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Last active March 27, 2024 05:07
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Videos for Legacy Computers
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readme.md

Download from youtube

yt-dlp <url> --check-all-formats

Make raw avi to convert for Video for Windows:

ffmpeg -i "Skibidi Toilet Full Song Music Video [6dMjCa0nqK0].webm" -vf "scale=320:240" -c:v rawvideo -c:a pcm_s16le skibidi_320_raw.avi

Make raw quicktime to convert with Quicktime Pro:

ffmpeg -i video.webm -vf "scale=320:240" -c:v qtrle -c:a pcm_s16be -pix_fmt rgb24 output.mov
  • Note the raw files are gigantic.
  • Use QuickTime 4 Pro (run with windows 95 compatability on Windows 10), export it as any of these
  • Works in QuickTime 2/Win16: Cinepak, Millions of Colors, Best quality, Frame Rate 12, Key frame: 24, Data rate 90 K/Second. Sound: IMA 4:1 Sample Rate 22.05 (or 11), Sample Size 16 or 8, channels 1
  • Doesn't display in QuickTime 2/Win16: Intel Indio 4.4 - this had a better appearance than Cinepak and is supported by QT 2 on paper.
  • Video - This uses too much CPU for Win16.

Other notes

  • The system requirements for QuickTime 4 were listed as:
  • System requirements for Windows-based systems are: Intel or compatible processor or any MPC2-compliant PC with minimum 66-MHz 486 processor; at least 16MB of RAM; Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT 4.0 system software. Sound Blaster or compatible sound card and speakers and DirectX version 3.0 or later are also recommended. Pentium processor required for streaming.
  • System requirements for Windows-based systems are: Intel or compatible processor or any MPC2-compliant PC with minimum 66-MHz 486 processor; at least 16MB of RAM; Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT 4.0 system software. Sound Blaster or compatible sound card and speakers and DirectX version 3.0 or later are also recommended. Pentium processor required for streaming.
  • https://www.tech-insider.org/digital-video/research/1999/0609.html
  • Myst (1994) uses QuickTime 2. It's 16-bit, requires 386DX/33, 486 recommended, 4MB RAM, Windows 3.1, DOS5 or later, SVGA (640x480x256, including the unaccelerated Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11 driver). This suggests acceptable performance using CinePak on much slower systems.
  • The Making of Myst video is cinepak, 240x180, 641 kb/s 12.88 fps with mono pcm audio, 11127 Hz, 1 channel, 89 kb/s. Presumably, one can watch this video on a the minimum machine that can run Myst.
  • I expect a slow Mac will do better than a slow PC.
  • Both bit depths of QuickTime 2.1.2 can coexist, as well as at least one more modern verison of QuickTime player. %WINDIR%\PLAY32.EXE is the 32-bit player, %WINDIR%\PLAYER.EXE is the 16-bit player.

Testing in 86Box with Windows 95 OSR2 and QuickTime 4 playing videos off a CD showed the following:

  • The videos were all 320x240 15fps limited to 120 KB/s bandwidth stored on a CD image. Playback was done at 640x480x16bpp unless noted otherwise.
  • ISA graphics are a significant bottleneck - while with a very fast CPU (Pentium MMX/233) it was possible to play Sorenson, the system was unresponsive while doing so. Cinepak played better, scaling a 320x240 video caused unsatisfactory performance. Switching to a PCI graphics card mitigated this.
  • Using the PCI Card and a slow CPU (Pentium 90MHz), the performance was extremely satisfactory with Cinepak, and very usable with Sorenson 320x240 video, scaling the video was fine.
  • Lowering from Socket 7 to Socket 4 with a Pentium OverDrive 83 resulted in CinePak still being very playable, a little stuttery with scaling. The Sorenson video played audio fine, the video was a bit slow. The software handled this relatively well. Switching from 16bpp to 8-bit (256 color) did not improve anything (playback of the Sorenson nor scaling a Cinepak video).
  • A 100MHZ i4DX2 486 was not significantly different than the Pentium OverDrive.
  • A 66 MHz i486SX2 66 MHz - the slowest CPU that meets QT4's requirements on paper - still played the Cinepak videos without any issue. It took a long time to open the player application.
  • A 33 MHZ i486SX played 320x240 15fps Cinepak videos fine in the 2.x player. It took an egrigiously long time to open QuickTimePlayer 4 (nearly a minute), and the playback was unacceptable, approximately 1 frame per second.
  • A 16 MHz i486SX played a low-action 320x240 cinepak video acceptably in 32-bit QuickTime 2, but a busy one dropped too many frames and sometimes the audio. Note that this system was below Windows 95's system requirements of a 25 MHz CPU. Adding a 487 didn't help. 25MHz i486DX was generally adequate, but with some performance issues with high motion videos.
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