The videos definitely play at a small size natively. I'm wondering if there might be a way to edit the game so that it plays them in a larger window. I do understand that when the games came out the impetus was to ensure compatibility across a wide array of computers with specs far below those of modern computers, and thus playing videos in a tiny window was probably a great idea.
I guess my goal in creating this thread was to see if there might be any way to improve the experience today, even if it might not be 100% faithful to the original.
To this end I've done some more research. I'll divide my findings between the two games as they are different in how they were constructed (even though the issue at hand is pretty much identical.
Torin's Passage: DOS Version
The movies are in Sierra's own .VMD format (Video and Music Data, apparently) and have a native resolution of 316x158, thus being twice as wide as it is high. According to http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=VMD the data determining how to display the video is contained in a header that would seem to be part of the .VMD file itself. Other games utilized the VMD video format, and videos extracted from these games can be played using a vmdplayer which can be downloaded from http://vagsoft.chat.ru/sci.html. Another game I own, Leisure Suit Larry 7, uses this format AND plays the videos in full screen. Though the game utilizes SVGA graphics, the videos are 320x240, thus the player IS stretching them to fit the screen; this gives me hope that the same can be done for Torin's Passage (although the aspect ratio of the Torin's Passage videos will mean there will always be black bars above and below the videos).
Things I have tried so far:
1. Replaced the vesa drivers with various other ones from the CD (located in D:\INSTALL\VESA\VESA). No difference (not that I really expected this to work...)
2. Ran the UVCONFIG.EXE program in the TORINDOS directory and increased the video RAM and set the machine type to think I had a Paradise card in the UVCONFIG file and in the DOSBox config file. No difference (again, not that I really expected it to work...)
Things I think might work:
1. Editing the .VMD files to reconfigure the size and screen location of the videos
King's Quest 7: Dos Version
The movies in this game are encoded in .AVI format, and thus can be viewed using utilities such as VLC media player. The version of the game that I have came from the King's Quest Collection DVD. I copied it to my hard drive and play from there; I don't have any other version of the game and therefore can't test another version.
Things I have tried so far:
1. Using an external program to re-encode the videos from a frame size of 320x168 to 640x332 (double the original size). No difference. I kind of thought this might work, but it would seem that either the game disregards the file data in the .AVI file, or it is forcing the video to remain at 320x168 anyways.
Things I think might work:
1. ??? This one has me flummoxed. Perhaps there is a different DOS AVI viewer that can be loaded before launching the game and which can be edited into the RESOURCE.CFG file as the default video viewer for the game to use?
Additional thoughts
A number of other games used the .VMD format for videos, as noted by the website detailing the format. Could it be possible to adapt the improvements discussed here to games such as Phantasmagoria?
I'd like to state that I'm not a developer, programmer, or coder of any sort. I can move around files and edit text with the best of them, but that's about it. I'd love to assist in any capacity I may with anyone who takes an interest in this project, but unfortunately this probably will never get done if it's just me thinking about it and working on it. If you do read this, then you have my appreciation, and if you contribute anything beyond that you already have my gratitude.