The Real Power of the Amiga CD32 Module

[Rochabian]

Ever wanted to play high quality videos files on your expanded CD32 from your HDD ?
Play high quality audio MP2 on your CD32 ?
Watch a VCD from workbench ?

It's possible with the right tools on Amiga CD32 + FMV + SX-1

A presentation of what is possible in this video :

[ Show youtube player ]

It's in french but i think you can have automatic subtitle
Sry for the flickering screen and masked video parts due to copyright

[grelbfarlk]

Holy carp! You can play VCDs with an FMV module on the CD32?

[Rochabian]

I don't know if you are ironic or not but yes, you can play VCD on a CD32 with FMV and some other files with hardware acceleration wich require at least a 68040 without the FMV module

[A500]

I don't think grelbfarlk was being ironic. I was impressed as well, had no idea this was possible Plus you did a pretty good job at building hype for this video

Edit: The video quality looks better than I expected. Never had a CD32 myself but the FMV I saw on Windows 95 was not this good usually.

[LieutLaww]

I had the FMV module mine came with Star Trek on VCD altho if i recall correctly we got the CD-i version in the UK

[AestheticDebris]

Am I missing something? Wasn't the whole point of the module to let you play back VCD?

[LieutLaww]

Pretty much yes but it can do more than just that.

[Rochabian]

After deeper tests with many more videos, lag appears on some videos that are full 4/3 (full resolution 352x288), strangely not all of them are concerned. 2300kbits for this type of video seems a little bit too much. I reduced the video bitrate to 2000kbits for all videos and every video i tried was smooth again. It's a little more blocky but still better than VCD 1150kbits

[Retro1234]

Can you answer this question https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=114406 ?

[CCCP alert]

Would be interesting to see what CD-i movies look like today, I have some CRT TVs and would consider getting a CD-i but I couldn't find a complete archive of movies, not even close to a complete archive of movies. Archive.org only has 1/7 Star Trek movies for a start in the TOSEC sadly.

[Retro1234]

Wouldn't you rather have a CD32 with a full selection of VCDs

Couldn't a PIE or something be made to simulate the MPEG module?

Also can the CD32 FMV play variable bitrates I.e.XVCD ?

[grelbfarlk]

I don't know why you would want to simulate the MPEG module. RTG+Fast CPU and you could play it all in Frogger or AMP or any of the other players.

It's like an MP3 decoder, sure that's great when you have an 040 or less, less useful when you have an 060, but also gives you a higher fidelity decoder. With a Pi, there's no point in a decoder if you already have a 24-bit RTG card or a 16-bit audio card.

[Rochabian]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Wouldn't you rather have a CD32 with a full selection of VCDs

Couldn't a PIE or something be made to simulate the MPEG module?

Also can the CD32 FMV play variable bitrates I.e.XVCD ?

The XVCD thing is interesting.

As it play files with higher bitrates, it should in theory play VCD with higher bitrate. I'll try this

For CDi VCD, yes the FMV can play CDi VCD, but you need latest firmware of the FMV module V40.30 like said supaduper in the thread mentionned above :

Originally Posted by supaduper

Yes it will play CD-1 disks, but your FMV must have the last rom which is ver 40.30 to play them, if you have an earlier version then you just need a 27c400 eprom to burn the rom to and away you go

[alexh]

While it is an interesting curiosity... swapping discs half way through a movie? Was never going to be a success.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by alexh

While it is an interesting curiosity... swapping discs half way through a movie? Was never going to be a success.

There is some DVD or even blue Ray where it is also recquired.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

There is some DVD or even blue Ray where it is also recquired.

The Lords of the Rings extended editions on DVD did that.

[Retro1234]

It was the norm at the time as with laserdisc. VCD has stayed popular in parts of Asia, even an MPEG 2 version SVCD.

XVCD you can fit a whole movie on a single disc I use to do it quite a bit "Backing Up" my DVDs

So what happens if you put CD-i Mad Dog Mcree in? Nothing? Can you play the FMV files?

[Etze]

Originally Posted by TCD

The Lords of the Rings extended editions on DVD did that.

Even much shorter movies like Starship Troopers or Fight Club (Edit: early releases only. They used DVD-10 ("flipper") instead of DVD-9 (dual-layer)).

[alexh]

I've never seen it since the VCD days. I would return a blue-ray disc if any movie did that today (not that I buy many since the streaming revolution)

[Rochabian]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

It was the norm at the time as with laserdisc. VCD has stayed popular in parts of Asia, even an MPEG 2 version SVCD.

XVCD you can fit a whole movie on a single disc I use to do it quite a bit "Backing Up" my DVDs

So what happens if you put CD-i Mad Dog Mcree in? Nothing? Can you play the FMV files?

The MDMC cd-i disc only has a data track, no vcd track, it's a game, not a movie. It's normal because they don't have made a track for each movie scene. It's a big file named dog.rtf on the disc that include movie clips i think, so it's not directly readable by the CD32.

EDIT: I've tested XVCD at higher bitrate but it doesn't work for me, it's laggy. As it uses Akiko for synchronizing video & audio from CD perhaps it only accept strict VCD format. I'm not sure it use Akiko when playing from HDD