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.