My first thought was ffdshow on virtualdub but both are probably long deprecated for w9x (ffdshow even more)

Can you share some more details on your workflow, please ?

How are you generating/capturing or the MJPEG encoded footage ? Was the footage captured a while ago and archived in AVI files ?

Are you attempting the Windows Media Player playback and VLC conversion on a Windows 98 PC ?

Is it the conversion in VLC that fails to produce a file that is playable or is the import into Premiere and Video factory that is failing ?

Are you using an analogue video camera and capturing in MJPEG using a analogue to digital capture card ? In which case, what capture card and software are you using to capture the video ?

Or are you using a digital video camera of some kind (model?) and with which software ?

If you are using a capture card that produces MJPEG (like a DC30), have you tried capturing directly in Adobe Premiere 5.0 ?

AFAIK and AFAICR, consumer video cameras from the late 1990s were either analogue and would require a capture card to digitize and record video in a computer (MJPEG being popular) OR were digital and typically recorded in DV data format (on miniDV or Digital8 tape) which one would could transfer digitally to a computer using a FireWire (ieee1394) digitally .

So, I am guessing that you either have archived MJPEG footage in files OR that you are currently capturing, digitizing and compressing in MJPEG some analogue recordings and then attempting to import them into a video editor. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Ffmpeg is the tool of choice for video format conversion. Pretty much anything in and almost the same number of options for output.

Use it on your modern system rather than trying to get ancient mjpeg encoders to work.

Definitely a codec issue. Either use a frameserver such as avisynth / vapour synth or transcode it to a lossless codec, supported by your editor. Not sure what premiere is up to these days in supporting codecs, but Prores 444 or H264 lossless, with I frames only, should do the trick

Thanks all.

It took quite a bit of trial and error using different codecs, but using ffmpeg on my modern machine with msvideo1 codec was finally readable by Video Factory. mpeg1/2 and h261/h262 didn't work either. Before I was just doing "convert/save" from vlc with mpeg-2 in the AVI container.

My setup was a canon powershot g1, taking video files straight of the CF card. I'm still looking for a w9x native solution if anyone has any ideas (old version of ffmpeg perhaps?) but current scheme is working for now.

maggle wrote on 2025-05-20, 03:24:

Thanks all.

It took quite a bit of trial and error using different codecs, but using ffmpeg on my modern machine with msvideo1 codec was finally readable by Video Factory. mpeg1/2 and h261/h262 didn't work either. Before I was just doing "convert/save" from vlc with mpeg-2 in the AVI container.

My setup was a canon powershot g1, taking video files straight of the CF card. I'm still looking for a w9x native solution if anyone has any ideas (old version of ffmpeg perhaps?) but current scheme is working for now.

Glad you got it to work.

Virtualdub releases at least from before September 4th 2006 are likely to still work under Windows 98. AFAICR, Virtualdub already had a Motion JPEG decoding engine integrated (and had had it for a long time) https://www.virtualdub.org/blog2/entry_126.html .

I hope that converting to MSVIDEO1 does not degrade the image quality significantly and, if it does, that you find better alternatives.

I had initially thought that you were using video camera footage of some kind. I had not even considered that you might have been referring to an early digital still camera's video recording mode, which was nearly always MJPEG (likely taking advantage of the hardware assisted JPEG still image compression functionality) and, unfortunately, low resolution and framerate (320x240 at 15fps on your G1 to 640x480 at 30fps on newer models). I don't miss that functionality, which is why I likely I did not even consider it.

Fun fact: one of my cameras that did MJPEG video, which one I forget (I had had several Canon, Olympus and Fuji ones in that era), seemed to properly generate 30fps video files but, depending on what was being recorded, it looked like it dropped frames and duplicated the previous one(s). I hypothesized at the time that something in the video processing pipeline just wasn't able to keep up on some scenes for some reason. Consumer digital video recording devices have really come a long way.

Anyway, I have ranted enough on my trip through memory lane. Have fun on yours. 😀

darry wrote on 2025-05-20, 14:13:

Glad you got it to work. […]
Show full quote

maggle wrote on 2025-05-20, 03:24:

Thanks all.

It took quite a bit of trial and error using different codecs, but using ffmpeg on my modern machine with msvideo1 codec was finally readable by Video Factory. mpeg1/2 and h261/h262 didn't work either. Before I was just doing "convert/save" from vlc with mpeg-2 in the AVI container.

My setup was a canon powershot g1, taking video files straight of the CF card. I'm still looking for a w9x native solution if anyone has any ideas (old version of ffmpeg perhaps?) but current scheme is working for now.

Glad you got it to work.

Virtualdub releases at least from before September 4th 2006 are likely to still work under Windows 98. AFAICR, Virtualdub already had a Motion JPEG decoding engine integrated (and had had it for a long time) https://www.virtualdub.org/blog2/entry_126.html .

I hope that converting to MSVIDEO1 does not degrade the image quality significantly and, if it does, that you find better alternatives.

I had initially thought that you were using video camera footage of some kind. I had not even considered that you might have been referring to an early digital still camera's video recording mode, which was nearly always MJPEG (likely taking advantage of the hardware assisted JPEG still image compression functionality) and, unfortunately, low resolution and framerate (320x240 at 15fps on your G1 to 640x480 at 30fps on newer models). I don't miss that functionality, which is why I likely I did not even consider it.

Fun fact: one of my cameras that did MJPEG video, which one I forget (I had had several Canon, Olympus and Fuji ones in that era), seemed to properly generate 30fps video files but, depending on what was being recorded, it looked like it dropped frames and duplicated the previous one(s). I hypothesized at the time that something in the video processing pipeline just wasn't able to keep up on some scenes for some reason. Consumer digital video recording devices have really come a long way.

Anyway, I have ranted enough on my trip through memory lane. Have fun on yours. 😀

Gave Virtualdub a try today and am very impressed. Almost all of the codecs built into it seem to work great with with the video editing software I have in 98 se. Surprisingly fast too! Thanks.

maggle wrote on 2025-05-22, 03:52:

darry wrote on 2025-05-20, 14:13:

Glad you got it to work. […]
Show full quote

maggle wrote on 2025-05-20, 03:24:

Thanks all.

It took quite a bit of trial and error using different codecs, but using ffmpeg on my modern machine with msvideo1 codec was finally readable by Video Factory. mpeg1/2 and h261/h262 didn't work either. Before I was just doing "convert/save" from vlc with mpeg-2 in the AVI container.

My setup was a canon powershot g1, taking video files straight of the CF card. I'm still looking for a w9x native solution if anyone has any ideas (old version of ffmpeg perhaps?) but current scheme is working for now.

Glad you got it to work.

Virtualdub releases at least from before September 4th 2006 are likely to still work under Windows 98. AFAICR, Virtualdub already had a Motion JPEG decoding engine integrated (and had had it for a long time) https://www.virtualdub.org/blog2/entry_126.html .

I hope that converting to MSVIDEO1 does not degrade the image quality significantly and, if it does, that you find better alternatives.

I had initially thought that you were using video camera footage of some kind. I had not even considered that you might have been referring to an early digital still camera's video recording mode, which was nearly always MJPEG (likely taking advantage of the hardware assisted JPEG still image compression functionality) and, unfortunately, low resolution and framerate (320x240 at 15fps on your G1 to 640x480 at 30fps on newer models). I don't miss that functionality, which is why I likely I did not even consider it.

Fun fact: one of my cameras that did MJPEG video, which one I forget (I had had several Canon, Olympus and Fuji ones in that era), seemed to properly generate 30fps video files but, depending on what was being recorded, it looked like it dropped frames and duplicated the previous one(s). I hypothesized at the time that something in the video processing pipeline just wasn't able to keep up on some scenes for some reason. Consumer digital video recording devices have really come a long way.

Anyway, I have ranted enough on my trip through memory lane. Have fun on yours. 😀

Gave Virtualdub a try today and am very impressed. Almost all of the codecs built into it seem to work great with with the video editing software I have in 98 se. Surprisingly fast too! Thanks.

Glad that helped. Please do feel free to share any interesting footage you might deem worthy.