RE: [GD-General] Video codecs

[Ivan-Assen I. <as...@ha...>]

> 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.

I can't comment on looping, since we haven't attempted anything more
complex than the "play this movie" interface, but
implementing the IStream interface to feed DirectShow off your packfiles
is trivial - it takes less than 100 lines of code code for us.

When I said Microsoft MPEG-4 v2, I was not talking about WMV files, 
but of plain old AVIs containing MPEG-4 encoded content. WMV provided
better quality, but failed to use hardware stretching when playing back
on some videocards, resulting in choppy playback. (Maybe it's better
to switch to 640x480 when playing movies anyway.)