AVI question

[fishy_fiz]

As mentioned already avi is a container.  Theres many, many codecs it can use.
Cinepak is probably the best compromise between speed and compression for slower hardware and can produce some decent results.
There's other options that give still better results on slow cpus, but the a1200's slow ide controller is a bottleneck so avoid them unless you use something like a fastata.
Also, make sure you have ks in fast ram as it makes a surprising difference in playback speed (especially with froggerng).

[fishy_fiz]

Ffplay requires RTG/sdl and is very slow vs things like moovid and froggerng anyway.
Its really only usable under emulation.

Converting to mpeg will also be slower than using cinepak.

[fishy_fiz]

Perhaps the '060 offering little performance increase vs a fast '030 is due to a bottleneck with the a1200's ide controller.
Would be interesting to try a more heavily compressed video and compare (or even seeing how much of a difference running from ram: makes)

[fishy_fiz]

Sysinfo reports 38mips for my 40mhz '040, so an '060@50mhz is clearly more than that, let alone an overclocked '060.

Also Cinepak isn't restricted to video as low quality as the sample videos on OS3.9. I converted transformers3 to avi/cinepak a while back and it looks quite decent. I tried with IV as well and Cinepak is a bit cleaner. IV does however compress better, and will give better image quality the faster the cpu (doesn't drop as many frames on slower hardware, but instead will lower image quality(why it was suitable for online video in the late 90's.)
This "improved" picture quality of course only scales as far as the source materials encoding.

As for ffplay, correct me if Im mistaken, but aren't arthurs compiles statically linked against sdl?
Im not aware of a native backend for it against cgx/p96

[fishy_fiz]

I used Virtualdub.
Bare in mind however that you'll need to first install Codecs for Windows to be able to read the different filetypes of the videos you're trying to convert (remember that avi is a container type, not a codec).
Virtualdub by default converts to assorted legacy Codecs (including cinepak), but doesn't read many "out of the box", and instead relies on Windows Codecs (different to what video players use).

[fishy_fiz]

no no
 you are fake you are a liar
 sysinfo on a 040/40mhz reports only 30 mips

a 060/50mhz does 38 mips in sysinfo
all of this can be verified easily in the web

Haha, yes Im fake, not real at all. My posts are merely figments of your imagination and/or doctored with photoshop.

Seriously though, either pull your head in and stop acting like a pork chop, or keep digging so I can enjoy the laugh.
I dont need the web to verify what my own computer tells me
For the record, I dont trust sysinfo anyway, but that wasn't the point.

[fishy_fiz]

Very nice.
If we weren't both fake I'd be impressed

Seriously though, what clockrate is that? Eighty mhz?

[fishy_fiz]

@laserback

Ah, I see you opted to keep digging a hole and making people laugh. Very good, this site needed more comic relief.

As for your claims that an '060 is much the same as an '040 at the same clockrate, care to amuse us with an explanation as to why real software performs so much faster on even 50mhz '060 than a 40mhz '040?

Doom, quake, pc-task, photogenics, even dnet clients. Its not just fpu stuff either. Imagine3d no fpu version shows big speed-ups.

[fishy_fiz]

@zipper

Careful, lest you want to be deemed fake.

[fishy_fiz]

Velcro then?  

[fishy_fiz]

Its actually pretty simple.
No need to install cinepak codec, virtualdub can deal with it by default.
Just open the file you want to convert (this is the part you may need to install a windows codec or two for), then select the video compression, select cinepak, then adjust your audio to suit (eight bit mobo is probably a good idea for a slower cpu). Adjust your color depth to sixteen bit, then save as legacy avi.

That's all there is to it.
Im not infront of my windows machine at the moment, so I couldn't remember menu names, etc., but with the above description and even a little bit of computer literary you'll be good to go
To be honest, having to have a look around the software a little will better help a person to learn than having their hand held all the way through anyway. Besides that, it really is very simple once you have the basics.