Converting Video to Play on Hardware MPEG Cards

[Phipli]

I decided to have a go at converting video files to play on my Performa 630 with an MPEG card today.

I used FFMPEG and the command...

ffmpeg -i ./For\ the\ Birds.mp4 -c:v mpeg1video -s 352x240 -r 30000/1001 -b:v 1000k -minrate 1000k -maxrate 1000k -bufsize 40k -g 15 -bf 0 -c:a mp2 -ar 44100 -ac 2 -b:a 224k -f mpeg ./output.mpg

It threw a couple of errors so I'm sure it isn't perfect, but this was the result on my Performa 630 once I got it transferred over (I made two slightly different versions, each was about 30MB for the full video).

Sorry about the auto-focus on my phone camera. It really doesn't like screens.

If you mess about too much and use funny scaling or move the window about and click around, the sound does get out of sync, but it fixes if you set it back to a sensible size (100% or 200%), pause, click somewhere slightly different on the playback position and then click play again.

I'll dismantle the machine in a moment and film performance without the card for comparison.

Edit - without the MPEG card, even when booted from a system without any of the extensions, you just get a blank white window and no sound.



If anyone is wondering, the DAV cables are about 120mm long.

 

[croissantking]

That is cool!

 

[Phipli]

That is cool!

Do you have one? Do you have a 630?

The hardware technically works in the 6200 / 6300 and AIO equivalents, but it is less useful because you can actually play MPEG files with the processor alone in them.

 

[croissantking]

Do you have one?

Nope

 

[Phipli]

Nope

630 is an interesting machine. It feels like Apple used it as a development platform - it has so many quirky hardware options and "firsts" like IDE (great because you can use cheaper adapters), AV, TV, FM Radio modules, DOS cards PPC upgrades, IR... And optional hardware VCD playback.

It's the 68k Performa AV Mac. In some ways it does more than the 840av. They trivially overclock to 40MHz.

Also the video and memory subsystems are probably the best of any 68k Mac and it supports hardware pixel doubling in Marathon for full screen, making it the best 68k Marathon experience...

But ssssh, they're still some of the cheapest 68k macs, so don't tell anyone!

 

[croissantking]

Yeah, I had a 6320 once, a long time ago. I always thought the slide-out motherboard tray was pretty cool. Unfortunately I never had any of the AV modules, which was a pity.

 

[Callan]

That's awesome. I have a couple nubus mpeg cards. One of them is a 3do development card (i believe), but i havent run across the the 630 card yet. I do have a 630 though, and agree! It's a great machine. Alas, It has terrible plastics (probably the reason they're still cheap)

 

[Phipli]

That's awesome. I have a couple nubus mpeg cards. One of them is a 3do development card (i believe), but i havent run across the the 630 card yet. I do have a 630 though, and agree! It's a great machine. Alas, It has terrible plastics (probably the reason they're still cheap)

Do you have the drivers for the Nubus cards? Do they support quicktime?

Be interesting if we could get them working with MoviePlayer.

I have a TrueVision. I'm not sure how different their JPEG transcoding and MPEG are.

 

[Bolacore]

That's cool! I had no idea this was even an option on the 630s - how much did you pay for it if you dont mind me asking? Kinda want to start looking out for one for my 630 too. Does it fit in with the network comm card too, or do you have to sacrifice any slots to use it?

 

[Phipli]

That's cool! I had no idea this was even an option on the 630s - how much did you pay for it if you dont mind me asking? Kinda want to start looking out for one for my 630 too. Does it fit in with the network comm card too, or do you have to sacrifice any slots to use it?

I've had it for about 5 years sorry, I can't remember what I paid. The problem is they're hidden inside machines so hard to know what machines have one.

It goes in the LC PDS. The comm slot is free, I have an ethernet card in mine.

I've gone a bit overboard with my 630, it is overclocked to 40MHz, has 132MB RAM, has the AV card, the UHF and FM module, ethernet and the MPEG card.