Why would you want to do that? What kind of software are you using to create this video?

Peter Swinkels wrote on 2024-10-03, 09:17:

Why would you want to do that? What kind of software are you using to create this video?

Oh, for now, let's just say I have my reasons 😉 As for the software or even the content of the video - I haven't decided yet.

Does video without audio count? Ironically, it's a music video. So maybe I should've picked Alanis Morissette.

10 fps, 48 kbps, H.264 encoded, 4m:04s

Maybe the codec is too new for Win9x, but with MPEG-2 I could only get 5 fps with Handbrake. Too PowerPoint for my taste.

PD2JK wrote on 2024-10-03, 09:44:

Does video without audio count? Ironically, it's a music video. So maybe I should've picked Alanis Morissette.

10 fps, 48 kbps, H.264 encoded, 4m:04s

Maybe the codec is too new for Win9x, but with MPEG-2 I could only get 5 fps with Handbrake. Too PowerPoint for my taste.

That's a good one 😉 Did you tweak the resolution? Also, supposedly, different file containers have different overheads, with .mkv being considered pretty lightweight. Maybe with .mkv instead of .mp4 you'd have some room left for audio? 😉

That sounds like a challenge.

Maybe try Xvid or DivX?
You would have to put the resolution right down, but you should be able to get 10fps 1.44Mb combo out of that.

HEVC X.265 144p 24fps

x265 / HEVC is possible on 2K/XP. (Don't know about Win98.) If you want to encode on XP, I think you need x265vfw and avidemux. If you only need it to play on XP, you can use VLC or the command line player that comes with FFMPEG. For that matter, you could even use FFMPEG for the encode...

Use an aggressive (slower) encoder setting. Do a two-pass encode. Maybe use DMF or another hacky floppy format to squeeze more data on.

Aye, guess I'll try h265 for the video and opus for the audio then. The encoding will be done on a modern system, it's the playback under Win98 that I'm worried about.

ASCIImation, like the blinkenlights.nl Star Wars movie 🤣

Look up the video on 286 thread, similar problems.

Actually, Realplayer/Realmedia used to be able to do a tiny video stream over a 28k-56k modems, which data rate would have been 3-6kilobytes per second, which in 4 mins would just fill a 1.44 MB floppy at the higher rate. However, I think the authoring tools were spendy back in the day, so not a lot around.

H265 has no hope of being decoded in realtime on a win98/XP era machine.
You're going to want to look for 256-color (paletted) codecs.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-10-03, 18:19:

Actually, Realplayer/Realmedia used to be able to do a tiny video stream over a 28k-56k modems, which data rate would have been 3-6kilobytes per second, which in 4 mins would just fill a 1.44 MB floppy at the higher rate. However, I think the authoring tools were spendy back in the day, so not a lot around.

Hey, you're right! I do recall downloading music videos from my favorite bands in rm during IT class back in high school! I could even fit several of these on a single floppy! I'll look into this as well.

Oh, and there's rmvb!

I think Quicktime had similar modes too, but trying to dig them out from everything else that's been quicktime before or since will be a huge pain in the ass.

1440 KiB over 240s is 6144 B/s or 49 kbps, which is just under the data rate for GPRS (2.5G). It was possible to stream video over that to a smartphone, usually MPEG-4 [Advanced] Simple Profile at 176x144, probably around 10 fps at those data rates. On Windows, a popular implementation of that codec was DivX.

The requirement to play back on a Win98-era machine is somewhat vague, it could be anywhere from 1998 to 2006 (when support ended), the latter would include Core 2. At such low data rates and resolutions, decoding H.265/HEVC in real time shouldn't be a problem on a Core 2, finding a decoder that can run on Win98 would be since H.265 was only standardised in 2013. H.264/AVC should be possible since that was standardised in 2003/4.

Come to think of it, because TV capture cards did only 320x240 or something, I think I could watch vidcap TV and VCRtape stuff in DivX on the K6-2-450 machine with V3. But DVD quality divX was too much until I got an Athlon XP.

PCI TV capture cards would typically pass through the full 720x480i30 or 720x576i25 video (at least on the typical BT878 chipset of the time) and displaying that isn't an issue, whether the host CPU is powerful enough to compress that for storage is another matter. More expensive capture cards have an MPEG-2 encoder for that.

I found some old videos captured on a feature phone from 2004 and they were 128x96 ~9 fps H.263 BaseLine@1.0 at 114kbps with narrowband AMR mono 8kHz sound at 5.6kbps. Quality is pretty poor as you might expect but this is probably down to the low-cost encoder in it and the lack of B-frames in the H.263 baseline profile. With a more modern H.264 codec, B-slices, and 2-pass encoding, 176x144 should be possible at the target 49kbps data rate.

revolstar wrote on 2024-10-03, 09:43:

As for the software or even the content of the video - I haven't decided yet.

It's bad apple

One thing I thought of was ansi frames in little lzma batch chunks....

but in legacy video codecs, realmedia video is the closest I can think of for this use case. Anime via RMs was a thing. Websites streaming whole TV episodes through the realplayer plugin was a thing. Surely a floppy can hold a 4min 120x80 RM of some kind....

jtchip wrote on 2024-10-04, 00:05:

PCI TV capture cards would typically pass through the full 720x480i30 or 720x576i25 video (at least on the typical BT878 chipset of the time) and displaying that isn't an issue, whether the host CPU is powerful enough to compress that for storage is another matter. More expensive capture cards have an MPEG-2 encoder for that.

You're thinking post 2000 and a bit, think it was 02 or so that that lot came in, though I think spendy spendy ones did that, 98-02, the rage all in wonder, avermedia TV, that sort of thing, low capture resolution for video, but I think they could do still frames higher.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-10-04, 02:05:

You're thinking post 2000 and a bit, think it was 02 or so that that lot came in, though I think spendy spendy ones did that, 98-02, the rage all in wonder, avermedia TV, that sort of thing, low capture resolution for video, but I think they could do still frames higher.

I just checked and my BT878A-based TV capture card was purchased in August 2000. I still have it though its analogue tuner is useless these days for broadcast TV. I used it with DScaler to capture, deinterlace, and clean up the video.