RE: [GD-General] Video codecs

[David H. <Da...@su...>]

-] > I'm evaluating video codecs for FMVs, and have currently 
-] looked into Bink
-] > and DivX. Are there any others worth checking?
-] 
-] The Microsoft MPEG-4 v2 codec, the spiritual ancestor of DivX,
-] is certainly a worthy contender in terms of 
-] quality/compression ratio,
-] and a decoder is installed along with DirectX 8 and later, 
-] so you don't have
-] to worry about compatibility.

I'm about to reevaluate the FMV solution for our PC titles.  In previous
projects we used the WMV format and the decoder found in DirectX 8.  The
problem with Microsoft's API is that they didn't have non-file-based
playback in mind and it doesn't have a clean way to loop video.  If you
store all of your game data in a game database, then streaming data into the
decoder can be a pain.  Microsoft just assumed that developers would have
WMV files laying around that you would just point their decoder at and let
it go.  Also, looping isn't easily accomplished because of the same reasons.

Dave Huseby
da...@su...