Cinepak is one. The videos on the Win95 cd used Cinepak and 22KHz ADPCM iirc.

ffmpeg can encode videos to an appropriate format for a stock win95 box (this being a .bat file for a SendTo operation)

1ffmpeg.exe -i %1 -r 15 -s 320x240 -ar 22050 -acodec adpcm_ms -vcodec cinepak %1.avi

dunno what -r 24 and -s 480x360 cinepak would do for classic pentium specs though. also note that ffmpeg's cinepak encoder is slowwwwwwwww. sounds like a possible phil chart project to find the most efficient codec/fps/size for each old cpu. MP3 is definitely off the table for sound. Similarly, MPEG4 codecs are all P2 territory at the minimum (including the ye old DivX ;-) 3.11)

Do you think it would yield better quality ultimately? My goal is too see how far the cpu can be pushed in terms of video playback quality. Without resorting to simply using a tv tuner card or something and just cheating.

I based my format choice on the windows 98 disk demo videos so it's funny to see the 95 cd mentioned.

So far the quality is between 240 and 360p youtube which isn't half bad. I'm wondering if 480 is even possible on a pentium 1 at a watchable framerate.

You just gave me an idea to use one of my tv tuners to put Episode VII on a VHS tape. Consider me watching this thread cloooosely.
Also, so long as it doesn't derail: What would be best for a 486DX-33/66 under DOS? It would be hilarious if I could get even really dunky quality video working.

I know I use to own an MPEG encoder card before, but I never used it. I guess this would give you hardware playback of MPEG1 video only though - but that would be cheating I guess if you are wanting to see how the video will run on older processors.

This is an interesting thread, I always wanted to know more about codecs and container files.

Tommaso

Intel Indeo was available for Windows 3.1 and was pretty good. Other options were Video for Windows and Apple Quicktime.

MPEG-1 on a Pentium ~133 is doable in VideoCD resolution. Not full PAL/NTSC.
There were also various custom video formats. One format I recall is the one from Electronic Arts, used in Need for Speed, among others.
FFMPEG actually has support for this format (at least for replaying). The quality is quite acceptable (320x240 I believe, 256 colours, good framerate), and it plays fine even on a 486DX2-66.
QuickTime also had some early video codecs that worked quite well on 486 and Pentium.

This is maybe cheating, but at least it's period correct:
I remember there was some video acceleration on the S3 Virge based Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 when we installed it on a Cyrix 6x86. I think the accelerated videos were MPEG-1 but I could be wrong. It's a really distant memory, but as I recall installing the drivers caused some video files to play a lot smoother. There were some video files that demonstrated this on the driver CD, but they were low res so I don't know if this feature was effective for tolerable, full screen worthy resolutions.
I have no idea what the requirements were for this acceleration (primitive as it may be) to work on a given file, but I'm assuming that it must have been a feature of any Virge chip and probably the Trio64 also.

Windows Media Player 7 seems too new, I wonder if it's sucking more life out of the CPU than WMP6 or older would.

I ran QuickTime on my 286. The small sample video played just fine.
Same for Video for Windows 1.0 and AAplay (fli/flc).
It would be a shame when such an 586 monster couldn't do at least 640x480@25frames.

For Pentium 1 machines, you can also get better performances by using a video player like QVpro under DOS or the Xing Mpeg1 player under Windows.
Smacker videos plays very well in DOS on 486 machines.
A similar thread from 2013 with details:
Recommendations for fullscreen video on a 486 DX-66?

I know of Xing MPEG Player, that's a good one. I even have the CD version as a collector's item. 😁
As far as I know, it does support DCI and runs on 386 and higher machines.
And I read many years ago about a new version wich claims to have MMX support (I've seen a screenshot).
Never tried this one, though. Does anyone have tried ? Anyway, some graphics cards also had features that assisted video playback.
DCI aside, they also had hardware scaling and YUV conversion. I think this started around the S3 Trio, perhaps also some ISA cards supported this.
Anyway, I heard that some MPEG daughterboards existed. Some of them attached to the VESA connector, perhaps ?

Edit: Thanks for the link! Fronzel's greyscale monitor reminded of WinGIF - it had the ability to use the Windows 3.x colour driver to display 16 shades of gray
(not 50 shades of grey, haha) on a mono screen using fake colours (or on a colour screen, if the VGA belived it is a mono model).
This was really cool, because the VGA mono drivers was.. well.. just mono (black/white). Perhaps it was meant for MCGA.

I got a copy of SoftPEG with my Matrox Mystique card, which I got for my Pentium 133. It was a very good MPEG player, and made use of the hardware upscaling with bilinear filter in YUV space that the Matrox cards implemented. This meant that you could watch VideoCDs even at 1024x768 resolution in 32-bit at full speed. The upscaling was virtually 'free'.

If I used the player on an S3 Trio card, the upscaling was done in software, so you basically could not really go above 640x480, or the framerate would drop too far.

shamino wrote:

I remember there was some video acceleration on the S3 Virge based Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 when we installed it on a Cyrix 6x86. I think the accelerated videos were MPEG-1 but I could be wrong.

Jo22 wrote:

I think this started around the S3 Trio, perhaps also some ISA cards supported this.
Anyway, I heard that some MPEG daughterboards existed. Some of them attached to the VESA connector, perhaps ?

Actually video support started much earlier and means basically Overlay capabilities. Optional are scaling capabilities and also optional color space conversions.
Well known was the introduction in the S3 Vision 868 and 968 chipsets (Prior to the Trio64V - note the 'V' for Video) where these features were integrated. Prior to this external chipsets were used for the job, like on the VideoLogic 928Movie (ISA):
http://retronn.de/imports/hwgal/hw_graphics_c … ovie_front.html
Also notable here is the Weitek P9130 chip.

However the hardware decoders are an optional extension to the Video capabilities, so e.g the Diamond MVP2000 extends the S3 Vision968 based Stealth 64 Video VRAM that has Overlay support.
http://retronn.de/imports/hwgal/hw_graphics_c … 2000_front.html
The daughterboard adds MPEG1 decode, MPEG Audio decode and Scaling capabilities.

The basic Overlay capabilities were introduced be nearly every manufacturer at that time, e.g.
TSENG with the ET6000
Avance Logic with the ALG2302.A
Oaktech with the OTI64111
Trident with the TGUI9680 ProVidia
ARK Logic with the ARK2000MT

just to name a few...

Scali wrote:

If I used the player on an S3 Trio card, the upscaling was done in software, so you basically could not really go above 640x480, or the framerate would drop too far.

The Trio64 chips had an evolution in capabilities regarding video, also noted here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S3_Trio

It basically went from Trio64V, Trio64V+, Trio64V2, whereas the first only supported linear horizontal scaling.
Another limitation of the early solution is that the Overlay capabilities are only available in certain modes. (e.g. up to 1024x768 at 16 Bit at max. 75 Hz for Riva128).

Intel Indeo 5 offers probably the best speed/quality ratio for a Pentium 1, but size will be far bigger than with mpg.

If someone wants to try some .smk videos on your 486, here are a couples with or without sound and different resolutions:
https://mega.nz/#F!ysYWnaaK!1es2187U032Un1VLdYA_ww
You'll need smackply.exe from the RADVideo tools.

elianda wrote:

The Trio64 chips had an evolution in capabilities regarding video, also noted here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S3_Trio

Yes, in my case it was the 'original' Trio64. Not quite as advanced as the Matrox Mystique.

Sent me looking for my old "MPC Wizard 2.0" CD, had examples in MS video 1 (CRAM), Indeo and Cinepak - and one my current machine, VLC can play them all.
Indeo looks like the most compact, followed by Cinepak with MS Video 1 bringing up the rear

Well, I used to have my Pentium 1 playing movies that I converted to mpeg1. The conversion was fast (using my Pentium 4), and the quality was acceptable... I was using windows 98 at the time.
These days I have been trying to get avi/divx and mp4/h264 to play in the same Pentium1, this time using DOS. quickviewpro can do it with divx but sound is out of sync. I have yet to try some more with mp4 but I don't have high hopes (even though I am willing to use like a 160x120 version of youtube videos).

The way I see it, there is little point in using any other "old codec" other than mpeg 1. Conversion is very fast with modern computers (you can download a HD movie, and convert it down to VCD quality in about half and hour and watch it in an old pc) and quality is acceptable for what it is. I believe if someone has a good graphics card it will be easier, in my case is a laptop that has only a 2mbs graphics card with no acceleration for video.

Thanks for lolo799 for the videos in smacker format. I will also try those. I am curious if smacker can produce better results. All in all, I think that for retro computing we need:

1. Small file size (old drives are small we can't waste a lot of space with videos)
2. Acceptable quality (we are not going fr HD of course)
3. Codecs that can be played using Pentium or 486 (I doubt a 386 can play movies). Although I have seen a 286 playing a fullscreen video on youtube (custom software made and it was not really all that great).

There is a problem of not having a website providing videos on those formats nowadays.

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

286 playing fullscreen video with sound