is there another way to play FMV videos besides .str?

[ponlork]

My idea is to have a sequence of .tim images playing one after another where it loads and unloads the next frames. if this idea is possible then how many FPS do u think we can achieve with this idea?

.str video is okay but it doesn't look as sharp. so i was wondering if there's a way to utilize higher quality images instead to produce a clean looking FMV cut scene. I've also heard about the PSX VCD player.

[Shadow]

I've tried that before, and it doesn't render 16-bit TIM's quick enough unless you reduce the image dimensions. However, if you make for example a quadruple buffer and write the 16-bit TIM's in a FIFO routine from the CD-ROM to RAM and then to the framebuffer, it might actually work and playback at a decent framerate. You'd need to experiment with it. I never bothered trying

You would also need to write the TIM's to the disc in non-error correction mode or disable error correction (IE: by using CdlReadS and not CdlReadN) otherwise the CD-ROM will retry and stop the playback whenever a read error occurs. Also note that the disc will fill up quick since TIM's are not compressed unlike XA sectors, so you won't get a lot of playback time.

[ponlork]

yeah that's too complicated for a amateur hobbyist like me at the moment but it's fascinating to know what could be possible.

while i was modding the PlayStation underground disc to bundle tonyhax i came across these tims that were in 512x240 resolution:
https://i.ibb.co/d0p1v3w/ps-underground.png

I had swapped out the images to insert my own and i was like wow these look much sharper than what i'm used to seeing on the PS1. I assume giving it that 512 horizontal resolution gives it more detail when resized on a CRT.

Well what about those 8bit index tims with a limited color palette? could we theoretically achieve say 12-15fps with these CLUT images?

Or what if we was to do something similar to what Popful Mail did on the Sega CD where it rendered the FMV cut scenes with the game graphics. Like what if we're making a anime style cut scenes where the background is pretty static and we only need to animate certain parts instead of the entire frame.

these are just ideas though. Also what's the highest resolution we can achieve on the PS1? is 480p possible?

[Shadow]

Some developers wrote their own formats where they would store image data in a different way to either compress or lose artefacts due to a different encoding method.

8-bit TIM's would get you a framerate faster than 15 FPS (in theory). I would imagine >30 FPS for 8-bit if done correctly using a multi-buffer FIFO method. The key here would be to make sure the data on the disc is also sequential. The PlayStation sucks at reading data that is scattered over the disc due to seek times.

640x480 is the highest resolution possible, but the performance impact is high. You also lose a lot of framebuffer if you use this resolution.

[ponlork]

I see. that's something i would definitely want to experiment with when i start getting into psx development. str video looks okay on a CRT but on a modern set or using emulators like duckstation, it looks pretty bad. So i was thinking maybe if the image frames are clean then it'll look good when upscaled.

i'm just guessing though. i have done some AI upscales before and that's how my youtube channel got millions of views from upscaling videos. a lot of them got taken down due to copyright though.

but one of my videos was this 1984 anime called Fushigina Koara Burinkī aka Noozles that i captured from Yahoo Gyao over 10 years ago using hypercam, it was captured in 320x240 and i upscaled it to 4k and it looks pretty clean:


I also ripped Tales of Destiny 2 from the PS2 which was 640x334 when the black borders were cropped, and upscaled it to 4k and it looks pretty good too:


Is there any reason why most PS1 videos are 320x240 15fps? couldn't it handle 30fps? or will increasing the fps sacrifice quality? I have come across some squaresoft FMVs that were widescreen in 20fps. I believe Final fantasy 4 had 20fps. from my memory Xenogears has the cleanest looking FMVs i can recall. There's also this Japanese game called Athena: Awakening from the Ordinary Life that has nice looking FMVs too.

Some developers wrote their own formats where they would store image data in a different way to either compress or lose artefacts due to a different encoding method.

I remember coming across some Dreamcast games that used it's own compression format. One game in particular was Headhunter which used a format called 4X Movie compression.

what's interesting about this is i test a lot of Dreamcast games on the PlayStation Classic and none of the .sfd sofdec videos come close to playing full speed. But when i played headhunter it actually played the FMVs full speed at 29.970 fps and that threw me for a surprise
https://youtu.be/pYZ2cMT0Iw0?t=6315

[Shadow]

They are probably set to 320x240 at 15 FPS to save room on the disc, or the developers got lazy and just used what they had and what worked. I've got STR to playback at 30 FPS without any issues. It works fine if you convert everything properly.

[Luckarusky]

I'm setting up a development kit for a student/friend who's looking to develop for the PSX. To help realize more modern concepts, I'm using the serial port to stream data at 3mb per second and upping the system ram to 4mb instead of 2. His dev unit will have the full 8mb as developers had back in the 90s.

So I'm curious. Between much better streaming at sky-high compacity, and the doubled default memory, could the PSX handle 640x480 video at 30fps? I know the video buffer isn't the same as primary ram, but this would enable data to be fed and swapped out a lot quicker than it's x2 CD drive.