhz with a FPU IIT@40Mhz needed for such decoding in real time. I don't remember the MSDOS app I tried but was one if not the only one found that was able to get that result when most others apps required anyway a 486/FPU combination.
In fact, those tests were the only able to warm up the 387 FPU much more than running Quake on it. 😀

dr.zeissler wrote on 2023-03-10, 14:48:

Is there a way to directly transcode a yt-video to a format a 286 can play in dos ?
320x200 or better 160x100 256color pal 15fps with or without sound (better with).

Hello all, it's been quite some time since I've visited this forum (3 years) and about the same amount of time since I've last played with video experiments on my 286. I'm happy to see that this topic has gained some renewed attention since then. As far as your question, dr. zeissler, there are some video editors that will directly transcode a video into a 286-compatible format without all the filtering and workarounds (Adobe Premiere 6.5 and older being one, though I've found 6.5 to be the best). I think FFMPEG will do the trick, though I never was able to make a working video. I will play around with that more once I get back on my 286. The nice thing about FFMPEG is it will support MP4 as an input file but older editors such as Premiere 6.5 will not, so the input file must be converted into a compatible video format to encode with Premiere. As far as DOS players there is a Microsoft Video 1 compatible player called GEEWIZ which I was able to find that works even on 8088 machines! On an emulated 8088-10 I think I got like 4 fps, so not desirable, but I think it is possible to make it better. Performance is about the same as in Windows as it is in DOS on a 286 using the GEEWIZ player. If you cannot find GEEWIZ online I can send it to you. The newest version I could locate is 1.7. I hope this helps, please reach out if you have any more questions. I can't promise I'll be online but I'll try my best.