Sega CD / Mega CD FMV Resolution thread

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10-03-2017, 06:46 AM
matteus

Sega CD / Mega CD FMV game video resolution thread

Hi folks,
I'm doing a lot of FMV based stuff at the moment and I'd like to try and document FMV game video resolutions so I can test them out myself and see what they would offer frame wise on a 32MEG Megadrive cart :)

Released in 1992

Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective - ICOM Simulations
Video-player: 128 x 96 (16 x 12) - 192 tiles per frame

Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective Vol. II - ICOM Simulations
Video-player: 128 x 96 (16 x 12) - 192 tiles per frame

Road Avenger - Wolf Team

Cobra Command - Wolf Team - 4 Palettes - 1 Plane

Intro: 192 x 160 (24 x 20) - 480 tiles per frame
Gameplay: 192 x 160 (24 x 20) - 480 tiles per frame

INXS: Make My Video - Digital Pictures

Intro/Cutscenes: 176 x 104 (22 x 13) - 286 tiles per frame

Kriss Kross: Make My Video - Digital Pictures

Intro/Cutscenes: 176 x 104 (22 x 13) - 286 tiles per frame

Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch: Make My Video - Digital Pictures

Intro/Cutscenes: 176 x 104 (22 x 13) - 286 tiles per frame

Night Trap - Digital Pictures

Intro/Cutscenes: 168 x 104 (21 x 13) - 273 tiles per frame
Gameplay: 168 x 104 (21 x 13) - 273 tiles per frame

Power Factory featuring C + C Music Factory: Make My Video - Digital Pictures

Intro/Cutscenes: 176 x 104 (22 x 13) - 286 tiles per frame

Sewer Shark

Intro: 168 x 104 (21 x 13) - 273 tiles per frame
Communication Scenes: 144 x 104 (18 x 13) - 234 tiles per frame
Gameplay: 128 x 224 (16 x 28) - 448 tiles per frame

Released in 1993

Time Gal - Wolf Team

Intro: 192 x 160 (24 x 20) - 480 tiles per frame
Gameplay: 192 x 160 (24 x 20) - 480 tiles per frame

Revenge of the Ninja - Wolf Team

Double Switch - Digital Pictures

Intro: 208 x 144 (26 x 18) - 468 tiles per frame - 3 Palettes - 1 Plane
Gameplay: 192 x 136 (24 x 17) - 408 tiles per frame - 3 Palettes - 1 Plane

Mad Dog McCree - American Laser Games

Intro: 240 x 200 (30 x 25) - 750 tiles per frame
Gameplay: 240 x 200 (30 x 25) - 750 tiles per frame

Dracula Unleashed (1993) - ICOM Simulations

Intro: ? - ? tiles per frame
Gameplay: 256 x 152 (32 x 19) - 608 tiles per frame

Ground Zero Texas (1993) - Digital Pictures

Intro: 200 x 144 (25 x 18) - 450 tiles per frame
Gameplay: 192 x 128 (24 x 16) - 384 tiles per frame

NFL's Greatest: San Francisco vs. Dallas 1978-1993 - Park Place Productions

Who Shot Johnny Rock? - American Laser Games

Space Ace - Epicenter Interactive

NHL '94 - Electronic Arts

Intro: 256 x 224 (32 x 28) - 896 tiles per frame

Released in 1994

Tomcat Alley - The Code Monkeys

Corpse Killer - Digital Pictures - 4 Palettes - 1 Plane

Intro: 192 x 136 (24 x 17) - 408 tiles per frame
Gameplay: ?

Crime Patrol - American Laser Games - 3 Palettes - 1 Plane

Intro: 288 x 200 (36 x 25) - 900 tiles per frame
Gameplay: 288 x 200 (36 x 25) - 900 tiles per frame

Dragon's Lair - Don Bluth Studios - 4 Palettes - 2 Planes

Intro: 288 x 192 (36 x 24) - 864 tiles per frame
Gameplay: 288 x 192 (36 x 24) - 864 tiles per frame

Kids on Site - Digital Pictures

Intro: 160 x 144 (20 x 18) - 360 tiles per frame
Gameplay: 256 x 144 (32 x 18) - 576 tiles per frame
Cutscene: 160 x 144 (20 x 18) - 360 tiles per frame

Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine - Rocket Science Games

Intro: 240 x 208 (30 x 26) - 780 tiles per frame
Gameplay: 240 x 208 (30 x 26) - 780 tiles per frame

Masked Rider - Toei Animation

Midnight Raiders - Stargate Productions

Intro/Cutscene: 256 x 224 (32 x 28) - 896 tiles per frame
Gameplay: 256 x 224 (32 x 28) - 896 tiles per frame

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - Orion Technologies

Intro: 248 x 208 (31 x 26) - 806 tiles per frame
- 4 Palettes - 1 Plane

Gameplay: 248 x 206 (31 x 26) - 806 tiles per frame

Mad Dog II: The Lost Gold - American Laser Games

Intro: 288 x 200 (36 x 25) - 900 tiles per frame - 3 Palettes - 1 Plane (2 Planes in some sections)
Gameplay: 288 x 200 (36 x 25) - 900 tiles per frame - 3 Palettes - 1 Plane (2 Planes in some sections)e

FIFA International Soccer - Electronic Arts

Intro: 256 x 224 (32 x 28) - 896 tiles per frame - 4 Palettes - 1 Plane

Supreme Warrior - Digital Pictures

Slam City with Scottie Pippen - Digital Pictures

Star Strike????

Released in 1995

Fahrenheit - Infogrames

Prize Fighter - Digital Pictures

Intro: 240 x 144 (30 x 18) - 540 tiles per frame
Gameplay: 112 x 112 (14 x 14) - 196 tiles per frame

Wirehead - The Code Monkeys / MGM Interactive

Intro/Cutscene: 256 x 224 (32 x 28) - 896 tiles per frame
Gameplay: 256 x 224 (32 x 28) - 896 tiles per frame - 3 Palettes - 1 Plane

Surgical Strike - The Code Monkeys

Intro/Cutscene: 256 x 224 (32 x 28) - 896 tiles per frame
Gameplay: 256 x 224 (32 x 28) - 896 tiles per frame

Adventures of Batman & Robin, The

Cutscene: 256 x 192 (32 x 24) - 768 tiles per frame - 4 Palettes - 1 Plane
10-20-2017, 08:56 PM
matteus

Starting to make some headway with this! I'm planning to examine everything I can about each of these games and the way they display fmv such as number of palettes and background planes used.

I'm very well aware that the tile totals aren't representative. For instance Mad Dog 2's 900 tiles per frame would require a ridiculous amount of DMA and is probably not representative of what's really going in the codec.

I'll gather as much as I can from observations. I'm not up to ROM hacking yet.... May be one day ;)
10-21-2017, 07:14 AM
Team Andromeda

Is that True for Tim Gal, There is a noticeable difference from the intro to In-Game . I thought the FMV used in Dracula Unleashed, Cadillac and Dinosaurs and Adv Of Batman 8 Robin to be up there with the best on the Mega CD. EA also did some wonderful full-screen intros to Fifa and NHL Hockey 94 on the Mega CD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hofuau0lGU8&t=260s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxACPH0u_kE&t=242s
10-21-2017, 07:20 AM
matteus

I think Prize Fighters layout and 112 x 112 FMV resolution could be a good fit to make something a tad more playable on a 32MEG cart. One frame of animation fits into a single DMA effectively allowing for 50 / 60 FPS on PAL/NTSC. I wonder if that's Prize Fighters frame rate o.O Surely not?
10-21-2017, 07:24 AM
matteus

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

Is that True for Tim Gal, There is a noticeable difference from the intro to In-Game.

Time Gal is deceptive as the second scroll plane with the interface covers some of the view. The video size and resolution is identical...
10-21-2017, 07:28 AM
Team Andromeda

Quote:

Originally Posted by matteus

Time Gal is deceptive as the second scroll plane with the interface covers some of the view. The video size and resolution is identical...

Its just the intro seems far smoother and grainy compared to the In-Game Gfx which is much cleaner, more colourful but looks less smooth. I thought it was steaming in the gfx and displaying them almost like its real-time kind of like the that used in Lunar II, Son Of Chuck II
10-21-2017, 07:46 AM
matteus

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

Its just the intro seems far smoother and grainy compared to the In-Game Gfx which is much cleaner, more colourful but looks less smooth. I thought it was steaming in the gfx and displaying them almost like its real-time kind of like the that used in Lunar II, Son Of Chuck II

Differing quality is because the intro is straight up source video, while the in game animation is redrawn source video.
10-21-2017, 10:29 AM
Team Andromeda

Quote:

Originally Posted by matteus

Differing quality is because the intro is straight up source video, while the in game animation is redrawn source video.

I get that part, but Time Gal In-Game seems to suffer none of the FMV grain found in all other Wolfteam FMV games
10-21-2017, 10:53 AM
matteus

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

I get that part, but Time Gal In-Game seems to suffer none of the FMV grain found in all other Wolfteam FMV games

As I said it wouldn't because its all redrawn. No artefacts meant they could use lossless compression and achieve very good results!
10-21-2017, 10:57 AM
Team Andromeda

Quote:

Originally Posted by matteus

As I said it wouldn't because its all redrawn. No artefacts meant they could use lossless compression and achieve very good results!

True, but I#m sure Cobra Command was redawn too. I wonder why Wolfteam didn't use it for later titles like Revenge of the Nina (which is one of the best FMV games going)
10-21-2017, 12:08 PM
matteus

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

True, but I#m sure Cobra Command was redawn too. I wonder why Wolfteam didn't use it for later titles like Revenge of the Nina (which is one of the best FMV games going)

No idea probably a rushed job! I'd imagine it's a costly process to redraw animation too! It looks like they only redrew parts then dithered the rest from the original footage.
10-22-2017, 05:13 AM
Team Andromeda

Quote:

Originally Posted by matteus

No idea probably a rushed job! I'd imagine it's a costly process to redraw animation too! It looks like they only redrew parts then dithered the rest from the original footage.

There are parts that are look redrawn. Its funny Wolfteam get so much credit for FMV on the Mega CD, when they weren't the best for quality Mega CD FMV. I know many people list Cobra as the 1st Mega CD game to use FMV, but it was the Masters that are GameArts that did with Tenka Fubu
10-22-2017, 05:43 AM
matteus

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

There are parts that are look redrawn. Its funny Wolfteam get so much credit for FMV on the Mega CD, when they weren't the best for quality Mega CD FMV. I know many people list Cobra as the 1st Mega CD game to use FMV, but it was the Masters that are GameArts that did with Tenka Fubu

Wolf team tended to opt for colour reduction rather than dithering :)
10-22-2017, 11:32 AM
Mega Drive Bowlsey

Man I love that intro to FIFA International Soccer on the Mega CD! It really gets me in the mood for the World Cup.
10-22-2017, 03:13 PM
matteus

It's interesting when you start examining how each video is done :) It's as many people have told me previously a single scroll plane with multiple palettes! Basically no 8x8 tile exceeds 15 colours :)
10-23-2017, 08:43 AM
bultje112

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mega Drive Bowlsey

Man I love that intro to FIFA International Soccer on the Mega CD! It really gets me in the mood for the World Cup.

it's the same one as the 3do version, but the 3do version has much better quality fmv and contains over 1 hour of fmv from older world cups (1954-1990). it also is a completely different game.
10-29-2017, 04:12 AM
Mega Drive Bowlsey

Quote:

Originally Posted by bultje112

it's the same one as the 3do version, but the 3do version has much better quality fmv and contains over 1 hour of fmv from older world cups (1954-1990). it also is a completely different game.

Ah OK, I did not know that. Considering that the Panasonic 3DO was about as popular as anthrax I must confess to not knowing much at all about it's library of games.
11-01-2017, 05:22 AM
bultje112

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mega Drive Bowlsey

Ah OK, I did not know that. Considering that the Panasonic 3DO was about as popular as anthrax I must confess to not knowing much at all about it's library of games.

neither did I until I stumbled upon one 8 years ago. awesome system with many unique (some exclusive) ea titles.
01-23-2018, 11:21 AM
bgvanbur

Back when I was decoded Cinepak for Sega CD, I made this spreadsheet of all the Cinepak movies I decoded which include their resolution among many other characteristics (many of them require understanding the cinepak format but there are things like palettes used, frames per second, compression ratio that are useful):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x8m8yb1ai6...files.xls?dl=0
01-23-2018, 01:48 PM
matteus

That is absolutely amazing bgvanbur! have you got the codec working out of interest?
01-23-2018, 04:54 PM
bgvanbur

Here is the Cinepak source along with a PDF that details how the codec works, summary of how it is used at a high level and brief overview of a few games usage. It also includes the source the most widely used version of cinepak for sega cd (since it went under several revisions).
https://www.romhacking.net/documents/740/

I have posted links to various sample Cinepak for Sega CD examples but they are out of date since dropbox changed it URLs for sharing files. So here is an example with all the source I used to build it (I built it with my SCDTools) featuring Nyan Cat.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wid6ts4cls...ATSRC.ZIP?dl=0
01-24-2018, 04:58 AM
matteus

If this worked with C and the Megadrive alone I'd use it in the blink of an eye. I'll have a look at your examples and see if they make sense to me.
02-08-2018, 04:34 AM
Paul Jensen

Quote:

Originally Posted by matteus

It's interesting when you start examining how each video is done :) It's as many people have told me previously a single scroll plane with multiple palettes! Basically no 8x8 tile exceeds 15 colours :)

The Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective games use some tricks to get up to 32 colors per tile, but in a limited way.

The game displays video using three palettes, three layers, and highlight/shadow mode. A full 4-bpp frame goes on Plane B, and then an identical frame (with the bottom 4 lines of each tile made transparent) goes on top of it on Plane A. This allows for two palettes to be used on a single 8x8 block. The layers are displayed in shadow mode. On top of that goes a layer of 1bpp sprites in highlight mode to brighten up certain areas of the image. The max number of colors seems to be around 52 using this method, so it allows for more than what's available in the 3 palettes.

As for the actual data, you've got 1024 bytes of 8-bit unsigned audio @15360Hz, then 6144 bytes of uncompressed 4bpp pattern data shared by Layers A and B, 1536 bytes of 1bpp pattern data for the sprite layer, 48 bytes of 2-bit palette map data for Layer B, 48 bytes of 2-bit palette map data for Layer A, and then 96 bytes of palette data in standard 16-bit 0BGR format. A total of 8896 bytes/frame. At 15 fps, that's 133,440 bytes/sec, which is near the maximum bandwidth of a single-speed CD-ROM drive.

The Digital Pictures games use a lot of interesting tricks, too. If you're interested to see how they work, you can check out the source code for my program SCAT. It can convert any video from any Digital Pictures game on any platform, as far as I know.

Media in DP games are stored in chunks spread out across multiple sectors, and in lots of cases (notably Sewer Shark, Prize Fighter, and Supreme Warrior), there are multiple streams going on at once. Here's a list of the different types of chunks (when I started writing the program, I only had info on chunk types $A1 and $C1. :-)):

Code:

Video81 = &H81 'Macroblock encoded indexed 8bpp video (All 32-bit Digital Pictures ports) [!] Video82 = &H82 'Macroblock encoded indexed 8bpp video (extensionless files in DOS and Mac ports) [?!] 'NOTE: These chunks actually have no type code -- it was added by me FileHeader85 = &H85 'Appears at beginning of extensionless files in DOS and Mac ports [?!] Video8A = &H8A 'Macroblock encoded indexed 8bpp video (Night Trap DOS .AVC files) [?!] Tileset99 = &H99 'LZ-compressed 15 bpp tile set with 8192-byte window size and base 1 copy count (Saturn ports) [!] AudioA1 = &HA1 '8-bit sign/magnitude PCM [!] AudioA2 = &HA2 '8-bit sign/magnitude PCM (3DO and Saturn ports) [!] AudioA3 = &HA3 '8-bit unsigned PCM (extensionless files in DOS and Mac ports) [!] AudioAA = &HAA '8-bit sign/magnitude PCM (Night Trap DOS .AVC files) [?!] VideoC1 = &HC1 'Raw (Night Trap SCD, Sewer Shark, Corpse Killer SCD) [!] VideoC2 = &HC2 'Pattern generator encoded (Corpse Killer SCD, Slam City, Supreme Warrior, Kids on Site) [!?] VideoC4 = &HC4 'Interframe version of C2 (Slam City) [!?] VideoC6 = &HC6 'LZ compressed version of C1 with 8192-byte window size and base 0 copy count (Night Trap SCD, Sewer Shark, Make My Video) [!] VideoC7 = &HC7 'Same as C6 but with base 1 copy count (Prize Fighter) [!] VideoC8 = &HC8 'Same as C6 but with pixels swapped on even lines for better compression (Sewer Shark, Make My Video) [!] VideoC9 = &HC9 'Same as C8 but with base 1 copy count (Double Switch) [!] VideoCB = &HCB 'Same as C6 but with 4096-byte window size and base 1 copy count (Prize Fighter, Double Switch "DPLOGO", Corpse Killer 32X) [!] VideoCD = &HCD 'Same as C8 but with 4096-byte window size and base 1 copy count (Double Switch) [!] VideoD1 = &HD1 'Raw with encoded tile map, and no palette data, used for enemy death animations (Sewer Shark) [!] VideoD2 = &HD2 'Same as D1 but with palette data (Slam City, Supreme Warrior) [!] VideoD3 = &HD3 'Raw animation frame with palette and pixel offset data (Corpse Killer SCD / 32X, Slam City) [!] VideoD4 = &HD4 'LZ compressed version of D3 with 4096-byte window size and base 1 copy count (Corpse Killer SCD / 32X, Slam City) [!] VideoD5 = &HD5 'LZ compressed version of D2 with 4096-byte window size and base 1 copy count (Supreme Warrior) [!] VideoD7 = &HD7 'Macroblock encoded version of D3 (Corpse Killer Saturn) [!] VideoE7 = &HE7 'Raw/LZ Compressed tri-frame with 4096-byte window size and base 1 copy count (Make My Video series "*BIG.SGA" files) [!] VideoE8 = &HE8 'Special compressed keyframe (Ground Zero Texas) [!] VideoE9 = &HE9 'Special compressed interframe (Ground Zero Texas) [!] HeaderF0 = &HF0 'Sequence header (Slam City) [!?] ContainerF1 = &HF1 'Container for other chunks (Slam City, Supreme Warrior) [!] HeaderF2 = &HF2 'Video chunks (Slam City, and in other games as *.F2 files) [?] 'HeaderF2 = &HF2 'Header for multi-part chunks of type $99 (Saturn ports) [!] ContainerF3 = &HF3 'Container for multi-part $99 chunks in Saturn ports [!] ContainerF9 = &HF9 'Container for $8A and $AA chunks in (Night Trap DOS .AVC files) [?!] FooterFF = &HFF 'Appears after last chunk in a clip (Supreme Warrior, others) [!]

The games that use type $C2 probably have the best looking video of the 16-bit ports, but the codec is also really complicated. It uses a combination of macroblock encoding, self-modifying code, and the Sega CD's built-in pattern generator feature to decode tile data. Basically, you write some pattern and color data to a specific address in memory, and then the Sega CD spits out a tile at another address. It took me a while to reverse-engineer it, and I had to learn Motorola 68000 assembly to do it. :-)

Hope this info helps.
02-09-2018, 11:13 AM
matteus

That is one massive brain dump! Intrigued by the suggestions you're making about the codec! I've turned on and off layers / sprites and seen no noticeable differences in the Sherlock games.

Will need to have a real nose now!
02-10-2018, 09:04 AM
Paul Jensen

Quote:

Originally Posted by matteus

That is one massive brain dump! Intrigued by the suggestions you're making about the codec! I've turned on and off layers / sprites and seen no noticeable differences in the Sherlock games.

I used Gens KMod to toggle different layers and look at how everything was stored in VRAM, which is how I was able to figure it out.
02-04-2020, 01:15 PM
matteus

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul Jensen

I used Gens KMod to toggle different layers and look at how everything was stored in VRAM, which is how I was able to figure it out.

Could really do with having a chat with Paul! Does he still come on the forums?
02-07-2020, 12:17 PM
Team Andromeda

What codec does Adv Of Batman on the Mega CD use? That's IMO the best quality FMV on the Mega CD along with EA intro to Fifa on the Mega CD