Highest resolution video application for dreamcast????

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extrax6
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Highest resolution video application for dreamcast????

Post by extrax6 »

Anyone know the best video application for the dreamcast that supports the highest resolution? I know there is VC/DC 0.2 released, but that only supports SVCD which is only 480x480. There is also uDCDivX, but I do not know what the highest resolution that can go up to.
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Re: Highest resolution video application for dreamcast????

Post by OneThirty8 »

extrax6 wrote:Anyone know the best video application for the dreamcast that supports the highest resolution? I know there is VC/DC 0.2 released, but that only supports SVCD which is only 480x480. There is also uDCDivX, but I do not know what the highest resolution that can go up to.
I know that the official DCDivX had a max resolution of 496x496, but you're not likely to get acceptable playback speed using such a high resolution. VC/DC should, in theory, support resolutions up to 1024x1024, but like the maximum resolution for DCDivX, this is realistically useless because playback speed will suffer tremendously due to the time to draw frames that big and then copy them to the 3D hardware for scaling. Keep in mind, also, that the 480x480 that you mentioned is approaching the highest resolution that you're going to actually see on the Dreamcast, because the DC doesn't output HD resolutions anyway.
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Re: Highest resolution video application for dreamcast????

Post by Eviltaco64X »

I'm all for pushing the most out of hardware, but, as OneThirty8 mentioned, the Dreamcast isn't your best option for playing DVD-quality video let alone in a high resolution.

You're better off getting a cheap HD upscaler (with component and possibly HDMI) DVD Player from Wal-Mart.
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Re: Highest resolution video application for dreamcast????

Post by Stryfe »

The last version of VC/DC can play VCD quality video pretty well, but not with any subtitles/onscreen text. Use TMPGenc with the default VCD template, with maybe upping the B-Frame count by one as the only exception.
Last edited by Stryfe on Tue Jan 26, 2010 8:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Highest resolution video application for dreamcast????

Post by extrax6 »

Yea i know the dreamcast isn't the best to play videos, but i like to use my dreamcast for almost everything. I just read that the dreamcast games are in 640x480 resolution. So just wondering what is the best resolution to play videos on the dreamcast with perfect framerate. And what application does this.
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Re: Highest resolution video application for dreamcast????

Post by OneThirty8 »

Stryfe wrote:The last version of VC/DC can play VCD quality video pretty well, but not with any subtitles/onscreen text. Use TMPGenc with the default VCD template, with maybe upping the B-Frame count by one as the only exception.
I never bothered with subtitles because the VCD standard doesn't allow for them, and SVCD doesn't play nearly well enough for me to want to bother with it. It's somewhere on my wish list for whenever I find the time to get back to VC/DC. I'd really like to do a major overhaul/rewrite of the code, but it would require a lot of time that I haven't had lately.

**EDIT** I believe that VCD 2.0 has support for subtitles when used on a Philips CDI player. I'm not sure if this is in the VCD standard, or if it's simply an extra feature included in the CDI application. **/EDIT**
extrax6 wrote:Yea i know the dreamcast isn't the best to play videos, but i like to use my dreamcast for almost everything. I just read that the dreamcast games are in 640x480 resolution. So just wondering what is the best resolution to play videos on the dreamcast with perfect framerate. And what application does this.
Try 352x240 for NTSC video or 352x288 for PAL with VC/DC (these are standard VCD resolutions). You could try increasing the B-frame count as Stryfe suggests, because VC/DC can skip B-frames if it needs to. Another option would be to Google KVCD templates. If I recall correctly, these don't include audio settings, but you can modify the templates. Just copy over the audio settings from the standard VCD template and you should be good to go. With KVCD, you will also want to be sure that you're setting things to the standard VCD resolutions I mentioned above. What KVCD does, if you're not familiar, is modify the quanitzation matrix so that you can use a lower bitrate to encode your video without noticing as many compression artifacts. The result is usually surprisingly good.
Last edited by OneThirty8 on Tue Jan 26, 2010 8:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Highest resolution video application for dreamcast????

Post by Stryfe »

After doing some tests recently, the best players are:

uDcDivX - (Last Resort) = AVI (encoded with DivX 3 to 5.02)
Settings: 650 to 900 Kbps video single-pass encoded. 320x200, or 320x240 resolution. Sound needs to be MP3 in the range of 22,050Hz, and 64Kbps.

DcPlaya - (Decent) = FLV
Settings: 700 to 1150 Kbps single-pass encoded. 320x240, or 352x240 resolution. Default audio.
Can also play some AVI at decent speed, but no control options.

VC/DC - (Best Dreamcast video option) = MPEG (MPEG-1)
Settings: Standard VCD Template.
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Re: Highest resolution video application for dreamcast????

Post by extrax6 »

Stryfe, thanx man. I'll use VC/DC and convert all my videos to SVCD for highest quality. Do you know if VC/DC even plays the video at Full Framerate, like is it really smooth?
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Re: Highest resolution video application for dreamcast????

Post by Stryfe »

I was in the middle of typing my post when OneThirty8 posted (He's the VC/DC programmer).
Try 352x240 for NTSC video or 352x288 for PAL with VC/DC (these are standard VCD resolutions). You could try increasing the B-frame count as Stryfe suggests, because VC/DC can skip B-frames if it needs to. Another option would be to Google KVCD templates. If I recall correctly, these don't include audio settings, but you can modify the templates. Just copy over the audio settings from the standard VCD template and you should be good to go. With KVCD, you will also want to be sure that you're setting things to the standard VCD resolutions I mentioned above. What KVCD does, if you're not familiar, is modify the quanitzation matrix so that you can use a lower bitrate to encode your video without noticing as many compression artifacts. The result is usually surprisingly good.
And what I meant by a "standard" VCD template is just a VCD template, I wouldn't use a Super VCD (SVCD) template.
extrax6 wrote:Do you know if VC/DC even plays the video at Full Framerate
It'll play smoothly most of the time, with an occasional dropped frame. If you're encoding with VCD templates, use a b-frame count of the default 2, or up it to a 3 to 4 count. This will alllow video to work at about 24 (NTSC Film) - 30 (NTSC) FPS, depending on the source frame-rate. I don't have a PAL compatible TV/monitor, so I didn't test those standards.
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Re: Highest resolution video application for dreamcast????

Post by OVERRiDE_DC »

Absolute, highest resolution video player for Dreamcast? SFDC Player R11b.

It support video resolution up to 704x480p. Video specifications here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DcVD

It is the player I built from sample code in Katana Dev Kit R11b.
It only support the .SFD codec, which is normal .m1v muxed with .sfa (sofdec audio)
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Re: Highest resolution video application for dreamcast????

Post by Stryfe »

I didn't know the Katana Dev was finally open-sourced.
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Re: Highest resolution video application for dreamcast????

Post by Christuserloeser »

It isn't, so there might be licensing issues involved. But we do tolerate free discussion on + sharing of Katana homebrew so go ahead (at your own risk of course).
Insane homebrew collector.
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