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 | | From: | James | | Subject: | Audio Video Codecs... | | Date: | 22 Jan 2005 11:47:18 -0800 |
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 | Does anyone know which audio/video codecs would be included in a basic
windows installation...?
I'm looking to compress some video clips (with audio) to enable
playpack straight from CD-ROM.
Controlling data-rate is no problem, but choosing a codec that will be
supported by as many people as possible is...
Cheers.
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| | From: | Jim Leonard | | Subject: | Re: Audio Video Codecs... | | Date: | 22 Jan 2005 12:53:40 -0800 |
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| James wrote:
> Does anyone know which audio/video codecs would be included in a
basic
> windows installation...?
> I'm looking to compress some video clips (with audio) to enable
> playpack straight from CD-ROM.
> Controlling data-rate is no problem, but choosing a codec that will
be
> supported by as many people as possible is...
The only codecs that are "universal" from Windows 3.1 up to XP are
Cinepak, Indeo 3.2, Microsoft RLE, and Microsoft Video 1. Of these:
Microsoft RLE: Good for working with 256 colors or less animated
screen tutorials or simple flat-color animation.
Microsoft Video 1: Inferior to Indeo 3.2 and Cinepak in almost every
respect; do not use this.
Indeo 3.2: Given the same target bitrate, produces smaller files if
there are simple areas in the video (ie it doesn't pad or waste space).
Noisy video tends to make Indeo 3.2 output "swim" so perform some
noise reduction on the source if possible.
Cinepak: Has extremely simple decompression requirements (can be
decoded on a 386). Color saturation is lower in the output than in the
input, so boost saturation before encoding.
If you have to support Windows 3.1 or Windows 95, either Indeo 3.2 or
Cinepak is fine. I just did some informal tests of the "standard" at
that time (320x240, 15fps, data rate 230KB/s for a 2x drive, force
keyframes every 30) and concluded that Cinepak produced the best
results.
If your target is Windows 98 or later, MPEG-1 is your best bet as it
greatly outperforms all of the above in quality and is playable on a
120MHz Pentium.
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