Re: Multimedia APIs

Mike Melanson wrote:

>>Here's the truly scary thing:  It is indeed possible.  Unless I'm making a
>>horrible mistake, my initial tests and calculations show that the 360K
>>floppy-disk version would be able to store 45 seconds without sound @ 8fps,
>>and the hard-disk version would be able to play back 29.97fps with rudimentary
>>Sound Blaster audio in as little as 64KBps, well within the playback rate of a
>>10MB MFM hard disk of 1983.  The secret?  Anyone who knows how early SegaCD
>>streaming CDROM video formats were constructed will figure out what I'm doing
>>in short order :)
> 
> 
> 	Bitplane format? Also, didn't you once mention that you had a
> soundless clip of "Casablanca" that ran on a 286 and fit on a 1.44 MB
> floppy?

Bitplane:  Not exactly.  Think tiles/character cells ;-)  I heavily considered 
using actual CGA graphics mode because its interlaced nature makes filling 
half the scanlines easy with a single memory move, but 8K raw data per frame 
and very little compression may have exceeded the transfer rate of a 10MB hard 
drive.  The original challenge never said the video had to be perfect, just 
discernable.

Casablanca:  Yes, and you have one hell of a memory!  I will send it to you as 
soon as I can find it.  Resolution appeared to be 160x100 @ 24fps in a 
64-level grayscale and lasted well over one minute.  I didn't know RE back 
then so maybe when I find it we can see who achieved this little gem of 
engineering.
-- 
Jim Leonard ([email protected])                    http://www.oldskool.org/
Want to help an ambitious games project?             http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at             http://www.mindcandydvd.com/


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