Best And worst Quality FMV (Streaming video) on the Sega CD?

[kool kitty89]

Moved from this discussion ( http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthr...ok-audio/page3 ) as it fits better here:

Look I appreciate about Technical aspects and you're always spot on, but just have a look at both Video's and just going with what you see (not what you know Technically) Tell me which looks the best and the more impressive FMV


To me not only is the FMV window bigger it appears to be more smoother and more impressive imo.

Yes, and that's exactly what I addressed in my previous post: aesthetics (independent of any technical issues), and as I said, it varies by whom you ask. (some find both just as choppy while others find Road Avenger less choppy)

It's pretty obvious why RA's intro appears "smoother" at a glance: the source animation is mostly doen at quite low framerates with animation style catering to that.
Sonic CD's source animation OTOH, is extremely fast and smooth at high framerates, so it takes a much bigger hit in the conversion. (the Wolf Team logo is an evenmore extreme example of this -though personally, it looks very choppy to me, though a nice looking animation sequence overall)
Just look at them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2LMxG_dq9U (not technically Road Avenger/Blaster, but the same animation -and the best quality one on YT)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKMC1x5pU0o (from Sonic Gems)


There's also the Sonic Jam version, though that's lower quality (looks like it may be Cinepak, not sure).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odse1JjEaRI

And some better quality examples of the Sega CD versions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKyAS_jqLew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V0XIJOhgUA (this one's good for comparing the unscaled -square pixel- aspect ratio, and for not being zoomed in)
(I can't seem to find a good recording from real hardware though)
Plus this one for Sonic CD off real hardware:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BTvTKkBnwM (though the color saturation is too high, I can't seem to find any better examples)


Anyway, it's nothing to do with Wolf Team's skills and Sonic CD would look no better (at least in terms of motion) if presented in Wolf Team's format; in fact it would be slightly worse, but the difference between 7.5 and 8 FPS is almost negligible.
The significant differences between the 2 video formats is that RA uses a lower res output (so it's stretched wider on the TV) and moderately larger screen size (208x176 vs 256x112) at the expense of considerably lower audio quality (16kHz vs 32 kHz -granted, most FMV opts for 16 kHz with a few using 22 kHz and maybe 11 kHz, I think Sonic is actually the only one with 32 kHz).

OTOH, one could argue (in total speculation) that Wolf Team (or someone else in general) would have made different compromises for Sonic CD's animation that would cater better to the animation in question. (like dropping the screen size much below that in RA along with the 16 kHz audio to allow a more reasonable framerate -even 10 FPS would be a major improvement, but 15 FPS might be preferable)
The format used for Night Trap and Sewer Shark (not identical, but very close) probably would have catered quite well to Sonic CD's intro (and obviously, such animation could be optimized better for much less dithering -but still have more color than RA or Sonic CD since you're using all 4 palettes rather than 1).
Or if you wanted large screen size but low resolution was OK, you could drop the resolution in one or both directions (H/V) and scale up to double the height and/or width of the pixels for a large size and reasonable framerate (without compression) at the expense of blockier pixels. (and/or you could just use compression, especially since heavily posterized images like used in Sonic CD and RA would cater very well to simplistic run length encoding)
Bus this is all really tangent to the argument of Sonic CD and Road Avenger in particular. (both could be done far better, though Sonic obviously has more still to gain due to the much greater content of its source animation)

[Team Andromeda]

There's also the Sonic Jam version, though that's lower quality (looks like it may be Cinepak, not sure)

I have the Japanese version and its TrueMotion

Anyway, it's nothing to do with Wolf Team's skills and Sonic CD would look no better (at least in terms of motion) if presented in Wolf Team's format; in fact it would be slightly worse, but the difference between 7.5 and 8 FPS is almost negligible.

Bar being a bigger Window eh ?-You need to play both games and see how small the Sonic FMV window really is; There is no excuse Wolf Team were a tiny 3rd party Team Sonic Team were a major Team inside SEGA Japan and have all the money and tools at their disposal and the FMV in Sonic CD was shockingly poor, more so when compared to the FMV window SEGA America and EA were able to produce .Adv of Batman and Robin as a better FMV window than some of the launch Saturn games imo

looking over that, if the Mega CD was incapable of handling fast and smooth animation, why even spend all that time and money on producing such a intro for the Mega CD ?. Not matter which way you cut it, SONIC CD should have been a better showcase for the Mega CD in terms of FMV, PCM soundchip and the ASIC chip. It's a shame as the game in it's self is the best 2D Sonic game I've ever played, the Time Travel idea was inspired

[kool kitty89]

Bar being a bigger Window eh ?-You need to play both games and see how small the Sonic FMV window really is; There is no excuse Wolf Team were a tiny 3rd party Team Sonic Team were a major Team inside SEGA Japan and have all the money and tools at their disposal and the FMV in Sonic CD was shockingly poor, more so when compared to the FMV window SEGA America and EA were able to produce .Adv of Batman and Robin as a better FMV window than some of the launch Saturn games imo

I already addressed all of that in terms of both quality from a viewer's standpoint, and from a technical standpoint. (and have watched both, back to back, on real hardware on TV and in emulation -both at the proper sizes, unlike Youtube where most of the Road Avenger examples are very zoomed-in)

The audio quality being so much higher on Sonic CD is the main issue (it's at least double the quality), and the slightly higher framerate and higher resolution mode make up the rest of the reasons. (if running at the low res mode, Sonic CD would fill the horizontal screen into overscan)

Again, both examples are relatively poor and simplistic examples of FMV, just with different trade-offs made within those limitations (namely different audio quality and slightly different framerates).
And IMO (assuming they couldn't manage any compression -which almost no Japanese developers did aside from Game Arts), they'd have been better off using a smaller FMV window with sonic CD along with lower quality audio (probably the common 16 kHz used in most other games, or maybe 22 kHz) to allow a decent framerate for the fast-paced animation seen in Sonic's video sequences.

It really is rather silly not to use any compression though, especially since common lossless format would work very well with the heavily posterized/low color animation in question.
Otoh, live action stuff like Tenka Fubu, Night Trap, and Sewer Shark are difficult to compress with those methods or tend to look horrible if preprocessed to poserize enough for that -like in Stellar Fire, Microcosm, or Novastorm- so those being uncompressed is more forgivable. Ground Zero Texas is very moderately compressed using lossless video and Sewer Shark is supposed to be but I really can't see why given the resolutions and framerates used -identical to Night Trap. And, actually, Sewer Shark and Night Trap probably could have afforded to use lower framertates at higher resolutions given how much later stuff used 10 or 12 FPS -10 makes it nice for PAL/NTSC conversion too- where you don't have extremely fast motion as in Sonic -though 10 FPS would still be a notable improvement for Sonic too)

They could also just use a low res screen at higher framerate and scale it up, but if the developers were incapable of managing even simple RLE compression, I don't see them attempting that either . . .





If Sonic CD were to use the exact format of Road Avenger, it would sound much worse and look just as choppy (technically worse, but you can't really see it), but it would have a moderately higher resolution and a considerably larger window on-screen due to the low res video mode stretching it 25% wider. (resulting effectively in a 60% larger video screen even though the resolution is only 27% higher)
Though it should be noted that Wolf Team did at least use the CD bandwidth slightly more efficiently as (assuming they used no worse than 16 kHz audio) the video comes close to maxing out what's possible with uncompressed frame by frame animation, about 99.9% used. (which Sonic CD uses about 95.6% of it -in both cases assuming 150 kB/s -or 153,600 bytes per second- rather than the possible mode 2 data rate of ~170 kB/s which few games used, presumably due to limited documentation and limited error correction -I think Silpheed may use that format)

looking over that, if the Mega CD was incapable of handling fast and smooth animation, why even spend all that time and money on producing such a intro for the Mega CD ?. Not matter which way you cut it, SONIC CD should have been a better showcase for the Mega CD in terms of FMV, PCM soundchip and the ASIC chip. It's a shame as the game in it's self is the best 2D Sonic game I've ever played, the Time Travel idea was inspired

It is capable, but either not at moderate to high resolutions or not without using compression. In both cases, it was mostly western developers who opted for small enough windows for decent framerates and/or implemented compression (Game Arts being among the few exceptions -and also probably the only JP publisher to use more than 16 color video, in fact using multiple palettes from the start with Tenka Fubu -a very similar format to Night Trap, but trading resolution for framerate and apparently somewhat less efficient packing of data among some other minor differences).
I have no idea why that ended up the case, but it's certainly unfortunate. (all those examples of FM in Japanese games that could have been double or more the framerate -and higher res in some cases- with more color, etc)

This is also why I mentioned it was a shame that SoA didn't put a major effort into re-doing the FMV for Sonic CD rather than just changing the soundtrack. (even using their early Night Trap style schemes could have had better trade-offs made, but better would have been using some of the early compression schemes implemented in 1993 -especially since Sonic's animation would tend to compress much better than the likes of Ground Zero Texas's live action video, that or even Cinepak if it was ready in time -Dracula Unleashed seems to have used that in '93)

[Team Andromeda]

Again, both examples are relatively poor and simplistic examples of FMV, just with different trade-offs made within those limitations

. I'm not even making out otherwise . I'm saying that Road Adv FMV looked the more impressive and run in the Bigger window. Given that Road Adv was a early 1992 Mega CD game by a tiny 3rd party, and Sonic CD was a massive Big Budget game for one of the top Team inside SEGA Japan it was nothing more than a disappointment. Sonic CD should at least been up to Devastator standards

This is also why I mentioned it was a shame that SoA didn't put a major effort into re-doing the FMV for Sonic CD rather than just changing the soundtrack.

yes when you look at the FMV SEGA of America were able to use in Batman & Robin or what the like of Rocket Science games did in C&D (some of the best FMV I've ever seen in a SEGA CD game) it was poor around

especially since Sonic's animation would tend to compress much better than the likes of Ground Zero Texas's live action video, that or even Cinepak if it was ready in time -Dracula Unleashed seems to have used that in '93

Cinepak was finished in time tbh , SEGA dubed it TrueMotion at the time

[bgvanbur]

Cinepak was finished in time tbh , SEGA dubed it TrueMotion at the time

Cinepak was first seen in October/November of 1993. Sonic CD was released in September 1993. If they had already finished the FMV for Sonic CD before Cinepak was usable (which is very possible since they probably had a longer development time than some of the early Cinepak games), they would have been no reason to convert it to Cinepak since the current FMV format was already tested.

TrueMotion was for Sega Saturn http://segaretro.org/Truemotion. TruVideo was the early Sega CD movie format, and was still used when they started using Cinepak for Sega.

[Bastardcat]

The worst? Corpse Killer.
The best? That game with Ned Beatty in it.
...Stupid sexy Ned Beatty!

[Team Andromeda]

Cinepak was first seen in October/November of 1993

No it was 1st shown off in the CES Summer 1993 gaming show and where SEGA rep's dubbed it as 'Truemotion' . Where SEGA were showing off games like Prize Fighter, Double Swtich, Joe Montana ECT all using the new Codec.

[bgvanbur]

The earliest Sonic CD prototype (1993 May 13) had FMV fully working, so who knows how much before that is was finished. Whereas the CES is in 1993 June so Cinepak may not have been ready in time for Sonic CD to be able to use it. Even in my March 1993 issue of EGM has both Sonic CD and Joe Montana FMV frames. My real point was that Sonic CD was probably already working on the FMV prior to Cinepak being completed.

[Team Andromeda]

Whereas the CES is in 1993 June so Cinepak may not have been ready in time for Sonic CD to be able to use it. Even in my March 1993 issue of EGM has both Sonic CD and Joe Montana FMV frames. My real point was that Sonic CD was probably already working on the FMV prior to Cinepak being completed.

Seriously how hard would it have been to ditch Sonic CD intro codec and use the all new Cinepak- Seeing as SEGA had already done the deal and was showing games off in a very complete state in the summer of 1993 (were games were far from just starting production) more so as games like Joe Monatana used Cinepak it's self, If not for the Japanese version, it should have been used for the Pal/USA versions . I'm not sure if any SOJ game ever used cinepak on the Mega CD and for the life of me, I can't work out why

[bgvanbur]

Why would they ditch a completely implemented and tested codec? They already tested the current codec and it worked. Adding cinepak, not only do you have to reencode the video (and due to the compression the reason to use Cinepak is that you can increase the quality), verify the movie under its new form looks right (so maybe tweaking frames and such), and make sure the Cinepak code does not interfere with other aspects of the game through testing. When you are trying to get a game out the door, you don't waste time reworking already working things without a very good reason. If you keep trying to perfect a game, it turns into Duke Nukem Forever.

[Team Andromeda]

Why would they ditch a completely implemented and tested codec? They already tested the current codec and it worked.

To give you the best quality playback and try and show the animation at it's very best ?, given so much of the animation and detail was lost, never mind the speed, smoothness or poor size of the window .
I rather that to SOA reworking one of the best soundtracks ever made and seriously can't for the life of me seeing a Intro to the star & end of the game affecting the game code at all. Sure they may have been issues with space, but didn't Cinepak on the Mega CD offer better compression at a rate of 5:1 for animations

[kool kitty89]

. I'm not even making out otherwise . I'm saying that Road Adv FMV looked the more impressive and run in the Bigger window. Given that Road Adv was a early 1992 Mega CD game by a tiny 3rd party, and Sonic CD was a massive Big Budget game for one of the top Team inside SEGA Japan it was nothing more than a disappointment. Sonic CD should at least been up to Devastator standards

True, but also remember that such FMV continued to be the standard fare for basically all Japanese developers for the entire lifespan of the MCD. That shouldn't have been the case, but since it is, SoJ being no different is hardly surprising. (Game Arts was an exception to be sure, and they were also an exception for pushing the MCD in general)

yes when you look at the FMV SEGA of America were able to use in Batman & Robin or what the like of Rocket Science games did in C&D (some of the best FMV I've ever seen in a SEGA CD game) it was poor around

I still think Dragon's Lair looks better than Batman and Robbin (and B&R could have been even more omptimized/customized that Dragon's Lair since the animation was being made for the system specifically).
The dithering and color optimization for Dragon's Lair and Space Ace were among the very best of any MCD video IMO. (Batman and Robin is certainly good too, though not really more so than LoadStar, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Road Rash, etc)

Cinepak was finished in time tbh , SEGA dubed it TrueMotion at the time

Are you sure it's Truemotion? I've seen plenty of refrences to Truvideo (many cinepak games used that label), but Truemotion refers only to Duck's later (quite nice) video codecs for PC/Saturn/etc. (maybe 3DO, which would explain the relatively high quality of some 3DO FMV compared to highcolor cinepak)

Cinepak was first seen in October/November of 1993. Sonic CD was released in September 1993. If they had already finished the FMV for Sonic CD before Cinepak was usable (which is very possible since they probably had a longer development time than some of the early Cinepak games), they would have been no reason to convert it to Cinepak since the current FMV format was already tested.

Since the US release had been intentionally delayed for enhanced content (new soundtrack),partof which had actually involved replacing the PCM tracks in the FMV, and the final release was late November, it could have made sense for the North American release to replace the video entirely with cinepak.

OTOH, even if Cinepak wasn't ready in time, SoA's older formats could have been major improvements over the existing Sonic CD animations. (especially given how such animation should compress much better using the LZ based schemes than live action stuff does)

Or, in the extreme, even using a Night Trap/Sewer Shark quality format, which technically isn't making much better use of the CD bandwidth than Sonic CD does, you'd arguably have a better video due to the much higher framerate capturing the fast motion of the source video far better (not to mention better color optimization).

Using such a low framerate was a bad trade-off for Sonic CD, in fact you can see they actually chose to slow down the animation a fair bit so that it didn't get even choppier. (they did that by removing an entire segment and increasing the duration of the rest of the sequence -the time around where Sonic runs through the log is missing in the MCD version, but present in the PC, Saturn, and GEMS versions)

In all those SoA examples, lower quality (usually 16 kHz) audio was used, so that would be a disadvantage unless the 32 kHz audio bandwidth was retained (compromising for video space) or if ADPCM was used to do 32 kHz at 16 kB/s. (but SoA wasn't using audio compression at all, and AFIK no video actually used compressed audio for whatever reason)

TrueMotion was for Sega Saturn http://segaretro.org/Truemotion. TruVideo was the early Sega CD movie format, and was still used when they started using Cinepak for Sega.

Wasn't TruVideo also used as a label on some later games using Cinepak?

Why would they ditch a completely implemented and tested codec? They already tested the current codec and it worked. Adding cinepak, not only do you have to reencode the video (and due to the compression the reason to use Cinepak is that you can increase the quality), verify the movie under its new form looks right (so maybe tweaking frames and such), and make sure the Cinepak code does not interfere with other aspects of the game through testing. When you are trying to get a game out the door, you don't waste time reworking already working things without a very good reason. If you keep trying to perfect a game, it turns into Duke Nukem Forever.

They wasted time replacing the soundtrack (including in FMV) for various reasons (including showing off the new multimedia studio) where doing the same for the FMV would have had far more merit (if not doing both) and would have shown off the multimedia studio's achievements significantly more. (including outshining their Japanese counterparts by a huge margin)

Though, again, Cinepak wasn't the only option . . . the various preceding SGA/TruVideo formats also should have been major improvements over the Japanese version.

[bgvanbur]

Wasn't TruVideo also used as a label on some later games using Cinepak?

Yes, TruVideo was used for both the old SGA format and the Cinepak for Sega format. I meant to say that, but I can see I didn't exactly write it that way.

[kool kitty89]

I wonder why SoJ didn't collaborate more with SoA in general . . . or at least get assistance in areas where the other was ahead. Perhaps it was arrogance/stubbornness (more likelyat the management level than program/development staff) or perhaps general difficulty in inter-region management, or (more likely) a bit of both.

In any case, it's a shame that there wasn't such collaborative efforts (if not full collaboration, at least sharing resources efficiently), and that obviously has implications far beyond video encoding.

[Team Andromeda]

SoJ being no different is hardly surprising. (Game Arts was an exception to be sure, and they were also an exception for pushing the MCD in general)

SEGA Japan should have been leading the field , but they were beyond hopeless when it came to FMV video on the Mega CD. The FMV video to the likes of Super League CD ECT is just laughable.

I still think Dragon's Lair looks better than Batman and Robbin

Dragon's Lair looks great, but for my money it's FIFA, Batman&Robin and Cadillac and Dinosaurs that looked the most impressive on the Mega CD in terms of FMV.

Are you sure it's Truemotion? I've seen plenty of refrences to Truvideo

Yes sorry

Since the US release had been intentionally delayed for enhanced content (new soundtrack),partof which had actually involved replacing the PCM tracks in the FMV, and the final release was late November, it could have made sense for the North American release to replace the video entirely with cinepak

Sonic CD and Joe Montana came out with in weeks of each other. SOA already done the deal and was using the new Codec in the spring on 1993. They really should have gone to SEGA Japan and say we've got this much better codec, use it for the FMV in Sonic . Mind you knowing Sonic Team and SEGA Japan they were too pigheaded to admit SOA had the better codec.

Using such a low framerate was a bad trade-off for Sonic CD, in fact you can see they actually chose to slow down the animation

It wasn't just the smoothness or the animation , it was that so much of the detail was completely cut out too. If one look at Devastator original source Video a lot of the detail was still kept in the Mega CD FMV, in the Sonic CD FMV intro, loads of detail is cut out


Mind you FMV intro is great for a couple of viewings, pretty much pointless afterwards . The bigger let-downs for me, was Sonic CD made no real use or really took advantage with the Mega CD ASIC or PCM chips In-game . When every level or at least every boss battle should have been an showcase for the ASIC chip. It's pretty sh8t and embarrassing that ports of Chuck Rock II, Puggsy were a better showcase for the Mega CD ASIC chip in Game , than Sonic CD.