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Video playback on low-end MS-DOS machines

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Re: Video playback on low-end MS-DOS machines

#21

Post by gmueckl »

qingcharles wrote: post #15

This is awesome. I tried doing this in the early 90s by breaking down video frames into averaged color triangle polygons and then using the renderer I had to draw them. It worked fine, but obviously best on large swathes of flat color like cartoons where it would create the smallest number of vertices and the largest runs of bytes. Somewhere on Usenet there is a post of mine about running it on my 286, but I just was…

This seems very similar to how the cinematic platformer Another World (1991, also known as Out of This World) was doing its elaborate full screen animation sequences, although the animations were rotoscoped rather than generated by an automatic encoder.

Re: Video playback on low-end MS-DOS machines

#22

Post by AnotherGoodName »

Minor49er wrote: post #16
qingcharles wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On my 486 I don't remember being able to play MP3s in realtime. I remember having to convert a 3MB MP3 to a 50MB WAV that took up my whole HDD just to play it.

Ken Silverman, creator of the BUILD Engine, made MP3PC.exe that's still hosted on his Utilities page. I'm pretty sure I used this on a 486 years ago and was surprised at how well it worked, though it apparently is picky about MP3 encodings. From the description: > MP3PC.EXE (73,483 bytes): Got no sound card? MP3PC plays MP3 files through your PC speaker! For some reason I like to make programs work through the PC spe…

There were entire games, eg. star control 2, that played sample audio through the PC speaker. It included voice sample in parts (eg. The pkunk swear words).

Re: Video playback on low-end MS-DOS machines

#23

Post by Scali »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #22
Minor49er wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ken Silverman, creator of the BUILD Engine, made MP3PC.exe that's still hosted on his Utilities page. I'm pretty sure I used this on a 486 years ago and was surprised at how well it worked, though it apparently is picky about MP3 encodings. From the description: > MP3PC.EXE (73,483 bytes): Got no sound card? MP3PC plays MP3 files through your PC speaker! For some reason I like to make programs work through the PC spe…

There were entire games, eg. star control 2, that played sample audio through the PC speaker. It included voice sample in parts (eg. The pkunk swear words).

It was actually patented by Access Software, under the name of RealSound. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealSound

Re: Video playback on low-end MS-DOS machines

#24

Post by EvanAnderson »

qingcharles wrote: post #15

This is awesome. I tried doing this in the early 90s by breaking down video frames into averaged color triangle polygons and then using the renderer I had to draw them. It worked fine, but obviously best on large swathes of flat color like cartoons where it would create the smallest number of vertices and the largest runs of bytes. Somewhere on Usenet there is a post of mine about running it on my 286, but I just was…

re: decomposing video to triangles - That makes me think of State of the Art[0] and Nine Fingers[1], though I don't actually know how they worked.

[0] https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=99

[1] https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=100

Re: Video playback on low-end MS-DOS machines

#25

Post by peekpeek »

First full color I saw on low end PC was 1987 demo on IBM Model 30. 8086 CPU. It used 128 out of 256 colors to hide the palette switch flash. It was a clip from National Geographic mammals and a classroom video. It was digitized using a laserdisc and at&t Targa16 to get one frame at a time. Was captured on a compaq 386/20 because IBM didn't have any micro channel capture cards. So IBM paid for the compaq. Video was in 320x200 mode since no higher 256 color modes on M30. It took SVGA cards to commonly see higher res 256 color modes. This wasn't dithered video, so looked pretty good.

Re: Video playback on low-end MS-DOS machines

#26

Post by qingcharles »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #24
qingcharles wrote: post #15

This is awesome. I tried doing this in the early 90s by breaking down video frames into averaged color triangle polygons and then using the renderer I had to draw them. It worked fine, but obviously best on large swathes of flat color like cartoons where it would create the smallest number of vertices and the largest runs of bytes. Somewhere on Usenet there is a post of mine about running it on my 286, but I just was…

re: decomposing video to triangles - That makes me think of State of the Art[0] and Nine Fingers[1], though I don't actually know how they worked. [0] https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=99 [1] https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=100

YES! I was trying to remember the names of these demos, they came out the same time I was working on my code. Really was peak demo scenes days in 93/94. I feel like we were doing it that way because we had hammers and saw everything as a nail. I don't think any of us knew how an actual video codec worked back then, there was so little information available until the Internet started taking off in late-93 onwards.

Re: Video playback on low-end MS-DOS machines

#27

Post by Scali »

qingcharles wrote: post #26
EvanAnderson wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: decomposing video to triangles - That makes me think of State of the Art[0] and Nine Fingers[1], though I don't actually know how they worked. [0] https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=99 [1] https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=100

YES! I was trying to remember the names of these demos, they came out the same time I was working on my code. Really was peak demo scenes days in 93/94. I feel like we were doing it that way because we had hammers and saw everything as a nail. I don't think any of us knew how an actual video codec worked back then, there was so little information available until the Internet started taking off in late-93 onwards.

The Amiga had a hardware blitter that was very good at drawing lines and doing area fills, so it made perfect sense to encode video to polygons on that particular hardware.

Re: Video playback on low-end MS-DOS machines

#28

Post by bigger_cheese »

qingcharles wrote: post #13
bdcravens wrote: post #10

I had a 486DX - if I wanted to play an MP3, I had to exit out of everything and run only the DOS player.

On my 486 I don't remember being able to play MP3s in realtime. I remember having to convert a 3MB MP3 to a 50MB WAV that took up my whole HDD just to play it.

I had a 486 dx4/100 there was a checkbox in winamp options you needed to tick in order to be able to play mp3's, I've long since forgotten what it was labelled but when you checked the tickbox it worked and audio played correctly but basically pegged the entire cpu - forget about skipping or being able to seek within the track. Just moving mouse cursor etc. was massively delayed the whole computer was unusable until the track finished playing.

My next computer after the dx4 was a Pentium 166 MHZ - it could play mp3's and Quake simultaneously.

Re: Video playback on low-end MS-DOS machines

#29

Post by [deleted] »

HPsquared wrote: post #11

16 FPS video and audio on a Commodore 64 demo. Very, very highly compressed and optimized data and algorithm: https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=12m55s&v=yW5v93P-gBw&feature=y... EDIT: and some details on the audio encoding method, might as well start here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=11m55s&v=yW5v93P-gBw&feature=y...

[deleted]

Re: Video playback on low-end MS-DOS machines

#30

Post by djmips »

Scali wrote: post #23
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were entire games, eg. star control 2, that played sample audio through the PC speaker. It included voice sample in parts (eg. The pkunk swear words).

It was actually patented by Access Software, under the name of RealSound. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealSound

What a dumb patent. We were already doing this before their patent. We just ignored it and they didn't try to challenge. I remember talking to my EE father at the time and he said the idea of doing PWM for audio was obvious and ludicrous to patent.
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