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DS Misc > A question about video codec quality...

#109720 - OOPMan - Mon Nov 20, 2006 7:01 pm

Hey all, I was just wondering if you guys could give me an idea of the subjective quality of the various video codecs playable on the DS...

I'm just wondering about it from two angles...

On the commercial side a lot of games use the ActImagine codec. Pretty much every video I've seen using this looks amazing and runs perfectly.

How do the various homebrew-ish codecs compare?

By homebrew codecs I don't necessarily mean homebrew made, but playble using homebrew...

For example, Moonshell can play MPEG2s, right? What kind of quality level MPEG2s? Awful lo-res ones?

What about the Crystal codec (Or whatever it is DPGs) use?

I'm mainly just interested in subjective opinions and viewpoints here, because I'm very impressed with the quality of ActImagine clips and was wondering whether any non-commercial codecs on the DS rival it or better it?
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#109780 - tepples - Tue Nov 21, 2006 5:35 am

Crystal codec is used by GBM on the GBA mode firmware of GBA Movie Player. There is no known DS mode homebrew program that can play GBM.

DPG is essentially a wrapper around MPEG-1 video, used by MoonShell.
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#109823 - MaHe - Tue Nov 21, 2006 2:20 pm

The probably best video format out there is Cayman's Codec for Nintendo DS, but since it's commercial, we can't use it. DPG is the best codec you can use for your media, but the dithering and file sizes suck (but still, a light-year better than CrystalEngine).
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