1src Forums - SNES Emulator for PALM

JackAxe

03-08-2003, 06:47 PM

I'm back and I'm a monkey. =P My PPC is overclocked to 500 MHz, the best SNES emulator<PocketSNES> on the PPC without sound gives me about 20 Fps on average. I doubt a 200 Mhz Clie' would some how be able to emulate the SNES at full speed. Consider that it took a while before a Mac and PC could emulate the SNES at a good speed.

On the other hand the NES is a good option. I get between 35 and 45 fps on my PPC.

And on this button thing. I love my GamePad from SONY. It's only missing 2 of the buttons that the SNES has. If you have not bought one and play games, then you're truly missing out. The buttons on the Clie' itself are horrible.

If I recall, there is no difference between the core of the Celeron, P2 or P3. Only the internal cache size is different.

<]=)

cbulock

03-08-2003, 07:32 PM

Originally posted by JackAxe
If I recall, there is no difference between the core of the Celeron, P2 or P3. Only the internal cache size is different.

<]=)

There were some slight differences if I recall correctly. The first Pentium 2's were slot based and the L2 cache (i think) was seperate from the processor, and it was actually the Celeron that was the first to have it included in the core. I had one of those Celerons (Socket 370 based) and it performed very good compared to a similar speed Slot-1 based Pentium2. They had more cache, and it was on the processor card, but in was seperate from the main CPU.

Sorry for dirverting for the main topic:)

Pen-Pen

03-08-2003, 08:16 PM

I've never talk about the P2 and the P3, only about the P4 and his lower cost brother, the Celeron4, and there are many changes between P2 and P3 core and the P4 core.

After, don't forget that Palm os requires less resources than PocketPC 2002, so I think a 200Mhz or an 300Mhz overclocked NX could play SNES games.

For the gamepad, I know, but there is still a lack of buttons, it could be unpleasant for some games.

Donkeystyle

03-08-2003, 09:10 PM

what about gameboy advance emulation? that would rock.

RaptorX30

03-09-2003, 01:35 AM

You are so wrong about the core, they are all so different.

And im not talking about a 200MHz clie.

Im talking about a 66MHz clie. It can be done.. if its programmed right.. maybe its possible to create a GPU to stick in the expansion slot thingy... HUMM

Zork

03-09-2003, 02:12 AM

skribe, emulators on the PPC are simply sh*t. They are done by simply recompiling the existing Windows emulation software (and nope, most of the emulation software avail for Windows doesnt contain ASM code to keep them portable (so that you could recompile them for the Mac or Unix platforms l like Frodo for C64, Stella for VCS, SNES 9x for SNES, etc.)).
Palm software on the other side is almost anytime done with the correct CPU and the correct screen size in mind. So if you do your emulation software by including code hich perfectly fits the advantages of this system it could be simply done by someone familiar with the Clie APIs.
Bout the limitations : The four buttons are already there. The Scroll switch could be used for the shoulder buttons(or place them at the outer hardwre buttons and place X and Y at the scroll switch). The DPad could be done using the Graffiti area. And finally the Start and Select button isnt any prob at all, placing them as usual at the home and menu button.

Zork

03-09-2003, 02:23 AM

The main difference between the Celeron and the P3 simply were the lack of 2nd level chache. Therefor the Celeron neve were anythign else then useless junk, cause espececially at CISC CPUs you need at least (!) 512 KB 2nd level cache to keep things going. Thats why the Celeron is always way slower then the P3 or P4 cycled at the same frequency.
and BTW folks : We are talking bout frequency. This one doesnt almost tell anything at all bout the speed of a system. If you like to get information bout the speed ofyour system check the GFLOP or some units like that. Bout the frequency doesnt tell you anything beside how much cycles are offered per second. It doesnt tell you the way more important information how much informations are executed at one cycle or even worse how much cycle one opcode needs while execution. It doesnt tell you anything at all bout the also way more important count of registers and how large they are. It doenst tell you anything bout the pipeline stage (which is one of the main reason why P4 are way slower then AMD CPUs). It doenst tell you anything bout the branch units, which are completely antique on any Intel system compared to the Motorola ones. It doenst tell you anything bout the avail opcodes, the avail registers and there bandwidth of the custom CPU extension (like the SSE2 or the Altivec) which takes over ressource intensive tasks from the CPU.
Thats why for example a 1 GHz Motorola G4 isnt half as slow as a 2 GHZ P4, but instead twice as fast. You see .... frequency doesnt tell you anything at all. Its the architeture which decides if you buy sh*t or not.

iebnn

03-09-2003, 12:16 PM

Originally posted by RaptorX30

Look im aware of NOTHING. so ill just figure something out and make it good

Go spend a few years learning C/C++ and ASM before you start on this project.

iebnn

03-09-2003, 12:18 PM

Originally posted by Zork
NES aint any prob on the CISC OS 4.x CPUs. and it would be way mor useful, cause almost every user out there has a non ARM Clie and the ARM 5.x users could also use this tools cause they would be most likely emulated correctly on their ARM. Thats why most emulation software still is released for 4.x Clies.
So ARM is some nice stuff, but you would develop only for a fraction of the market. And anything til the NES (this includes the C64, Atari VCS 2600, GameBox, GameBoy Color, ZX Spectrum, ... ) could be easily emulated on the 4.x Clies.
And SNES could be easily done indeed on the ARM Clies. But you have to optimize them for the ARM CPU and not just recompile them and hope that everything would run fine.

In not-too-long, the majority of Palm devices out there will be using ARM. How many people are still using OS 1 / OS 2?

iebnn

03-09-2003, 12:21 PM

Originally posted by RaptorX30
You are so wrong about the core, they are all so different.

And im not talking about a 200MHz clie.

Im talking about a 66MHz clie. It can be done.. if its programmed right.. maybe its possible to create a GPU to stick in the expansion slot thingy... HUMM

66Mhz Dragonball CPU cannot emulate SNES at a playable FPS. And creating some GPU to stick in the expansion slot is not feasible.

skribe

03-09-2003, 01:36 PM

zork: the snes9x core IS in fact coded in ASM and almost all of ZSNES is ASM except for basically a few parts of the GUI and therefore according the authors of both not simply recompilable on toher systems without rewriting at least those parts of the programs (practically a full rewrite in the case of ZSNES)

I posted on the snes9x board shortly after getting my NX inquiring about this very topic and was told that for all intents and purposes SNES emulation on machines such as these really isnt practical even with all of the machine optomizations you can muster. Optomization only goes so far and then its really down to brute force and power.

Dont get me wrong, SNES emulation is a possibility, you might even be able to make a program like say...final fantasy 2 somewhat playable with no sound, something that dosent need too high a frame rate. But what I'm saying is that its really not practical, nobody wants to play f-zero or super mario world at 15FPS with no sound.

RaptorX30: I'm gonna have to assume you're just joking at this point...you're planning on emulating the SNES on a Dragonball? ...

Zork

03-09-2003, 03:27 PM

skribe, you forget that you talking bout a RISC CPU. There you could do things way faster then on Intel CISC CPUs, cause every (!) instruction just needs one cycle.
Sound would surely be some prob (not cause of the playback (that stuff could be handled by the SPU mainly), but cause of the modulation needed to fit Clie sound format), but noone needs sound at a first version.
But for the picture alone : np at all. I used the SNES predecessor with my 66 MHz PowerMac 6100 then and the games were not complete full speed and there were no sound. But all of the supported games (which were almost 80 % of all SNES games) worked perfectly with it and even action games like F-Zero played at action game speed.
The ARM RISC CPU inside the Clie is indeed slower then a PPC601 (cause it had to be developed with portable usage in mind), but a 200 MHz ARM should be at least almost as fast as a 66 MHz PPC601.
And you perfectly discribed the prob with PPC emulation software : this folks simply ported the Windows versions (beside the ASM core), which means no optimization at all (beside porting the ASM code from the CISC x86 to the RISC ARM opcodes).

iebnn

03-09-2003, 09:14 PM

Zork... photoshop benchmarks turned out better in the 2.4ghz P4s than in the dual apple 1ghz cpus.... (apple's was almost twice as slow).

___

03-09-2003, 09:17 PM

Originally posted by Zork
skribe, emulators on the PPC are simply sh*t. They are done by simply recompiling the existing Windows emulation software (and nope, most of the emulation software avail for Windows doesnt contain ASM code to keep them portable (so that you could recompile them for the Mac or Unix platforms l like Frodo for C64, Stella for VCS, SNES 9x for SNES, etc.)).
Palm software on the other side is almost anytime done with the correct CPU and the correct screen size in mind. So if you do your emulation software by including code hich perfectly fits the advantages of this system it could be simply done by someone familiar with the Clie APIs.
Bout the limitations : The four buttons are already there. The Scroll switch could be used for the shoulder buttons(or place them at the outer hardwre buttons and place X and Y at the scroll switch). The DPad could be done using the Graffiti area. And finally the Start and Select button isnt any prob at all, placing them as usual at the home and menu button.

LOL is zork trying to defend his T665 again over the PPC at gaming and saying that his T665 can "potentially" run SNES better than PPC? that's a laff. Palm right now can barely run most GAMEBOY (hahaha) games at half the speed.

BTW, if the PPC emulators are "simply sh*t"...why do they run flawless and are very reliable. I see nothing "sh*tty" about them. Oh, so your next argumentn is that Liberty is Pocketnester right? Hahaha. And why complain about PPC emulation software when no optimization is needed anyways.

___

03-09-2003, 09:17 PM

Originally posted by iebnn
Zork... photoshop benchmarks turned out better in the 2.4ghz P4s than in the dual apple 1ghz cpus.... (apple's was almost twice as slow).

and.... thank you mods for deleting ___'s post.

I deleted it myself because I quoted the wrong quote...thank you very much.

___

03-09-2003, 09:19 PM

BTW, iebnn, you said in another post that you do not have a PPC. Why then, do you argue about how PPC always crashes when you know jacksh*t about PPC? Laff at your lame justification of spending $600 on a Clie!

iebnn

03-09-2003, 09:22 PM

All I said is that I do not like the PPC OS. I find it to be very slow and overall bad. This is my opinion. I have based this opinion on the times that I have used various Pocket PCs (including 206mhz strongarms and 400mhz xscales).

And I spent $440 on my NX, and have made it all back in software sales (for stuff coded for OS5). Laff at your lame trolling.

iebnn

03-09-2003, 09:24 PM

Palms aren't capable of SNES emulation yet. PPCs have it, but it's not done well (slow).

Zork

03-09-2003, 09:30 PM

PPC->Palm, fine that I have now ia T675 instead of a T625, idiot.
And this is still the smartest part of your posting. Where exactly did I mentioned that a T625 or even a T675 is faster then a PPC for emulation ? And yep, sometimes it is faster, cause Win CE is the slowest **** you could get as OS for a PDA. Check the bookmarks when it comes the office and productivity software. This stuff run even on he old CISC CPUs way faster then on the ARM PPCs.
And nope, SNES emulation never runs "flawless and reliable" on PPCs. Its simply useless sh*t. And thats also your answer bout there is no optimization needed. Thats true, cause useless sh*t doesnt need any optimization at all.

iebnn

03-09-2003, 09:33 PM

Don't get so worked up over him..... he's known to troll in these boards.

Zork

03-09-2003, 09:34 PM

iebnn, ARM Palms are way more capable of SNES emulation then PPCs, cause thos devices have to fight with the slowest PDA OS out there. The OS never were fitted for the slow ARM CPU and the small PPC display.
Palm software on the other side is almost always optimized to run on PDAs. Screenwise and for optimization. Thats why all OS 5 applications run way faster then their PPC counterparts. And thats why simply noone is interested in PPCs anymore since Palm OS devices usin the same CPU PPCs using (cause there is simply no advantage left with this antique sh*t anymore).
And BTW : Photoshop is Altivec optimized. Dont even think bout comnapring Wintel and Mac Photoshop. Thats like comparing a horse with a Ferrari. I only tell you bout 128 bit registers ! And 32 of them. Altivec is the fastest CPU add on avail for any system out there. So if you have some faked review which tells stup*d stuff like "Photoshop for Windows is faster then its Mac counterpart", then you know whom paid for this "indepentend review" ;) .

iebnn

03-09-2003, 10:10 PM

Clueless people are sometimes more interested in a 400mhz ppc than a 200mhz Palm. They think "twice as fast."

Let me find the benchmarks

iebnn

03-09-2003, 10:11 PM

And there are advantages to PPC right now. To name a couple, DivX and NES emulation.

Berto2112

03-09-2003, 10:31 PM

I don't know what all this jibberish is about gameboy emulators "barely running on Clies" Phoinix ran fine and at full speed on my little SJ-20 (33mhz, mind you).

cbulock

03-09-2003, 11:31 PM

For some reason ___ always forgets about ARM based Palms. The only reason that PPC has SNES emulators and Divx players and Palms don't is that PPC's have been based on the ARM platform for a few years now. Palms have only been based on this platform for a few months. It's not that PPC's are more capable, they have just had more time to get the software written for them. I'll bet if you ran a Divx player on a 200MHz XScale Palm and compare it to a 200 MHz PPC, the results would be very noticably better on the Palm unit.

JackAxe

03-10-2003, 12:16 AM

I completely agree with you about Divx playing better on a Clie'.

Not only does video looks better on the Clie' it plays way faster then Divx movies on my PPC. The Clie' is way ahead in this area, mainly because it has a dedicated graphics accelerator. Only the Toshiba that I know of has a GA on the PPC side and since it is new, most apps do not take advantadge of it. Something PPCs do that Clie's do not, is drop frames. The PPC can handle a 240x XXX video, but not a 320x240 video<This does not apply to the Toshiba>. This might change with the PXA255, but for now I'll stick with the Clie' for video playback.

Sorry, I don't buy that Phoinix runs at full speed on a 33, I'm using a 66 and the only way I get near full speed is by overclocking to 90+. This applies to Liberty also. But at 66, most games are extremeley playable. Barely applies to my old PALM IIIc. I'm comparing performance to my real GBA.

<]=P

hansschmucker

03-10-2003, 02:36 AM

Zork I have to protest (a little). I know the Wintel version of Photoshop is much slower then the Macversion. But then again, Adobe gets all the support from Apple and the biggest part of their customers uses the Mac version anyway. So, they are just not interested in optimizing the Wintel version. Or look at Premiere: On Mac it is THE product when it comes to speed, stability and features. The Wintel version is slow as hell, crashes every five minutes, not to mention whenever you play a video with compressed audio backwards, and doesn't even support the most common import/export functions.

So, try to compare opimized software, like Photoshop to PaintShopPro.

------------------------------------------------

OK, but that was HIGHLY off-topic

Going back to the previous topic:
What's the better plattform for SNES emulation?

I honestly don't think there's much of a difference. The only problem is that people tend to do recompilations on PPC, instead of a total rewrite, but that's no technical problem, but more a question of how many effort you want to put into a project. About the actual programing:
When using ASM, you basically use the OS only for storage and input/output as well as sound. Everything else can be coded better accessing the hardware directly. And the few os-specific calls, shouldn't be a big slowdown, even on a PPC.

So it all comes down to the fuzzyness of PPC users and/or developers =)

---------EDIT---------
Just want to point out that I don't think PSP/Wintel is faster then Photoshop/Mac, it's just a better comparison.

RaptorX30

03-10-2003, 03:04 AM

Originally posted by iebnn

Go spend a few years learning C/C++ and ASM before you start on this project.

I have. Not ASM tho, ill have to look into it.

RaptorX30

03-10-2003, 03:06 AM

SNES System Specs

CPU Type: 65816 16-bit: 2.68 / 3.58 Mhz
16-bit Picture Processing Unit
MEMORY RAM: 1 Mbit (128 Kbyte)
Video RAM: 0.5 Mbit (64 Kbyte)
Cart Size's: 2 Mbit - 48 Mbit
DISPLAY Max Resolution: 512 x 448 pixels
Colors: 32,768 colors Max Colors at Once: 256
Max Sprite Size: 64 x 64 pixels
Max Sprites: 128 sprites
SOUND Sound Chip: 8-bit Sony SPC700 Sound Channels: 8
FEATURES Mode 7
2 Controller ports

JackAxe

03-10-2003, 03:39 AM

Sorry off subject. =P

hansschmucker,
Adobe gave it's code to Intel to optimize for MMX Pentiums a few years back. I remember this from an article written by I. Cringley. It talked about how Intel slowed down some of the filters with the MMX version of Photoshop so that the MMX enabled filter were perceived to be much faster. But in reality, there was only about a 2% gain and this was only because of a slightly larger cache on the MMX CPU. The filters that Intel slowed down were now aobut 20% slower then the same filters on the non-MMX version of Photoshop.

Just for reference, my Co-workers 9500 120 made the MMX enabled version of Photoshop look like a slug on the software engineers P233 MMX. My MP 180 crushed it. =P

Just pointing out that Adobe works with both sides. Of course Apple does have the advantadge since it took several years for the PC to get Photoshop. The latest version of Photoshop for PC still can not move Lens Flare around in real time. This isn't a performance issue, it just was never implemented.

Another advantadge for the Mac, the "command key." This makes the Mac much easier to work with when it comes to shortcuts. 4 keys are better then 3. This is why I'll never switch to a PC for Photoshop.

Blah,
<]=)

Zork

03-10-2003, 06:13 AM

come on, hansschmucker. Adobe is one of the few companies which supported MMX from the first moment on. And its still the only company which fully supports the SSE2 and the P4 FPU. And dont compare Photoshop with anything else, cause there is nothing comparable. Photoshop is one of the few (!!!) examples where a company got a monopoly cause of quality and not of illegal methods (do I really hear someone talking bout Micros*ft ;) ? ).
Bout Premiere and After Effects : Thos 2 had their times, but since Final Cut Pro and even more since Final Cut Pro 3.x is After Effects plug ins compatible neither Premiere nor After Effects are necesarry anymore, cause Final Cut Pro is done by Apple and therefor the fastest and best supported application.
Dont misunderstood that. This is just for information purpose. Dont wanted to start some off topic thread. The main purpose were to show that MHz arent any indicator for speed comparision at all. Every competent user knows that and i posted it here just to share this knowledge with newbies too ;) .
So back to topic. Its fine that someone already posted here the tech specs for the SNES. And its obvious that the CPU alone wont be any trouble at all to emulate on a ARM Palm/Clie. But the SNES also had its SPU and GPU (with its kewl Mode 7 for example). Emulating that stuff accurately is the prob. and this is the part where most ressources are wasted for hundreds of branches ;) . So a soundless, 80 % speed, 80 % game support SNES emulation software could be done for sure on a 200 MHz ARM. The Clie GPU could also help a little, but that would only increase speed i presume at 1 - 2 %, cause the CPU still has to do most of the job.

IMHO every ARM Clie user with at least minimum development knowledge should support such a project. I, on the other side, are perfectly familiar with C++ and the Visual C++ IDE (I could do Win CE applications within minutes ;) ), but never done stuff with the Palm OS API. Im also familiar with MIPS ASM, but not with ARM ASM (but RISC ASM is usually not that different (also checked a little PPC (PowerPC not PocketPC ! ;) ) ASM in the meantime)).

So I suggest again, what I already suggested at the GBA emu thread : what bout starting projects with a few competent Palm hobby developers and a few otherwise experienced developers ? That would share the work necesarry for such a huge project on many shoulders and therefor make it more likely that there really would be some sort of product in the end and it would help developers to become familiar with the Palm too (books alone wont help you at all to become familiar with a platform. You need users you could speak with and a common project is the best base for such a purpose) and therefor broaden the base of Palm/Clie freeware/shareware developers (which is the source for almost every emulation software out there).
I for myself really like to see a Atari VCS 2600 emulation software for the Clie. This platform had almost thousands of games, they were unbelievable small (usually appr. 4 KB (yep, thats Kilobyte) and had all the classics of the early 80s (do I really have to refer to PacMan, Frogger, DigDug, Galaxian, Phoenix, Vanguard, Amidar, Asteroids, etc. etc. ;) ? ) and the CPU were slow enough to being emulated perfectly on the OS 4.x Clies (33 and 66 MHz). Perhaps even with sound. Thats some project I really like to join and support.
For the ARM Clie on the other side as mentioned a SNES emulation software or a C64 emulation software would be surely some starting point (both indeed cause of the completexity of both systems cant be full scale, but I prefer playin 60 % of all C64 games with 80 % speed then none at all ;) ).
Hoping that this posting could be some starting point for such projects.

iebnn

03-10-2003, 07:14 AM

Originally posted by JackAxe
I completely agree with you about Divx playing better on a Clie'.

Not only does video looks better on the Clie' it plays way faster then Divx movies on my PPC. The Clie' is way ahead in this area, mainly because it has a dedicated graphics accelerator. Only the Toshiba that I know of has a GA on the PPC side and since it is new, most apps do not take advantadge of it. Something PPCs do that Clie's do not, is drop frames. The PPC can handle a 240x XXX video, but not a 320x240 video<This does not apply to the Toshiba>. This might change with the PXA255, but for now I'll stick with the Clie' for video playback.

Sorry, I don't buy that Phoinix runs at full speed on a 33, I'm using a 66 and the only way I get near full speed is by overclocking to 90+. This applies to Liberty also. But at 66, most games are extremeley playable. Barely applies to my old PALM IIIc. I'm comparing performance to my real GBA.

<]=P

I've read several reviews of PPCs using DivX players, and some of the newer ones do not drop any frames. There is one out now that is optimized to use the graphics accelerator in the new toshiba as well.

I know that Palm is CAPABLE of having a divx player -- but it doesn't have one.

It's really annoying to have to convert all my videos to that MQV format (which I have almost no control over in quality).

jpolz

03-10-2003, 08:50 AM

What about the GP32 that was just released??

It can emulate SNES, Sega, NES, PC Engine, ZX Spectrum, Commodore, MSX, GBA. It's only being powered by a 130Mhz ARM Processor. It seems quite possible, given the right programming.

Zork

03-10-2003, 10:28 AM

iebnn, with kinoma producer you convert your videos within minutes and you have way better control at quality then with DivX codecs. and BTW Divx is dead (all new releases are XVid which isnt compatible with the old DivX codecs anymore). So why using such a player still ?
If you like a working player simply get the MPEG player for the Clie. All the movies out there are encoded usin MPEG (1 or 2) and almost noone uses DivX anymore (cause it is simply to chaotic and non standard like to use it on any platform). For example after years of waiting some company really released now the first DVD Video player with DivX support. And even more amazing ... after years the first DivX player for the PS2 were released (there is some avail since a long time for the XBox, but hence noone uses the XBox it doesnt matter at all for the mass market acceptance of DivX). And what did thos sh*theads which are responsible for DivX ? They changed everything to the completely incompatible XviD format. This isnt just stup*id, this is simply braindead. So DivX never lived (MPEG always were the standard for movies. Check for example for the new Futurama and Simpsons releases) and is now completely dead. You dont make fools of the global players two times.
MPEG on the other side is a real standard and hey ... perfectly playable on your Clie and Tungsten. So again ... huge disadvantage for PPC and huge advantage at the same time for Palm OS.

Zork

03-10-2003, 10:44 AM

jpolz, noone here meant that SNES emulation on the Clie aint possible. Its just a matter of work. And the GP32 is Unix based (further tech specs at http://www.devrs.com/gp32/docs.php ). And Unix freaks usually are the more development centric folks. So its no surprise at all, that they port the existing emulation software for Unix way faster then our lazy Palm folks ;) .
But BTW No GBA emulation (check http://www.emu.pl/gp32/ ). And SNES is indeed speed and compatibility limited. Thats exactly what we could reach at the Clie too.
BTW This guys already had Frodo ported to GP32. Some C64 emulation software with its thousands over thousands over classics would be IMHO way more interesting then some SNES emulation ;) .

nevarDeath

03-10-2003, 10:50 AM

Just thought I'd let you know that MaxMESS for Linux can run SNES games at 20fps on the 206MhZ zaurus.....If it can do that with no optimization then I'm sure a Palm OS5 device (the 206MhZ ones anyways) could run one

skribe

03-10-2003, 11:08 AM

zork: XviD has absolutely nothing to do with the developers of DiVX :) - They're two completely seperate codecs

That being said DiVX was never intended to be an industry standard and a DVD player that can do DiVX movies is a huge plus and not a given.

DiVX (and XviD for that matter) are nowhere near dead and they both serve WAY different purposes then standard MPEG 1 or 2 video. A full length DVD quality and resolution DiVX movie can fit on 1 CD, a comperable MPEG 1 or 2 clip would be several CDs - the compression is the advantage of DiVX not the widespread adoption.

Back on topic though, a few people here make make solid arguments for the feasability of SNES emulation on the ARM based clies...so I'm kinda wondering now if theres anyone reading this thread with the programming experience to give it a shot? or are we just kinda brainstorming here?

jpolz

03-10-2003, 12:24 PM

Originally posted by Zork
jpolz, noone here meant that SNES emulation on the Clie aint possible. Its just a matter of work. And the GP32 is Unix based (further tech specs at http://www.devrs.com/gp32/docs.php ). And Unix freaks usually are the more development centric folks. So its no surprise at all, that they port the existing emulation software for Unix way faster then our lazy Palm folks ;) .
But BTW No GBA emulation (check http://www.emu.pl/gp32/ ). And SNES is indeed speed and compatibility limited. Thats exactly what we could reach at the Clie too.
BTW This guys already had Frodo ported to GP32. Some C64 emulation software with its thousands over thousands over classics would be IMHO way more interesting then some SNES emulation ;) .

That's precisely what I was getting at :) They are able to emulate these systems DECENTLY @ 130Mhz, with our CLIE's being able to reach 300Mhz soon (hopefully) it should be even closer to the origional.

iebnn

03-10-2003, 01:02 PM

Originally posted by jpolz
What about the GP32 that was just released??

It can emulate SNES, Sega, NES, PC Engine, ZX Spectrum, Commodore, MSX, GBA. It's only being powered by a 130Mhz ARM Processor. It seems quite possible, given the right programming.

I've talked with someone who owned it. He sold it after a month. He said the buttons were terrible (sounded like you were breaking the thing when you pressed them), and the emulators weren't that good. I read through the sites again and it looks like the SNES emulation wasn't very fast (still slow like PPC). It's in development (it's not an official product for gp32..).

It's a 66mhz ARM clockable to I think 166mhz (maybe it is 130 though). Also remember that the OS is geared towards GAMING and not much else -- Palm OS has other overhead.

Zork

03-10-2003, 04:54 PM

skribe, DivX never were even near DVD quality. DVD only compresses movies with a 1:3 ratio. DivX on the other side compresses the same data at a 1:20 ratio and looks therefor horrible compared with the original DVD (good enough for leechers at the net, which get everything as long as it is free, but dont compare it at all with the real thing (not that you didnt see artifacts with DVDs too - cause 1:3 ratio still means visible loss of quality. But with DVDs you have to know where you have to look for artifacts ;) ). So please dont tell such stuff ;) .
Bout bandwidth : Then simply use another industry standard if you prefer size over quality. Its called MPEG 4. And it will become supported on most players as MPEG 1 and MPEG 2 already is. So DivX had its time a few years ago, but in the meantime the DivX scene is nearly dead.

iebnn

03-10-2003, 05:15 PM

DivX scene is nearly dead? What are you talking about? Far from it.

MPEG4 seems to make larger files than divx/etc. Plus, I don't see any places releasing stuff encoded in mpeg4 -- it's all either divx or xvid (still mostly divx actually).

Zork

03-10-2003, 05:51 PM

iebnn, almost no DivX at all anymore. Just a few illegal DVD rips, nd even they are already switched to XviD. Sorry d00d, but DivX is history. I dont like this fact neither, cause I thought with the DivX player for the PS2 I could watch this stuff too (cause watching movies on a PC monitor is one of the most braindead tasks someone could to, when he has the oportunity to watch the movie on his tv set and layin lazy around). But then XviD appearted and now the DivX scene is almost dead.
And even XviD is nearly inexisting compared with MPEG 2 (means SVCD) or even the good, old MPEG 1 (means VCD). thsi were some surprise for me too, cause I know the leechers from IRC and thought "Hey, DivX doenst offer the same quality as SVCD, but leechers never thought bout quality at all. So DivX will surely remove MPEG as scene standard. And now ... a few years later its DivX which is almost completely removed when you compare it with the VCD and SVCD releases. Even worse DivX/XviD is almost exclusively used alone for DVD rips anymore (wondering anyway how lame someone must be to DL a DVD rip. K, PC software sometime is really expensive and its sometime useful to test if before you buy it. But DVD Videos and expensive ? Come on, its poor greed which is the background for DLin DVD rips). Nothing else. Ask for example for the recent Futurama and Simpsons eps as DivX/XviD format and you will get absolutely nothing.
Sorry folks, but DivX killed its own *** ;) (switching to XviD were the death kiss for the whole non MPEG scene. You cant switch a codec completely when the mass market starts to implement your strange codec after all. Thats simply stup*d). Thats the simple truth.

iebnn

03-10-2003, 06:02 PM

It all depends where you look. I can still find plenty of new xvid/divx releases. Other places cater to the vcd/svcd crowd (and have little or no divxs/xvids).

hansschmucker

03-10-2003, 06:15 PM

Max I give my .015€ as well (considering the current US$ value)
Every format has it's good sides as well as things it can't do. So here's my table

MPEG1
+Streaming
+MultiPlatform
+Low and Mid-bandwidth quality is OK
+Native support for interlaced video (Important for TV)
+Fast
+No illegal history
-High encoding time
-Leaking colors even with high datarates
-bad standard presets (MPEG-1 can do almost all the stuff DivX&Co can do plus in-between frames, but the standard presets use only a fraction of these features.

MPEG2
+High quality with high datarates
+about the same stuff that MPEG1 can do
-Slow
-Almost impossible to use with low data rates
-No decoder supplied with Winblows

MPEG-4 (Differences to MPEG1/2)
+better quality with low-datarates
-bad standard presets
-almost no encoder/decoder sticks to the standard precisely
-currently, too slow for high quality
-not yet supported with all platforms

DivX &Co
+Very good quality at low datarates
-Miserable quality at high datarates
-illegal history makes use by Sony&Co impossible

And now I have other things to do... I will enhance this list lateron. MJPEG and such are still missing as well as Bind/Smacker.

iebnn

03-10-2003, 06:22 PM

IIRC DivX 5 is no longer illegal. Divx 3.11 was a hacked mpeg4. DivX 5 was coded from scratch. That's why there are hardware divx players coming out now.

___

03-10-2003, 06:54 PM

JackAxe

03-10-2003, 06:55 PM

Originally posted by iebnn

I've read several reviews of PPCs using DivX players, and some of the newer ones do not drop any frames. There is one out now that is optimized to use the graphics accelerator in the new toshiba as well.

I know that Palm is CAPABLE of having a divx player -- but it doesn't have one.

It's really annoying to have to convert all my videos to that MQV format (which I have almost no control over in quality).

I mentioned the Toshiba, and excluded it from the drop frames comment. To date it is the only PPC with a GA that I know of. I do not know of any PPC besides the Toshiba that can run 320x240 movies at full frame rate. They all will drop frames at this rez. The latest DivX players work great, but only at 240xXXX.

This is the DivX player I use and most PPC users will recommend it. Notice that it can only handle 15fps at 320x176.
http://home.adelphia.net/~mdukette/

Seeing DivX on my PPC was a let down when compared to the Clie'. I compress everything at 1000k, 320xXXX 66k stereo sound. This produces video that's nicer then anything I've seen with DivX on my PPC. If someone can point me to a high quality DivX file I would be interested. I wouldn't mind watching videos at 240xXXX since my PPC has way more storage then the Clie'.

<]=)

iebnn

03-10-2003, 08:06 PM

Are you using Kinoma? You have an NX/NZ? I think you'll find that the built in movie player is much nicer than kinoma (higher quality/smaller videos). Kinoma uses that really old cinepak codec -- the clie uses a weird version of mpeg4 it seems.

iebnn

03-10-2003, 08:07 PM

___ go away. Overhead means more than just business expenses, and I'm NOT talking about features.

___

03-10-2003, 08:11 PM

Originally posted by iebnn
___ go away. Overhead means more than just business expenses, and I'm NOT talking about features.

In your context, any meaning of overhead makes no sense.

___

03-10-2003, 08:13 PM

Because you used "overhead" as a noun, it means "business expenses." Look in the dictionary as there is only 1 meaning of overhead as a noun close to what you meant. And don't argue and say you didn't use it as a noun cause that would be really dumb. Just admit that you didn't know what overhead meant and it makes no sense in your sentence.

over·head
Pronunciation: 'O-v&r-"hed
Function: noun
Date: 1914
1 : business expenses (as rent, insurance, or heating) not chargeable to a particular part of the work or product
2 : CEILING; especially : the ceiling of a ship's compartment
3 : a stroke in a racket game made above head height : SMASH

iebnn

03-10-2003, 08:17 PM

What's with your grammatical nitpicking lately?

Alll of these straight from dictionary.com:

2: (computer science) the processing time required by a device prior to the execution of a command [syn: command processing overhead time, command processing overhead, command overhead]

Source: WordNet, Princeton University

Another:

1. Resources (in computing usually processing time or storage
space) consumed for purposes which are incidental to, but
necessary to, the main one. Overheads are usually
quantifiable "costs" of some kind.

Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing

hansschmucker

03-10-2003, 08:42 PM

Oh for f***'s sake don't start a discussion about grammer. You know, some people learn English at school and just don't wanna hear about that stuff in their free time.

iebnn

03-10-2003, 08:46 PM

I don't plan on having any discussion continue on that topic. It's pretty clear that ___ is incorrect. Hopefully it will just end there.

cbulock

03-10-2003, 09:33 PM

Divx is dead? The the...? This is the first I have heard about this.

iebnn

03-10-2003, 09:38 PM

Yeah, I have no idea what he's talking about...

JackAxe

03-10-2003, 09:39 PM

Anybody for a grammar cracker, kill me now. =P

I'm still using a NR70v, bought 2 of them with warranties, so I'm going to hold onto them a little longer. The NX video would be a nice improvement, but I can wait. This is where I'm confused about DivX the files I grab all look like crap. Cinepack is old, but at 1000k it's pretty clean, definitely much nicer then what I've seen on my PPC for quality. But if the PPC can truly produce at least VHS quality at 240, that would be fine with me. Right now all the examples look like complete AVI garbage, blurry with artifacts everywhere.

<]=)

hansschmucker

03-10-2003, 09:43 PM

It has the market it always had, namely geeks and criminals.

The new license terms make it practically impossible to use it for legal distribution of animations by small companies (most don't want to since, a no-streaming format is of little use today)

And now, good night! It's almost 4 am and I have to get up at 6

iebnn

03-10-2003, 09:48 PM

Any codec can look like crap if you encode with it the wrong way. DivX can look amazing if used properly and done with 4 pass encoding.

There is an SDK out for Gamecube that allows it to use DivX in its games (legally).

There are a lot of good uses for non-streaming video formats. Making them streaming often adds size to the file as well.

giorgos_gs

03-11-2003, 08:50 AM

This device has:
http://www.gbax.com/gp32review.html
* Hires Graphics
* Good sound
* Plays DivX and MP3
* Is OPEN SOURSE
* Plays Emulators for NES, SNES, GB,GBC,GBA, Sega, PC Engine, ZX Spectrum, Commodore, MSX
* Has USB
* Takes Smartmedia Cards
* Has ARM CPU around 133 - 160MHZ
* Plays Lucas Arts SCUMMV with sound

and with ARM CPU around 133 - 160MHZ it plays all that.

NX70V has a stronger CPU!!

Zork

03-11-2003, 12:27 PM

hansschmucker,
theres some correction necesarry to your codec table

MPEG 1 isnt and never were slow to encode. To be exact : its the fastest mass market encoder out there. The same is true for MPEG 2. With my 2 year old G4/400 I encode 2 hour DVD Videos with any source within 4 hours. With the new G4s you need something between 30 - 60 minutes for the same video.

MPEG 2 is standard on any system, cause you could play DVD Video with any system. If you have a DVD ROM drive you always also have some DVD player installed with it (usually WinDVD, beside the VLC works way better).

MPEG 4 is also a full standard and is fully standardized included sice QuickTime 6.x which is installed on every MacOS and Windows PC. And MPEG 4 is way less ressource intensive then DivX (which is some MPEG 4 derivate anyway). Check MPEG 4 movies made by Apple. They working on every G4 avail and on any PC released throguh the last few years.

DivX on the other side never had any standards at all. They changed its sound codecs at least half a dozen times since the first version, which means that even if you have some DivX player it wont mean at all, that you could even play DivX movies with it. and now with XviD, you could trash all your DivX stuff anyway.

You missed a few important codecs. Just one example is the all mighty Sorenson (I believe they are at version 4 in the meantime). They fulfil everything what was promised with DivX, with way better quality, but has the same disadvantage as every non MPEG codec : You cant use them outside your PC (either MacOS or Windows). That means they are worth sh*t, cause noone with a working brain sits 2 hours in front of his PC starring at the monitor watching a movie. You could bypass that prob with having some huge cable laying around your rooms to connect your TV Out of your Radeon or GeForce and connect it with your TV set (ignoring all the noise your PC builds up during playtime and hoping that noone will fall into your well hidden cable trap :) ), but thats at best some freak stuff and no real solution at all.
Motion JPEG has amazing quality (way better then MPEG 1 with the same bandwidth), but were used mainly with Pinnacle video cards and the PSX used this format for all of its movies (thats why PSX intros always looked way better then our jerky and ****ty intro movies displayed on the Windows and MacOS PC ;) ). Again no mass market acceptance, cause of missing playback devices.
If you wanna use real world codecs there is no solution beside the good, old MPEG 1, 2 and 4 family (they even survive at the scene beside that they build way larger files then Sorenson or the failed DivX - and that means a lot when you know the greedy nature of leechers).

Zork

03-11-2003, 12:31 PM

iebnn, kinoma is some newly build format. Cinepak is part of the Quicktime codec package and were some huge success at the first versions of QuickTime before they included Sorenson and MPEG 4. If Kinoma would be just Cinepak I could encode them with my Quicktime Player within minutes.

Zork

03-11-2003, 12:39 PM

hansschmucker, DivX is dying. XviD were the last step necesarry to conclude that fact. I checked for DivX stuff when the DivX player for the PS2 were released (before that tool DivX were just a waste of time, cause you couldnt watch it outside your PC equipment).
And there is lamost nothing left of the formerly DivX compared with its wealthy status lets says 3-4 years ago, when everyone mentioned that MPEG will die, cause DivX is so brilliant (there were even idi*ts which told that DivX has better quality then SVCD :) ).
And now a few years later MPEG 2 is the standard and for DivX there is nothing else then a few worthless DVD rips. There are also other releases, but all of them just MPEG movies reencoded to DivX (like for example Futurama and Simpsons episodes) and using a codec twice always produces just sh*t.
And when iebnn mentioned that DivX hardware players are released. Yep, there were one. Guess how glad thos manufacturer were, when XviD destroyed the last remainings of Divx :) . And XviD has the same limitations as DivX .... no scene support anymore. Just worthless and brainless DVD rips which are only needed by greedy leechers.

Zork

03-11-2003, 12:43 PM

giorgo, there is no GBA emulation software avail for the GP32. And the C64 and the SNES emulation are really slow. Check the URL I already posted at http://www.emu.pl/gp32/ . So thx for the hint which shows that the Clie community could expect some new emulation software with the ARM Clies, but beside that it wont help that much at this topic ;) .

CopyCat

03-11-2003, 12:59 PM

Originally posted by Zork

Thats why for example a 1 GHz Motorola G4 isnt half as slow as a 2 GHZ P4, but instead twice as fast.

thats funny, twice as fast. good one.

skribe

03-11-2003, 03:01 PM

zork: I dont mean to be rude but you are a very misinformed person in general.

DiVX can indeed be DVD quality and as someone else stated if encoded correctly the difference is for all intents and purposes indistinguishable on the typical computer monitor...that being said why does it matter - the point is that thje advantage to DiVX is the compression for downloading full length movies over the internet - which it is still wildly popular for and shows no signs of slowing down. XviD has nothing even remotely to do with DiVX aside from just being another MPEG4 based codec for video, its neither developed by the same people nor intended as a replacement for the existing DiVX codec. Check out the webpages for the developers of both if you dont believe me.

DiVX is not a standard, I dont know why you keep bringing it up. It was never intended to be a standard. Of course MPEG video is "more standard" MPEG video *IS* a standard. There are many video codecs out there that are not developed or intended to be a standard, DiVX is one of them.

Just to drive the point home again cause you're not seeming to get it, DiVX is not a standard codec. It is not an open codec. It is not supposed to be encorporated into all sorts of devices like MPEG and everyone but you already knows that and dosent care.

The codec still exists for the same purpose it always has and still thrives as well.

Next topic, Kinoma uses the cinepak mobile codec. Period. Its not "some special codec" its cinepak mobile. It even says so when you encode the video. You're right though, its a part of the Quicktime package. Thats why you need the quicktime encoding package installed to use kinoma.

Again I dont mean to be rude but you need to do a bit more research on this stuff before presenting personal opinions as fact.

Zork

03-11-2003, 03:15 PM

skribe, lets face facts. DivX offers indeed worse quality then DVD. I stated that clearly by posting the ratio at which DVDs are compressed and at which DivX movies are compressed when they are released on CDs. So, telling that DivX is even near DVD is simply wrong, cause DivX movies are usually released on one or two CDs. And yep, you could get the same quality with DivX, but at such size that you dont have to use it instead of standard codecs at all.

And yep, XviD replaced DivX. iebnn knew what we were talking bout, but it seems like you ignoring one huge fact : The only purpose of DivX were its illegal use at the movie scene. And there i were replaced by XviD a few months ago. Try to find DivX releases and you will see that this scene is simply dead.

But you got at least one fact correct : there are no devices out there avail to playback DivX movies. Thats what I stated all the time and thats why DivX never had the smallest chance against MPEG. Its simply braindead to change a codec essentially every few weeks for video and/or audio streams. Thats nothing else then telling : "Hey, dont use our stuff, cause noone knows what codec we will use tomorrow " ;) . That makes the codec completely useless, cause noone would be able to watch such movies on there prefered platform ... the good, old tv set.

And bout Kinoma : Kinoma format aint part of Quicktime. Thats what I clearly stated. And thats why I told, that Cinepak cant be the source of Kinoma, cause CinePak movies cant be played back usin Kinoma player (and yep, not even when you put the correct pdb header to such files).

You see, believing to being familiar with stuff is one thing. Knowing facts the other one ;) .

cbulock

03-11-2003, 03:48 PM

MPEG 2 is standard on any system, cause you could play DVD Video with any system.
MPEG 4 is also a full standard and is fully standardized included sice QuickTime 6.x which is installed on every MacOS and Windows PC.

Neither of these statements are true. Maybe you are using a Mac, and then that might be true, but Windows does not come with any MPEG-2 or 4 playback abilitys and it doesn't come with Quicktime either. I'm sure most systems with DVD players do come with some software to playback MPEG-2, but not all systems have DVD players.

iebnn

03-11-2003, 04:04 PM

Originally posted by giorgos_gs
This device has:
http://www.gbax.com/gp32review.html
* Hires Graphics
* Good sound
* Plays DivX and MP3
* Is OPEN SOURSE
* Plays Emulators for NES, SNES, GB,GBC,GBA, Sega, PC Engine, ZX Spectrum, Commodore, MSX
* Has USB
* Takes Smartmedia Cards
* Has ARM CPU around 133 - 160MHZ
* Plays Lucas Arts SCUMMV with sound

and with ARM CPU around 133 - 160MHZ it plays all that.

NX70V has a stronger CPU!!

And a whole different OS. Also, the CPU isnt the only thing that matters.

iebnn

03-11-2003, 04:07 PM

Originally posted by Zork
hansschmucker,
MPEG 4 is also a full standard and is fully standardized included sice QuickTime 6.x which is installed on every MacOS and Windows PC. And MPEG 4 is way less ressource intensive then DivX (which is some MPEG 4 derivate anyway). Check MPEG 4 movies made by Apple. They working on every G4 avail and on any PC released throguh the last few years.

DivX is more resource intensive because it has better compression.

iebnn

03-11-2003, 04:09 PM

Originally posted by Zork
iebnn, kinoma is some newly build format. Cinepak is part of the Quicktime codec package and were some huge success at the first versions of QuickTime before they included Sorenson and MPEG 4. If Kinoma would be just Cinepak I could encode them with my Quicktime Player within minutes.

Who would ever want to use a format that only takes a few minutes to encode into? You're going to either get trash quality or really huge files. 4 pass divx 5 is amazing quality, and takes many hours to do (obviously, since it's 4 pass).

iebnn

03-11-2003, 04:11 PM

Originally posted by Zork
hansschmucker, DivX is dying. XviD were the last step necesarry to conclude that fact. I checked for DivX stuff when the DivX player for the PS2 were released (before that tool DivX were just a waste of time, cause you couldnt watch it outside your PC equipment).
And there is lamost nothing left of the formerly DivX compared with its wealthy status lets says 3-4 years ago, when everyone mentioned that MPEG will die, cause DivX is so brilliant (there were even idi*ts which told that DivX has better quality then SVCD :) ).
And now a few years later MPEG 2 is the standard and for DivX there is nothing else then a few worthless DVD rips. There are also other releases, but all of them just MPEG movies reencoded to DivX (like for example Futurama and Simpsons episodes) and using a codec twice always produces just sh*t.
And when iebnn mentioned that DivX hardware players are released. Yep, there were one. Guess how glad thos manufacturer were, when XviD destroyed the last remainings of Divx :) . And XviD has the same limitations as DivX .... no scene support anymore. Just worthless and brainless DVD rips which are only needed by greedy leechers.

Stop spouting off crap. There's a lot more than dvd rips in divx. What scenes are you referring to? DivX is still used a lot (for things other than dvd rips).

hansschmucker

03-11-2003, 04:56 PM

Just a quick general word about QT. The average Windows user uses WMP and nothing more. Some people install QT6 by accident, when some program requests it, but most don't. And who can blame them. I hate to use it for playing as well. A player can't try to redraw it's interface about 5 times per second, don't allow standard hotkeys, don't support the standard file format for the system and expect to be widely accepted.

iebnn

03-11-2003, 05:46 PM

ugh.... I had a really long message but accidently loaded a different site in here when I clicked a link, and lost it all :/

Summary:
I don't like the quicktime player, it's expensive to be used to encode with (expensive being "not free"), and it has worse performance playing movies on my laptop than with divx for some reason (poorly coded/resource hogging player? maybe).. when I do full screen it plays the sound very choppily when I have too many other things open, but I don't run into that with divx encoded video.

And.... read through this.... http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/divx-encoding.htm (doom9 is a well known site where a lot of the coders of the various codecs help out)

DivX is an improvement on MPEG4..... how can you say mpeg4 is better? Sure mpeg4 might have more compatibility with players built into systems, but what does that matter to you/us? Quicktime is just as bad in this aspect -- you have to install it on a PC.

There is more use than for pirating dvd rips.... I can still find a LOT of new tv episodes in DivX in channels with over 1,000 people (divx is all they use... in fact I Haven't seen many places use xvid yet. It's still in alpha anyway and changes all the time.) And these aren't mpeg1->divx or anything. Don't even try telling me it's completely dead when I can go into hundreds of channels with new tv shows encoded in DivX.

Also.... encoding your dvds THAT YOU OWN into divx and keeping them on your hard drive is useful if you have a laptop either without a dvd drive, without any optical drive, or if you don't want to carry around your DVDs with you. Subnotebooks especially -- very portable, but often with no dvd/cd drive.

Yes, DVD is better in quality than divx etc, but it's also 2 to 4 GIGABYTES for a movie. And to tell you the truth -- I notice little difference between a GOOD encoded divx (2-4 pass, divx 5) and a DVD. But then again I watch my movies on my home computer (since I have a great sound system on it and a crappy sound system for my TV), but monitors are better quality than TVs anyway....

As for the cinepak comment.... Sorry, I had read that it uses cinepak but I guess I'm incorrect in thinking that. It's still crappy (kinoma). My NX which uses some weird version of mpeg4 gets much better quality than kinoma.

Zork

03-11-2003, 06:50 PM

hansschmucker, Quicktime is the most often used third party solution for windows. And thats simply cause its the best multimedia solution out there, which supports MPEG 2 playback (again, another misinformed guy didnt got this essential information) and MPEG 4 encoding and decoding (means the real thing, not that MS developed and now dead almost MPEG 4 stuff called DivX).

skribe

03-11-2003, 07:05 PM

zork: You're not too quick are you? DiXV is indeed almost lossless - a properly encoded DiVX file is practically indistinguishable from a DVD played on the computer even running at resolutions much much higher then a television set. XviD is the same way. Also, a DiVX or XviD file encoded to be completely lossless will STILL be smaller then an MPEG2 (dvd) movie file of the same quality.

Second topic, A fast search on kazaa for simpsons, that 70s show, and malcolm in the middle episodes in DiVX and XviD all turned up the maximum number of results. I got the same results on WinMX, Limewire, and Edonkey as well. The DivX movie group on my newserver has over 100,000 headers atm - and there were 7 releases encoded in either XviD or DiVX today according to various sites that track those things. So please tell me how that lends to a dead scene exactly?

Third, the following is an exact copy of the standard settings from my copy of kinoma producer,

Current Settings

video

format: cinepak mobile

frames per second: 15

size in pixels: 480x320

bitrate: 560kbps

audio

format: ADPCM

audio channels: mono

sample rate: 8.192kHz

compression ratio: 2:1

audio boost: none

I think that pretty much speaks for itself. Obviously you were wrong on the kinoma format since...according to the program itself it is indeed cinepak mobile.

Please stop spouting off about all of this stuff that you really have no idea what you're talking about...you're just comming across as ignorant.

PS: Microsoft did not develop nor has anything even remotely to do with DiVX or XviD

Zork

03-11-2003, 07:06 PM

iebnn, you arent allowed to make backups of your DVD, cause thats not possible w/o bypassing the DCC protection ;) . Isnt DMCA some fine stuff and didnt get the US people exactly the government they deserve ?
But here in civiliced europe we still could backup our own DVDs. And using their DivX is at best a waste of time, cause its quality cant compete at all with MPEG 4 or Sorenson 3 (that one is really amazing when it comes to quality). And nope, DivX isnt an enhancement to MPEG 4. Its just MS usual way to destroy a standard by developing something similiar. Then MS realized that this werent successful at all and they abandoned it. The only purpose left for DivX were the DVD rip scene (and sometime even the Cinema release scene, but thos times are gone).
D00ds, check the real stuff I mentioned above and stop playing around with dead stuff.
And bout the Quicktime nonsense : Quicktime is free to DL from www.apple.com/quicktime. Would have been surely some funny moment watching this silly guy trying to pay for freeware ;) .
Bout MPEG 4 : Quicktime is a standard software. Its even the most often used third party solution out there. So simply get the fact, that MPEG 4 is standard on any PC. Beside some folks which were to stupid to realize that they didnt had to pay for it :) . And thats some advantage compared with DivX which is installed only on a few systems.
And bout tv shows : Fine, show me the preair episode of the recent Simpsons episode on Saturday as DivX :) . Perhaps you get now the fact, that the whole DivX scene changed into a "We get all the stuff days after its released for the MPEG standard" scene. By that time its even already released also as RealPlayer files in most cases :) .
And one last thing : DivX releases looks way horrible compared with the real DVDs. And if you mean that you didnt seen any differences, then, please, simply get some glasses. You are really stating here, that not only 1:3 ratio equals 1:20 ratio, but also that using a destructive codec (your DivX file which is based on DVD video data) over a movie which already used a destructive codec looks (the DVD video data) equal to the first movie (again the DVD video data). You see what you mentioned here, d00d ;) ?

Zork

03-11-2003, 07:16 PM

skribe, noone believes this DivX is similiar to DVD Video stuff anymore. We all know it better. Get the DVD rip of the last Simpsosns DVD and you know what we all know since years. It looks lame. Thats a simple fact. I for myself like Sorenson 3, when it comes to doin stuff which is only targeted for computer use. But I would never intend such wrong stuff like "Hey, Sorenson 3 is way better quality with its way larger compression ratio then a DVD Video with 1:3". Cause that would be the only way to show that Im not familiar with compression at all. So stop telling here stuff which everyone knows is simply wrong. DivX looks horrible compared with DVD Video. Look at the dark areas of movies and especially at fast moving scenes. They look like complete sh*t. And at some (!) aspects they look even worse then MPEG 1 (I once had identical scenes of movies compared and at Red Planet when the spaceship fly to the dark moon at the beginning of the movie the moon details are all kept at the antique MPEG 1 version. But at the DivX version this moon were simply a dark grey ball. This is already a few years ago, but with todays DivX you still have the some huge artifacts no other codec have to fight with (I would even say, that beside CinePak (which were amazing with QuickTime 1.0 - I used it then for dozens of cutting projects) and MPEG 1 (the example I mentioned above were a single occurence. Usually MPEG 1 look like 80s stuff) I dont know any codec which produces as horrible results as DivX. Sorenson 3, MPEG 2 and MPEG 4 are all way better in quality and Sorenson and MPEG 4 when it comes to bandwidth.
And again bout your tv shows : Get the recent Simpsons episode on the saturday before airing as DivX file. Case closed.

iebnn

03-11-2003, 07:17 PM

Originally posted by Zork
hansschmucker, Quicktime is the most often used third party solution for windows. And thats simply cause its the best multimedia solution out there, which supports MPEG 2 playback (again, another misinformed guy didnt got this essential information) and MPEG 4 encoding and decoding (means the real thing, not that MS developed and now dead almost MPEG 4 stuff called DivX).

MS didn't make DivX.

Zork

03-11-2003, 07:17 PM

BTW Werent the topic once "SNES emulation" and not "Some folks tryin to defend a dead DVD rip codec" ?

iebnn

03-11-2003, 07:26 PM

You need to register Quicktime 6 to be able to encode with it. There is a free player version.

I don't really care about the DMCA. I own the DVD so I should be able to do what I want with it for private use.

You'll find yourself mistaken when making comments like "DivX can't compete at all with MPEG4."

This is getting to the point of absurd.

By the way, Quicktime is in no way standard on every PC. Almost none of my computers at school have it (except the macs of course). A few of my friend's laptops don't have it. It IS something you have to download. It is just as difficult to install as DivX.

"Get the DVD rip of the last Simpsosns DVD and you know what we all know since years. It looks lame"
This all depends on the encoder's skill. It is easy to make lame looking divxs if you don't have a clue what you're doing. You can't tell me that a 4 pass divx 5 encoded video looks "lame." Don't you get it that there are people who don't know how to encode yet still release stuff?

iebnn

03-11-2003, 07:27 PM

Okay, your comments have just escalated (or dropped) to the level of trolling. I'll be leaving this conversation now.

Zork

03-11-2003, 07:32 PM

iebnn, from http://news.com.com/2100-1023-272805.html?legacy=cnet

Microsoft could pose a further headache for DivXNetworks down the road for a different reason: The original version of DivX was essentially based on a Microsoft implementation of MPEG-4.

"The DivX technology lineage is based on using Microsoft technology and re-branding it as its own," said Michael Aldridge, Microsoft's product manager for the Windows Digital Media Division.

iebnn

03-11-2003, 07:35 PM

DivX 3.11 was a hacked MS MPEG4 (an improvement on it).

DivX 4 and 5 have nothing to do with 3.11 and were coded from scratch (they are legal.)

skribe

03-11-2003, 07:36 PM

zork: man...you really are dense.

First off, stop saying "d00d". Makes you look like a retard.

Second, please dont make me go rip off 15 secs of some DVD and then encode it to DiVX and post both for you just so you can compare the two to prove a point. Its really not worth the effort and I doubt you'll admit you're wrong even if I do. I dont care what the DVD rip of the simpsons DVD looks like - I didnt do it. Again if a DiVX encode is done the way it should be it will be PRACTIALLY lossless, in the same way that a 192kbps MP3 file is PRACTICALLY lossless compared to music off of a CD...or are you going to tell me thatt mp3 is dead now compared to ogg too...

Third, what in the world does a compression ratio have to do with picture quality? If I take a document and compress it with RAR or ZIP it still comes out exactly the way I put it in. The only thing that effects quality in digital media is the settings at which its encoded. I can take a picture perfect MPEG1 movie file, encode it to MPEG2, then to MPEG4 then to DiVX and then encode it to XviD and it will STILL look exactly the same (assuming the correct encoding settings are used for all of the above). If you are noticing a serious lack in quality of DiVX movies I'd bet you money its your player but since I dont use a mac I have no idea of a good one to suggest.

Fourth, about half of the DMCA has already been declared unconstitutional by various US courts and its a fairly safe bet that when faced with litigation the rest of it will too. In fact as far as I know the law is actually suspended atm pending litigation? (could be wrong just thought I read that someplace) Please dont get into the debate of international politics, I could go on for days about your "civillized europe".

Lastly, yes the topic of the thread was emulation but you derailed it long ago with your senseless rambling about topics you're terribly uninformed about so theres no harm now.

Alistar

03-11-2003, 07:40 PM

I have to agree with everybody but Zork. DivX is a widely used format. I see it all the time. Also I have to say that I have several DivX files that are quite small comparably to DvDs and the quality is much better than VHS and quite comparable to DvD if you get good ones. Admittedly I have seen some DivX that were small, the sound didn't sync and had horrible pixelation, but if you get good ones, I can put it full screen at 1280*1024 resolution and it looks great. I don't have any knowledge of this software or technology so I can't offer any technical opinion only a qualitative one.

Zork

03-11-2003, 07:48 PM

iebnn, FTV releases the Simpsons episodes. They are indeed released as MPEG 1 first. And thos releases are completely corrupted (you could easily check that by using VCDGear with them). So I know that people could do **** with codecs. But then again : 1:3 vs 1:20. You dont get the fact. Not even god could bypass that ratio gap. Thats why DivX releases not only looks way (!!!) worse then the DVD Video originals cause of the fact, taht they using destructive codecs twice at the same material (Divx rips of DVD Video (MPEG 2) data) instead of one destructive codec (means the MPEG2 data on DVD videos), but also cause they have to use way higher compression ratios to fit stuff on two CDs which were before stored on a 4.7 GB DVD.
And now some folks really stating here .... "Hey, this two destructive 1:20 ratio stuff is really as good as my original DVD Video". Yep, and Santa Claus is for real too ;) .

So much for this "DivX equal DVD Video" stuff.

And bout MPEG 4. That stuff is fully supported everywhere. And it looks really great. It doesnt have to deal with that huge visible artifacts DivX has to fight with when the alpha frames have to store a lot of data, simply cause the camera is zooming or moving. But indeed it still has visible artifacts as every codec out there (destructive compression isnt called that way for nothing). But even DVD videos show clear artifacts. But that shows only when you know where you have to look at. It has the same prob with the edges of the alpha frame data. There you have some small distortions, which are already known from the MPEG 1 movies. But at MPEG 2 they are better hidden by new compression schemes and the simple fact, that MPEG 2 movies are usually use higher resolutions and therefor this areas becoming smaller.
Bout Divx : Its simply a Legoland dream come true, when the whole picture moves. The screen become full of squares, cause thats the way it is, this codec works. And this squares could be only removed one way : enhance the VBR bandwidth limit. K, but why should I then still need this stuff, when I have to enhance bandwidth anyway ? This is something which MPEG 4 and even Sorenson 3 handles way better then DivX.

Zork

03-11-2003, 07:58 PM

skribe,
1)k, non-d00d :)
2)Thats already been made a few thousand times out there and when you are a litte familiar with codecs you should know that you are talking strange stuff, cause you really state here (despite the ratio prob !) : "Hey, using two different destructive codes onto the same material builds equal results then usin one destructive codec". You cant imagine how newbie like this sounds to anyone dealing with codecs.
3) Til this point something you stated sounded sometimes smart. Thats why I always tried to be nice and thats why I keeping this as nice as possible : You dont know the difference between non destrucitve and destructive compression. Learn bout it and you see what youve done do your net image with your lines at the third paragraph ;) .
4) the DMCA is complete sh*t and a crime against freedom of speech. Thats something we completely agree. But its valid right at the US. And if the US folks didnt voted for the stupies president ever DMCA wouldnt had become reality and MS already would have been splitted (anyone remembering DOJ trial ?) making PCs way more affordable and competition possible again.
And BTW DivX players for MacOS X are the fastest avail out there for any platform.

skribe

03-11-2003, 08:02 PM

Its amazing how you can make up some facts on the spot and act like they prove anything....not to mention how you can argue that MPEG-4 has better picture quality then an MPEG-4 derivitave codec.

I'd still love for you to explain to me HOW a compression ratio effects picture quality (not just repeat that it does)

Also, since you consider MPEG and DiVX "destructive" codecs...would you like to give me some insight on a codec or video encoding mode that exists that you consider lossless?

Milk-Man

03-11-2003, 08:02 PM

I read alot of forums and I've never actually wanted to slap someone for postin g before. Congratulations on being the first!

You've made so many ill informed and crass generalizations about everything from RISC vs CISC to video codecs I can barely believe it is possible in one thread.

I think you should read this

http://www.lingsoft.fi/~reriksso/competence.html

"People who do things badly, according to David A. Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well."

Zork

03-11-2003, 08:03 PM

Alistar, that were true before XviD take over the scene. Now DivX is mainly used for braindead stuff like DVD rips (as if DVD video are really that expensive ?) or MPEG 1 converted, old tv series stuff. Its sad, cause XviD take over at almost exactly the time, when DivX could have experienced some escape form its freak only status to some mass market acceptance when the DivX player for the PS2 were released (the PS2 already were part of the DVD video hype at japan). Bad timing ;) .
And you are true bout the VHS comparision. But then again, everything looks like gold compared with the dead VHS format. And now we live at the DVD video era. And there comparision looks way more ugly (DivX are smaller and have to use therefor higher compression ratio and they are the second destructive codec used with the same material).

iebnn

03-11-2003, 08:04 PM

"iebnn, FTV releases the Simpsons episodes. They are indeed released as MPEG 1 first"

I don't download simpsons, and I don't get anything from "FTV." They sound terrible to me (FTV).

I didn't vote for Bush.

iebnn

03-11-2003, 08:06 PM

"Now DivX is mainly used for braindead stuff like DVD rips (as if DVD video are really that expensive ?) or MPEG 1 converted, old tv series stuff"

STOP SAYING THIS. It is NOT true. I go into channels with >1,000 people in them (there are a lot of these channels) and with hundreds of fserves that have divxs of tv shows. Without any mpeg1 involved.

Zork

03-11-2003, 08:16 PM

skribe, last learning lesson :
1) Simply by comparing both. Get MPEG 4 movies from www.apple.com/quicktime.
2) Cant believe it. You mean that data compressed to a 20th of its original size are really have no visible artifacts at all compared with data compressed to is 3th size ?
3) I were talking bout destructive vs. non destructive compression, cause you really meant that "I can take a picture perfect MPEG1 movie file, encode it to MPEG2, then to MPEG4 then to DiVX and then encode it to XviD and it will STILL look exactly the same". And I were one of the nice guy which simply pointed you to some essential mistake you made here.
And BTW non destructive compressions for pictures are for exmaple LZW compression included with TIFF. Or you simply compress your files with RAR, ZIP or SIT. Thats non destructive compression. You could do that a few dozen times and the data will keep bit exactly the same. Destructive compression on the other side uses some smart compression algorithms by tryin to hide the data loss as good as possible away from you. The advantage with such stuff is, that you could achieve way better compression of multimedia data that way. But all of them are destructive, means the original data are lost.
And BTW Tell the whining guy, that he should at least try to post which RISC/CISC stuff he meant, before complaining around for nothing.
However .... enough time spent on that topic. I hope at least a few users learned now something bout the way codecs are working and which advantages and disadvantages they have (you surely did ;) ). I deal with that stuff since a long time and hoping that I spreaded a little knowledge here ;) .
So whining folks ... its your time now to place a few lies here, cause you hate the fact that someone which is familiar with the stuff he is talking bout doesnt share your point of view ;) .

Zork

03-11-2003, 08:22 PM

iebnn, I wouldnt DL Simpsons either. But here at europe its the only way to get them while they are recent and not watch them at least (!!!) a year later on TV. With Star Trek Enterprise its even 2 years later.
And how would you know that the episodes avail for DivX arent encoded already with other codecs ;) ? But indeed it could also be, that the groups keep there uncompressed data and release DivX versions after theyve done the MPEG 1 versions. But what purpose to they have, when almost everyone already got them as MPEG 1 version ?

skribe

03-11-2003, 08:25 PM

1) Encode your own of both and then compare.
2) Yes, thats exactly what I mean. Its just *gasp* smaller.
3) You are talking about a loss from the way a file is encoded not a loss from compression (now you're just getting technical since a smaller encoding format leads to smaller files which is, technically compression) but theoretically if someone made a pure compression algorithim for 100:1 with no changes to the frame of video itself it would STILL look the same.

You've taught and proven nothing, you make up your own facts and then REALLY think everyone must feel so surprised at how intelligent you are.

"So whining folks ... its your time now to place a few lies here, cause you hate the fact that someone which is familiar with the stuff he is talking bout doesnt share your point of view ." - Zork

I'm a film production student, I work with AVID and other digital video encoding and recording equipment every day. What are your credentials? heh

iebnn

03-11-2003, 08:30 PM

Zork: I know this because I used to help with one of the larger groups. They have people who capture the stuff straight off the TV and send it right over for the encoders (who all use divx btw). Nothing is used except DivX in the channels I'm in (which totals to over 1,000 fserves, many many gigabytes (terabytes) of files).

Why can't you just accept that DivX is still used a lot?

Unregistered

03-11-2003, 08:42 PM

Yah Zork makes lotsa BS up...like in the games thread, he thinks that Pocket PC Simcity is not as good because it has GUIs but Palm Simcity (LAFF) has hidden GUIs. The thing is, you can hide GUIs in PPC Simcity as well...

Unregistered

03-11-2003, 08:47 PM

Originally posted by Zork
PPC->Palm, fine that I have now ia T675 instead of a T625, idiot.
And this is still the smartest part of your posting. Where exactly did I mentioned that a T625 or even a T675 is faster then a PPC for emulation ? And yep, sometimes it is faster, cause Win CE is the slowest **** you could get as OS for a PDA. Check the bookmarks when it comes the office and productivity software. This stuff run even on he old CISC CPUs way faster then on the ARM PPCs.
And nope, SNES emulation never runs "flawless and reliable" on PPCs. Its simply useless sh*t. And thats also your answer bout there is no optimization needed. Thats true, cause useless sh*t doesnt need any optimization at all.

So you have a T675 yet...you say in 2 threads that you use a T625...IDIOT.

http://cliesource.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=56768#post56768

http://cliesource.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=54244#post54244

hansschmucker

03-11-2003, 09:09 PM

This has gotten past the point where I would want to continue reading all the stuff posted here. You mix up far too much stuff, and shouting and flaming is not what I consider civilized either. Maybe we will have another thread dealing with emulation, and, hope you do mind me saying, I would enjoy NOT meeting a few people there. Bye.

cbulock

03-12-2003, 01:43 AM

Wow, I'm with Milk-man, but Zork, your not the first person in forums I've wanted to slap. Maybe like the third or forth. Please understand that your are totally misinformed about Divx and you are just looking like an idiot because everyone else here has actually used it. I've never used XviD, but I assure you that there is very little noticable difference between a Divx file ripped from a DVD. Oh course there is a compression ratio difference. Divx uses a smarter encoder to make the files smaller while making the quality look the same. If your are staring at the pixels, yes you will notice a slight difference. Try sitting back from the screen at least 8-12 inches. Now it will look DVD quality.:rolleyes:

Zork

03-12-2003, 05:31 AM

skribe, you working with AVID Producer and really write sentences like "I can take a picture perfect MPEG1 movie file, encode it to MPEG2, then to MPEG4 then to DiVX and then encode it to XviD and it will STILL look exactly the same" ? Im nice again and telling you that you still have a long way to go ;) .
And bout 2nd) You cant get things essentially smaller w/o losing quality. Some part you could catch by advanced encoding schemes (for example Sorenson 3 movies look way better at he same size then the early CinePak movies), but not when you compare 1:3 vs 1:20. There you have some huge gap at quality.

Zork

03-12-2003, 05:57 AM

cbulock, DivX DVD rips (with appr. 1:20 ratio with two destructive codecs in use) look the same as the DVD videos (1:3 ratio with one destructive codec in use) itself. Thats some joke I really have to remember. 3 GB and double the destructive codec artifacts are gone .... cause the magician "SmartCodec" let them disappear :) .

Lets face facts : DVD rips movies always look like sh*t compared to the real thing (and i clearly include here MPEG 4 and Sorenson 3, cause im not stup*d enough to fight some evangelist war for such unimportant stuff like a plain codec. If others would have thought the same way, this thread wouldnt become a flame war started by some folks which thought they could fight their evangelist war).

So this is it for this thread from my side. This could have become some interesting thread bout the advantages and disadvantages of MPEG 1, 2, 4, Sorenson 3, Cinepak Mobile (thats one thing ive learned from this thread) and even DivX or XviD.
But what instead happened were some evangelist happening which posted stuff like "Use four destrutive codecs onto the same material and it will look identical to the original data", "1:20 ratio movies with 2 destructive codecs used looks identical to 1:3 ratio with one destructive codec used" and even "DivX isnt connected to MS". And none of this evangelists were able to tell the difference between there evangelist hype and reality even when they were faced with it.

BTW See what youve done to this thread. Even unregistered is reanimated again and started to sing his sad "A 640 * 480 only game is perfectly playable on a 320 * 240 screen w/o any change at all" song again. Was such drama really necesarry ?

Zork

03-12-2003, 06:19 AM

iebnn, I know that tv series DivX versions are released a few days or even weeks after the MPEG 1 releases and even the MPEG 2 releases are done. And there are folks on a daily base which joins MPEG channels and ask for DivX versions. And the answer always is the same : When the MPEG versions are done, there will be also versions for RealPlayer and DivX versions. So as DivX user you are at best some sort of second class tv series user. And bout other releases : Same scenario. Cinema releases are almost completely done in MPEG 1 and MPEG 2 (the only change I see during the last months is not only the complete dismiss of DivX/XviD of this part of the scene, but also that MPEG 1 starts to dying too. More and more stuff is done using MPEG 2 only, which means wave bye bye to all your VCD players :( - or start becoming familiar with TMPGEnc on Windows or M.Pack on the MacOS and reencode them as MPEG 1 ;) ). No way that you get DivX versions (within a recent time frame). Thats strange, but DivX lost the battle against MPEG 2 means SVCD. And as I mentioned before : To my surprise, cause I know the nature of leechers and DivX produces same quality as SVCD (you see im telling that DivX produces better quality at same size (!!!) as MPEG 2. Aint it nice when a posting is free of incompetent and evangelist stuff ?), but at smaller sizes (at best 33 % smaller w/o loss of quality, but 33 % are 33 %)). But MPEG 2 has the advantage of bein a standard and therefor everyone could use it everywhere. Thats the first time that leechers realized that purpose is more important then bandwidth. Now leechers just have to realize that its stup*d to DL DVD rips (no matter if DivX, XviD, Sorenson 3 or MPEG 4 is used), cause DVD videos are really not expensive enough to justify any DL at all and cause DVD rips looks horrible compared with the real thing (and you lose that way the huge advantage of DVDs compared with old VHS ... its amazing quality. Not to mention that you lose all the kewl extras).

iebnn

03-12-2003, 07:13 AM

No, the answer is not always the same. I was part of one of the encoding groups at one point. I knew what went on. I knew the owner. I know several encoders. They get the episodes straight off the TV (there are people who do this for the group), then they are encoded in 2 or 4 passes into DivX. After this, they do another episode. They do not take the DivX and do anything else with it such as convert it into MPEG1 or into RealPlayer. I have been through many fserves in these channels and have seen NO RealPlayer files, and no MPEG1 files (there are however VCD/SVCD channels, but these are entire different groups and seem to be a minority. They encode their own stuff and don't steal encodes from other groups. They couldn't do that anyway since often a watermark is added to the episode at some points.) And don't tell me that it's just some little crazy channel doing it -- I'm talking about hundreds and hundreds of channels with many thousands of people in them, and thousands of fserves. How can you tell me that this is not done when I see it being done? Also, I don't care about MPEG2 being standard and everyone everywhere being able to use it -- I'd rather use DivX, I can find DivX files more easily and quickly, and I'm competent enough to install the DivX codecs.

Zork

03-12-2003, 10:25 AM

iebnn, as mentioned : Where is the preair Simpsons episode on Saturday avail as DivX ? The simple answer is : There is none. Cause the scene mainly uses MPEG codecs. And scene stuff is the recent stuff.
What you talking bout is some group of users which also doin stuff and encoding stuff when its already old (means aired) and done by the scene a few days before. So its fine that there is also some small group which is still doin DivX stuff after it were already released as MPEG releases. But this isnt the early release scene at all. You wont find DivX Simpsons episodes on zero day FTP server. You wont find DivX cinema releases on zero day ftp servers. Cause all that stuff is done in the meantime using MPEG 2 for cinema stuff and MPEG 1 for tv stuff. If you try to UL there some old DivX version it simply get nuked (dupes are really hated on such sites :) ).
And I dont have to tell you, that zero day ftp servers are the root for every movies you find on the net. Indeed beside some old redone (not reencoded ! , but simply another one done the same stuff only at least a few days later - with cinema stuff its more like a few weeks later) DivX stuff, which is done as described by you by Kazaa folks (also heard from such stuff - but why waiting for DivX versions when the scene is using for its zero day releases only MPEG ? ). This is some nice addition (this folks even doin foreign movies, the scene wouldnt even think bout releasing), but the scene itself gave up DivX completely (again, im no evangelist, I would have liked DivX, cause the PS2 DivX player made DivX useful for the first time ever for the mass market) and XviD is almost only used for DVD rips. There were once some site where you could check the release dates of the tv series releases. And MPEG were the only format used by the elite groups which are the ones which post stuff onto zero day servers.
So thats what I were talking bout, when I clearly stated, that DivX is dead and XviD is used mainly for DVD rips (at this sector XviD is perfectly alive).
What you on the other site meant is the release of some small groups which still are doin DivX releases after they were released as MPEG versions on zero day ftp servers. This is fine and it clearly shows that formats could even survive, when they were dropped by the elite groups for most purposes. If small groups doin there own business is a sign for a living platform, then the good, old miggy is still living, m8 ;) . I presume that were the main difference between our points of view. I meant releases on zero day ftp sites and you meant stuff done by IRC and Kazaa groups (which is done a while after ftp stuff).

BTW Isnt it strange that a thread bout emulation for the Clie become mainly scene talk ;) ?

Whats a little sad, is the fact, that my offer that experienced developers from other platforms could join experienced Clie developers to build projects for OS 4.x and 5.x emulation software seems to be ignored. I still suggest such projects, cause it would enhance the chances that such a project produces some useable product (cause when you share tasks, you often get results faster) and it also would increase the mass of experienced Clie developers.

iebnn

03-12-2003, 10:46 AM

I guess we're talking about entirely different things. I download foreign television episodes that have been translated into English (with subtitles). It's not possible to have these out the day it comes on TV since it has to be translated, edited, etc.

And don't say a couple small groups... as I said before, there are hundreds of these and many of them have on average over 1000 people in their channels.

I don't download divx off KaZaa. It's terrible, and the quality is usually awful (there are a lot of bad encodes available on kazaa). I get my stuff from places that have high quality releases.

Why do SNES emulation now? Start out with NES or something.

skribe

03-12-2003, 03:09 PM

zork: I give up, you really are a moron. This isnt worth the effort.

RaptorX30

03-12-2003, 03:53 PM

Has anyone here ever programmed an emulator before in their life?

Any suggestions on where to start? :D im stumped

iebnn

03-12-2003, 07:49 PM

RaptorX30: Emulator coding is one of the most difficult types of programming. It's not easy, and requires a lot of knowledge of ASM (assembler language.) If you don't know where to start, this project isn't for you, sorry :)

Try learning some C/C++ for DOS, then once you get comfortable with that learn some basic stuff for Palm OS.

Zork

03-13-2003, 05:51 AM

skribe, indeed. And good luck with your trial to reach original data after using 4 destructive codecs with it :) .

Zork

03-13-2003, 05:59 AM

iebnn, simply cause of the name of this thread ;) . But as mentioned I would suggest SNES or GBA emulation for the ARM Clies (which are clearly fast enough for that purpose) and VCS 2600, NES and some appr. 50 % C64 emulation for the Dragonball Clies.
As mentioned I could do Pocket PC applications within minutes, cause im perfeclty familiar with the Win APIs and MFC (also already checked the WinCE APIs and there arent really different from the known APIs). But that wont help at all with Clie development I guess ;) . At asm im perfectly familiar with the r5900 MIPS CPU, but that again wont help with Dragonball or ARM asm.
The asm part wont be any real prob, cause RISC asm usually are at least at their core are nearly identical (already checked some Power PC asm). But becoming familiar with the Palm OS API and the Clie libs will be surely some challenge. But thats surely some stuff which could be learned at such projects within weeks during development.

iebnn

03-13-2003, 06:38 PM

Palm programming isn't so hard. Why not get started on porting snes 9x or something.

timewaster77

03-14-2003, 05:27 PM

To say that Divx is dieing is completely untrue. About 80% of the video on Kazaa is in Divx format and Kazaa is used by millions of people. I download video files off of FTPs and IRCs where the video is mostly MPEG1, but mostly people do not. I think it is a fair estimate that around 70% of the people who download video files download in Divx format simply because it is widely available on P2P networks.

Unregistered

03-14-2003, 06:53 PM

Originally posted by iebnn

I've talked with someone who owned it. He sold it after a month. He said the buttons were terrible (sounded like you were breaking the thing when you pressed them), and the emulators weren't that good. I read through the sites again and it looks like the SNES emulation wasn't very fast (still slow like PPC). It's in development (it's not an official product for gp32..).

It's a 66mhz ARM clockable to I think 166mhz (maybe it is 130 though). Also remember that the OS is geared towards GAMING and not much else -- Palm OS has other overhead.

I've got a GP32 and absolutely adore it; I intend on porting XCade to it for yucks, even. The buttons are fine, though the joystick is a little too "loose" (floppy.. moves too easily). Feels like a Neo Pocket more. The screen is big and glorious (kills GBA).

The TG16 emu is almost flawless.. wondrous sound and display, and the TG16 games are amazing. So within an hour of having the GeePee I had a couple dozen TG16 games going full speed on it. Gorgeous. ScummVM runs nicely on it, too. GBC and GB and NES run great. Its really only the SNES emus that are sluggish on it. Theres no useful GBA emulation for it yet. (If you can't pull off SNES at full speed, forget GBA, since it is an enhanced SNES ;)

SNES emus are about half speed on it, which is okay for SimCity, etc. The SNES emus could easily be sped up with some assembly and whatnot, though the SNES custom hardware would certainly be a challenge for 130MHz. ie: GB32 has Snes9xGP, which is a straight C++ port, no assembly. IT runs with sound and all layers at about 15fps.

The main advantage the GeePee has over a Palm OS unit is the flat memory mode; Palm OS makes memory management *hell* due to the limited dynamic RAM and the hoops you must go through to manage any real amount of memory.. You should see th crap I have to go through to get 2MB of RAM on a modern NX or TT :/

jeff

hansschmucker

03-14-2003, 08:09 PM

The NX can give you the memory through the extended heap, problem are the TT units. (Still I can agree on that much: POS memory managment was developed for small applications, not actually for games)

iebnn

03-14-2003, 11:50 PM

Hopefully OS6 will be our savior.... ;)

skeezix

03-15-2003, 08:58 PM

Originally posted by hansschmucker
The NX can give you the memory through the extended heap, problem are the TT units. (Still I can agree on that much: POS memory managment was developed for small applications, not actually for games)

The TT has a great heap space; the NX just has more. The TT's is about 700k if I recall offhand, which is pretty good. The NX is more.. maybe 1.5MB? The trick is.. the more heap, the less RAM you have for storage :) That is one reason the TT has more storage RAM. (Course the NX has more in ROM than the TT.. the TT browser is in RAM and not ROM, for instance.. so if you want the browser, theres 500k shot :)

Its always give and take.. hopefuly the right mix is available for everyone :)

jeff

Zork

03-17-2003, 08:07 AM

unregistered, the GBA and the SNES are complete different devices. The SNES used a 65C816 CISC CPU (running at 3.58 MHz) and the GBA uses some custom made ARM RISC CPU. The SNES also had even a SPU (called APU then) and GPU. The GBA on the other side does everything with its CPU and its custom subset. So the only thing which connects them both is the brand mark ;) .
Thats why its more likely that we see a full speed GBA emulation software on the Clie (cause of the same ARM core, where "only" the subset have to be emulated via software) then a full working emulation software for the SNEs, which is unbelievalbe complex to emulate cause of its different modes and its three processing units). The GP32 would be too slow for such as task. But the Clie surely could do that.
Emulation software is already getting larger and larger with the Clie. You would get here the fastest emulation, cause Clie apps are never simply ports (compared with the PPC stuff and there slow emulation solutions) and its using the faster CPU compared with the GP32 (with its 60 MHz ARM CPU (which could be indeed overclocked to 133 MHz)).
And dont forget : You didnt got a Clie to play dead old games all the time. You got it to play recent games and exclusive games. and there the Clie already takes the lead compared to any other handheld (beside the GBA indeed) or PDA.

Zork

03-17-2003, 08:11 AM

skeezix, RAM aint any real prob at all. While it isnt part of the OS, we simply have to construct and use our own VM architecture. Means in this case simply creating a file which stores all the data temporarly which cant fit at the heap and building some address system to access thos pages as fast as possible. Thats a lot of work, but its surely some interesting development.
For old skool developers this is even more fun, then doin real stuff.

iebnn

03-17-2003, 03:47 PM

And dont forget : You didnt got a Clie to play dead old games all the time. You got it to play recent games and exclusive games.

I'd be very surprised if anyone bought it for this purpose, or thinking that they would be able to. Sure there are a bunch of "exclusive" games, but they tend to be similar to games that have been around for a while..... no real "recent" games. The Clie really is no match for a GBA right now (and can't really be with the current models..... who likes a dpad that is made up of 4 awkwardly positioned buttons? Even with the controller addon, you have no shoulder buttons.) That's like saying you got linux for all of the latest and exclusive games.

How should the shoulder buttons on the GBA be handled? SNES also has the x and y buttons on top of those..... Even A and B are awkward since the dpad is in the middle of the two buttons (for those of us without the controller addon).

skeezix

03-17-2003, 07:10 PM

Originally posted by Zork
skeezix, RAM aint any real prob at all. While it isnt part of the OS, we simply have to construct and use our own VM architecture. Means in this case simply creating a file which stores all the data temporarly which cant fit at the heap and building some address system to access thos pages as fast as possible. Thats a lot of work, but its surely some interesting development.
For old skool developers this is even more fun, then doin real stuff.

Actually, with the speeds of current devices, RAM is *everything*. I had to work my *** off to get enough RAM to operate well with XCade.. it runs at 60fps on Tungsten T (140MHz). Thats *tough* topull off for emulation, with any video hardware action.

With something like the SNES, you've got some serious graphical effects.. you'll be hard pressed to keep 30fps on a T|T.

As soon as you start swapping ram to your own little VM, you're baked; accessing storage memory is very slow (remember, OS5 doesn't let you play with the semaphores like you used to, so you have to use legit techniques to get and access the RAM).

What it means.. your app shoudl stick to 700k RAM or less right now, since its reasonabyl easy to get that much; getting 2MB on a Palm OS machine is rough, and will kill your performance.

(Mind you.. if its an interactive app like a Infocom interp, or even ScummVM, you're okay; its when you're doign SNES 8megabit games like KI you get murdered)

I've got 3 emulators on the go right now, so I know what I'm on about ;)

Jeff

iebnn

03-17-2003, 07:17 PM

3 emulators?

Zork

03-18-2003, 07:03 AM

Hey iebnn,

Clies arent bought for gaming purpose :) . But when you thinkin of gaming, you arent thinking bout emulation first, but instead of custom made, recent, exclusive games. And there arent even near as much as for the GBA, but take a look at PalmGear and you will see that the Clie is the best supported PDA platform with exclusive and new games (already posted some list of exclusive games at another thread and there are dozens of full sized games wich are done for the Clie).
So thats the important stuff and its working. Emulation is kewl, but it is always just some second thought (nothing more and nothing less). Platforms which are centric on emulation simply doesnt offer enough custom made games. Thats why they relly on emulation software (like the GP32 for example).
For the buttons : The shoulder buttons arent the only prob. The way larger prob is the missing DPad with the Clie and almost every other Palm OS device beside the Tungsten (perhaps its working sh*tty, but its existing at least ;) ). Thats why some idea could be to use Graffiti as DPad replacement and having all the hardware buttons therefor free for emulating the other joypad buttons. And this way even the shoulder button prob is solved (simply use the Calendar and notepad buttons).
And it is correct that we still have to go some huge way to getting even more exclusive games and a wider selection of emulation software. But there is already some huge movement into that direction (look at all the new releases during the last few weeks like Insaniquarium, GTS Racing, Desailly Soccer, Toy Races, Rifle Slug II, etc. etc. ).

Zork

03-18-2003, 07:07 AM

skeezix, its surely not done easily, but doin some VM stuff surely is possible. But you have to structure your code that way as its done with consoles, where they have to fight with the same prob .... too less RAM, too less VRAM. Means swapping pages before you need them and swapping them while the games are running.
Perhaps I could help you with this stuff, cause it sounds really interesting. And lets face it ... most Palm OS devices will still use 4.x and 5.x for the next years. So even with OS 6 some fast working VM simulation would be essential.

iebnn

03-18-2003, 07:14 AM

Okay.... first you say "You got it to play recent games and exclusive games." then you say "Clies aren't bought for gaming purpose."

Even with the non-emulated games... there aren't that many that can compare to GBA games. The number is less than 10 or 20. Games are just an added thing for when you bought your clie.... You're not nearly getting the "latest" games for it (there is a long time between GBA-caliber game releases for Palm OS), and a lot of them aren't very "exclusive" (Insaniquarium has been a flash game for a while, toy races is a clone of an old game, rife slugs is a clone of an old game.... not to say they aren't fun, but it's nothing really *new* or exclusive). Yes, we have MT3D, but GBA has DooM, which is (at the moment) a lot nicer....

iebnn

03-18-2003, 07:15 AM

Zork: I think he knows what he's talking about.... he coded XCade, the most powerful emulator for Palm OS yet....

There is no chance you could emulate SNES under OS4, it's way too slow. (not sure if you're suggesting this, but if you are, it's not going to happen.)

Zork

03-18-2003, 10:34 AM

iebnn, i never stated that SNES emulation is doable with Dragonball devices, cause im one of the few which isnt even interested in SNES emulation. What I always liked to see is some sort of Atari VCS 2600 emulation software, which is perfectly suitable for our PDA (not much heap needed, cartridge images are between 2 and 16 KByte, all the classics of the early 80s were released for this console, resolution wouldnt exceed the 320 * 240 the Clie offers ever, etc. etc. . Some prob is surely to emulate the raster interrupts).
And this is talking bout how the heap prob could be solved, not if skeezix is compentent or not ;) .

Zork

03-18-2003, 10:47 AM

iebnn, that were some comparision, that if you thinkin bout gaming, you arent thinking first bout playin dead old games. You thinkin instead bout playin games which uses all the power of your device.
Dead old games could be fun every now and then. But custom made games is the stuff everyone is primarly interested in. And yep, ports are exclusive stuff too, cause even with the GBA many games are simple redones from SNES games. Its important that the idea is transferred perfectly to the new platform. Otherwise you could easily state that "GTS Racing is simply a Night Driver (a game on VCS 2600) clone" and deny that way that there were any new development after the VCS 2600 died ;) . Todays games always relies on existing game architectures.
And bout GBA : Every 320 * 240 game on the Clie looks better, cause the GBA isnt offering that resolution. I mainly see one remaining advantage of GBA games offer Clie games : there software polygon libs. That stuff is awesome and produces great games like Sega Rally Championship or Doom. Thats something which had to be developed for the ARM Clies too (so that not everyone has to reinvent the whelle everytime he is thinking bout including polygons into his game ... BTW there is already something like that. The Elite port developer is offering it for other developers. Perhaps that lib should be get a little more publicity and perhaps it also could be ported and advanced to the ARM Palms).
With ARM Clies we will see games for sure, which were simply not possible til now on any PDA.

iebnn

03-18-2003, 01:22 PM

There is a difference between an evolution of another game and a clone of a game. I'm not stupid enough to say that GTS is a Night Driver clone. Notice that I did not mention GTS? That is one of the "exclusive" games -- there are not many though.

RifleSlugs is a clone of Worms, but with renamed weapons and different graphics. It really makes no attempt to change or improve much (in fact, it's a clone of the older original Worms... for example it doesnt even have ninja rope yet.) I'm sure it will improve as time goes on, but that doesn't matter -- I'm just talking about the current situation with Palm OS.

As for SNES emulation with dragonball.... sorry, I got you confused with someone else who was talking about emulating SNES with his T-series clie (and saying it is doable).

As for GBA...... there are a LOT of original games. SNES ports seem to be a minority. Yes games like Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear for GBA are portable versions of PC/console games, but they are entirely new games...

PPC currently has the nicest graphics in their 3D games..... hopefully developers will start doing things like some of those PPC games for Palm games. (fully texture mapped polygons etc).

And not many Clie games look better than GBA games..... GBA may have a smaller resolution but it does amazing things with it.

Alistar

03-18-2003, 02:11 PM

I would like to see an emulator or game that takes advantage of the built in keyboard of our OS5 devices. My NX has arrows keys and although you won't be as fast with the keyboard as a game controller I used the keyboard for SNES emulation on my PC. I have always wanted to use the built in arrow keys on the keyboard for games. It doesn't sit in your hand quite as nicely as using the traditional hard buttons but I think it would be a good idea.
If it could be done you map a whole bunch of game functions to various keys just liek traditional PC keyboards work with games. Obivously you must take the size into account but you could do much more with it.

iebnn

03-18-2003, 02:43 PM

I'm not sure if the keyboard allows for multiple keys to be pressed at the same time (and for 3rd party apps to recognize this).....

Alistar

03-18-2003, 04:02 PM

Well you can hold fn or shift and then another key to get special characters and whatnot.
As for 3rd party apps recognizing it. Yea that is what I would like, for something to be made that uses it. It could easily be extended to allow external keyboard use that way it could be profitable rather than just making it for the sony NX/NZ/TG but rather any device and keyboard combination could use it.

iebnn

03-18-2003, 05:35 PM

That is what Im talking about though..... the OS might handle all of the keyboard stuff, I'm not sure if there are ways for developers to access it other than just receiving characters (ie if there are ways to check the status of each key on the keyboard, or for key press/un-press events). I might code this if someone could prove me wrong..... (don't have the time to look into it right now)

Zork

03-18-2003, 07:55 PM

iebnn, GTS is a simple racing game with nothing new at all when it comes to gaming architecture. So either say every game for every platform is a old one (cause there werent any new game genres since the introduction of the Ego Shooter and the Action adventures during the early 90s) or acknowledge, that every game for the Clie which came out during the last few weeks is simply a complete new game. There is nothing between it. There is no difference between GTS Racing and for example Top Gear for the SNES. So from your point fo view there arent any new games for any platform since the early 90s.
Thats correct, but you experience games from a different point of view when you play them on a handheld/PDA. Thats why alll this redones of old games (for example Age Of Empires for PPC is a horrible redone of WarCraft I, which is unbelievable old) are "feeling" different when you play them while you are not at home. So I wont see this point of view for PDA gaming. So Rifle Slug would be a complete clone of Worms like Age Of Empire is complete clone of stone old WarCraft I, but you are playing it now at the underground ;) .
And bout PPC gaming : This one is dead, since OS 5. PPCs arent recent anymore for todays gaming needs, cause they are way too slow (they have to fight with the slowest development interfaces avail for any PDA) and offering resolution which isnt pratical anymore for todays PDA gaming.

Thats why there is no racing game for the PPC which comes even close the awesome graphx of GTS Racing. The same is true for every other game genre (Doom is unbelievable boring and looking horrible compared with the technical advanced MasterThief. and things will get even better with MasterThief. I dont give a damn bout some boring, antique looking game like Doom or Quake. This is the 21 century and I like to see new games and new game ideas. And there MasterThief fits a little better then Quake/Doom ;) ).

iebnn

03-18-2003, 08:02 PM

I'm sorry..... I haven't played GTS. I assumed it had some new stuff from what you said.

And I'm not going to say that every game for every platform is an old one. That's just stupid.

And there is a HUGE difference between an old atari game and an SNES game. However, there is very little difference between an SNES game and a clone of that game for Palm OS.

I never said PPC gaming is superior -- I only said that some games have superior graphics to Palm OS games (but they are unusable since they run so poorly).

As for GTS graphics..... there is a racing game for PPC that has full 3d graphics with texture mapped polygons etc. The graphics are VERY nice -- however, it runs very slow (but this is besides the point.) It has superior graphics -- but it is not fun to play. I'm only arguing about the superior graphics.

Quake looks and works MUCH better than masterthief 3d. Don't try arguing about that. MT3D uses raycasting. It isn't even true 3d. Yes, quake is unplayable on a PPC, but it does exist. It would be nice if someone tried porting it to Palm OS (if it is fast enough).

Zork

03-18-2003, 08:04 PM

timewaster, read the complete thread. It were granted that DivX is dead from a scene point of view. What you mention are the leecher of the second hand scene which getting movies and other stuff when the scene wont even remember them anymore ;) .
But no platform or software ever survived the death kiss of the zero day scene. And DivX aint part of the scene anymore. And even XviD is just used for this useless DVD rip stuff anymore.
So like it or not ... beside the second hand leechers there is no DivX support anymore. And users always want the new stuff and this isnt DivX anymore.

iebnn

03-18-2003, 08:07 PM

With foreign and subtitled television shows, the ONLY format I have been able to find is DivX. I think I already went over this. Maybe with 0 day AMERICAN television rips it is not divx, but american television isn't the only thing available for download on the internet.

cbulock

03-19-2003, 01:08 AM

For some reason I keep reading this, I'm not sure why:rolleyes:

But, no, it's not just non-American televison. American TV shows are mostly in Divx format too (except where Zork hangs out of course). I have seen some VCD format stuff, but mostly Divx

iebnn

03-19-2003, 07:07 AM

He will of course argue that those divxs you find are encoded from the "original" VCDs that he downloads.....

I really don't know much about downloading american tv shows (I've only downloaded a few, all in divx actually, well a couple were mpeg1 but were poor quality and tremendous in size).

Zork

03-19-2003, 08:20 AM

Thos Divx stuff you find at Kazaa is always old stuff redone (if the MPEG 1 or MPEg 2 material of the scene is used as source or is not depends on the release) a few days or even weeks after the scene version were released.
I already stated here this simple quote : Try to get Simpsons preair on saturday as DivX. Impossible, cause this is scene stuff and the scene doesnt support DivX anymore (since months BTW). Thats why most DLs out there with the MPEG version and only a few leechers which doesnt know where to get new stuff gets the older DivX redo done by some small groups after a few days or weeks.
And do close this case after all : DivX looks sh*tty on PDAs anyway (thats something which is common sense at this thread). So its kewl that its dead from a scene point of view, cause this means better playback quality especially for PPC users, which are the ones which have to fight with the horrible playback quality. The inacceptable quality of DivX with PDAs isnt our problem, thx to the enhanced quality MPEG 4 and Kinoma with Clies. Sooner or later the scene will change from MPEG 2 to MPEG 4 (cause of the better compression) and then we doesnt even have to reencode DLs anymore to play them back on our Clies.

cbulock

03-19-2003, 12:09 PM

So basicly, like I said, where you hang out (the 0-day scene) Divx might be dead. But its far from dead elsewhere. This should be obvious if all those 0-day videos are quickly being converted to that format.

Zork

03-19-2003, 12:48 PM

cbulock, you talking bout second hand stuff. This isnt interesting for anyone except lamers, which taking everything as long as its free ;) . No matter if its still recent or not.
There is only one scene. Its not all that bystanders which redoin stuf which were already released sometimes even weeks or months ago, but instead with the elite groups. And they arent supporting DivX anymore. You could easily verify that by checkin sites containing release infos. Thats the whole point.
So the scene support for DivX is gone and even for XviD its just limited to braindead DVD rips (which again is lamer stuff, cause there isnt any explanation at all to DL a DVD rip beside pure greed, cause DVDs are avail anywhere and most times arent expensive at all. And you even loss picture quality and all the extras, sound streams, etc.).

iebnn

03-19-2003, 03:16 PM

Zork: I don't get DivX off KaZaa. You are right, partially -- kazaa divxs tend to suck in quality. However, KaZaa is not the only place to get DivX. I get my divxs from sources that rip the shows directly off the tv, then convert to divx (NO INTERMEDIATE MPEG/VCD/SVCD ENCODING). I am sure that they do not do this because I used to be part of one of the larger groups (over a thousand people are in the channel most of the time. When they release something, many more people come). How can you argue with this? You say it's just one random small place that does this, but this place is one of the larger ones. Also, there are many other ones very similar to this group. They all use divx (no vcd/svcd). There are also groups that use vcd/svcd. They are completely separate from the divx groups, and the divx groups do NOT get their content from the vcd/svcd groups. Again, I know this because I used to be part of one of these groups! I also have friends who have or are still encoders in different groups, and they use only divx. They don't steal other vcd/svcd content. And I am NOT talking about DVD rips.

Alistar

03-19-2003, 03:42 PM

Just so I can get my arguements completely straight here. What are the file extensions of DivX.

Unregistered

03-19-2003, 08:01 PM

AVI, sometiems .divx (not often at all though)

Zork

03-20-2003, 06:02 AM

iebnn, there are many groups taking the SVCD version and reencode them as DivX to avoid that the gap between the scene release and the DivX release is gettng to huge.
But the final versions (which are delayed after the SVCD scene release by either days or sometimes even months) are usually done w/o using SVCD as source. Thats what you talking bout.
And BTW You talking bout 1000 folks at IRC channels. FuturamaVCD alone has every saturday/sunday appr. 800 users online. And there we dont mention all the hundred thousands of DLers from FTP servers where this stuff is even released a few days earlier.

iebnn

03-20-2003, 06:51 PM

The 1000 people in a channel is only one channel. There are hundreds of these channels. They do nothing with svcd/vcd. They are the fastest way to get subtitled foreign teleivion shows. You can't have subtitled releases done in the same day the show comes out. We're talking about different scenes -- with american teleivion it may be entirely different, but I don't care about downloading american television shows.

Zork

03-21-2003, 06:33 AM

iebnn, for each of this channels there are ones which offers the recent ones for VCD/SVCD (for tv series VCD still is the premiere selection compard with SVCD - SVCD versions are always released a few days later followed a few more days by the DivX versions).
But even thos channels gettin it after a few days when they are offered on zero day ftp as you could easily check on release info web sites.
However, I hope at least that this folks store the subtitles at the correct streams .... means data stream. Cause it would be simple stupid to inlude them into the video stream. That would decrease quality and would mean that you have to encode the movie twice. But putting the data into data stream just means that you have to demux the movie and mux it newly including the data stream.

iebnn

03-21-2003, 07:05 AM

I'm not sure what they do with the subtitles. I'm sure they're not all doing it some horribly wrong way though, as a lot of them are really good with encoding. Also, they usually encode the divxs in 2 to 4 passes, which REALLY makes the quality a lot nicer. With foreign television, I haven't been able to find nearly as many svcd/vcd channels as there are divx channels. On multiple servers. It seems that svcd/vcd is used more for american television rips.

nevarDeath

03-21-2003, 03:01 PM

holy crap, this thread has really deviated from the original subject!

iebnn

03-21-2003, 03:04 PM

Yeah.... it goes back and forth from snes to video encoding back to snes then to atari then gba then video encoding again....

iebnn

03-23-2003, 05:01 PM

Just thought I'd point out that I saw at File Planet a preview for the new Final Fantasy X2 game.... It was a video encoded with DivX 5.

JackAxe

03-23-2003, 05:34 PM

I want to take back a comment I made earlier about frames dropping at 320xXXX on PPC. PocketDivx drops frames at this rez, where as PocketMVP runs without dropped frames. I honestly had not tried PocketMVP at this rez since PocketDivix handled it so poorly. I thought I had, but hadn't. Ramble. I downloaded a StarWars trailer which looks way better then the other trailer that I was tinkering with, but it's still so so when it comes to quality.

And on the SNES emulation thing, I still say that it's not feasable with the current crop of PALM devices.

<]=)

iebnn

03-23-2003, 09:53 PM

I say wait until Palm OS gets their memory API straight, then begin work on all these emulators..... you'll slave away all this time to make it, but when you finish it and have it working well Palm OS will be completley different and much easier to work with.

Zork

03-24-2003, 05:55 AM

Jackaxe, with the Palm OS API you have to fight only with the heap prob. And there are surely some ways to write some custom virtual memory functions.
So I dont see any reason why with the way faster Clie devices any emulation shouldnt be possible (beside the mentioned heap prob which is surely solveable).

iebnn

03-24-2003, 07:02 AM

Zork, go read in the GP32 thread. Skeezix gave a long post on why emulation on Palm OS is so difficult.

nx70

04-26-2003, 04:30 PM

How about a Atari emulator? The sounds are so rudimental, I don't think there are APIs needed. Are they? The Processor of the newer ARM based models should work fine as also the newer DragonBall CPUs will(66MHz). I think coded in C++ will give acceptable speeds..

Massman82

04-26-2003, 06:44 PM

Emailed him about the Tungsten C...he says that it would be possible to write some good emulators for that PDA...

Unregistered

04-28-2003, 09:07 AM

Amigas can emulate SNES and SMS very well with only 30 and 40 mhz processors but the custon chips may be doing some of the work. However DZ 33 or 66 may be up to the job if coded in assembler or ported C with assembler optimisation.

nekrataal

04-29-2003, 11:28 PM

I contacted Gambit Studios, the guys who did the Liberty GameBoy emu, and this was thier reply:

Brian,

We did consider making a GBA emulator, but the extremely large size of GBA
games (from 8 to 64 MB!) convinced us otherwise.

We are not planning a NES emulator at this time.

Regards,
Mike Ethetton
Gambit Studios, LLC
www.gambitstudios.com

KBeez

04-30-2003, 12:07 AM

actually, GBA games are typically 4-8 megabytes, with few reaching 16 megabytes or more. Nintendo measures their carts in megabit, so 64mbit (8mb) is the typical cartridge and like over half the people get this stuff mixed up all the time. Still, they are rather big, but with huge MS sticks and even bigger compactflash that wouldn't be the biggest thing to deal with.
Anyways gba emulators hardly run on a 500mhz pc, so I wouldn't even want a gba on the state of the current palms. (clies rather, because a tungsten c is getting there, but still)
bah, I may have to get me a cheap PocketPC one of these days too, just to try it out and see if the emulators and whatnot are up to par...

hansschmucker

04-30-2003, 09:13 AM

Ardiri:

mike and i have discussed it - and, it is on our to-do list (yes, we can write a kick-*** gameboy emu with ARM). *g* we pretty much have everything we need to do it, but time - we are working on a number of other 'better paid' projects right now.

if we were to release a new Liberty, it would be a new product, specifically only for the ARM devices - and, would support gameboy, gameboy color and - *maybe* gameboy advance. we have a cool project coming out soon - keep an eye out for it. we love emulation, thats all i can tell you.

nx70

04-30-2003, 11:47 AM

Okay, if money is the point:
how much will you want for it? How many applicants would you need to make it cheaper, maybe we can ensure you get paid- and we can lower the price *g*
BTW I only know of illegal ways to get GB ROMs How about some legal? I have original GB-catridges..

hansschmucker

04-30-2003, 12:08 PM

That was a quote of what Aaron Ardiri posted in another thread, ask him about it. About legal roms.
If you've got the original Gameboy games, then you are entitled to one backup copy per game, Or you could get a dumper and dump them yourself

nevarDeath

05-01-2003, 10:27 AM

You guys should get a sharp zaurus if you want an snes emulator. there's one called snes9x for it, and it runs beautifully!

Unregistered

04-18-2004, 03:50 PM

I dont see why u cant emulate snes on a clie. i had a crap 400Mhz PC and Snes ran fast, it should run at least decent on a clie.

tovarish

04-19-2004, 09:26 AM

well there is an opensource one being developed for the zodiac and as per reports it runs quite well.
http://yoyofr.fr.st/
gues someone will have to port it to the other palm os devices, there is already a volunteer ;)

tovarish

Kbranch

04-19-2004, 11:02 PM

Originally posted by skribe
A robust SNES emulator on even the ARM handhelds simply isnt really possible. Even cutting out sound and adding frame skips. It wouldnt be an efective emu by playable standards.

Tell that to my Zaurus C700. 400 MHz PXA250 running SNES at full speed with sound (actually running at 30 FPS, but most people can't tell the difference between 30 and 60 FPS).

Sorry if this has been said in the other pages of this thread, but I don't really want to read through it all.

Spiral

04-20-2004, 12:07 AM

I agree, skribe has no clue what he's talking about. I can easily run any game that doesn't require specific chip support (SA-1, Super Mario RPG, Kirby games) with full speed without sound. With sound, many games still run full speed (with frameskip).

on the other hand, clie-users might have some trouble with controls.

tovarish

04-20-2004, 04:19 AM

Originally posted by Spiral

on the other hand, clie-users might have some trouble with controls.

not with the game controller, i really enjoy playing nes games with it, feels just like the nes controller.

anitanium

04-20-2004, 08:53 AM

hurry and port the zodiac version!
i want chrono trigger!

Fez

04-20-2004, 03:16 PM

Originally posted by anitanium
hurry and port the zodiac version!
i want chrono trigger!

No way! Indiana Jonen's Greatest Adventures is better!

Spiral

04-20-2004, 06:23 PM

Originally posted by tovarish

not with the game controller, i really enjoy playing nes games with it, feels just like the nes controller.
You still lack buttons, SNES controller has 4 more buttons than an NES.

tovarish

04-21-2004, 04:11 AM

the snes controller has 12 buttons while the cliecontroller has 10, hopefully if all the 10 can be mapped then start and select can be maped to jog push and back.
many snes games just use 8 buttons only.

after the zodiac the clie game controller has the best buttons for any pda.

tovarish

dgtiii

04-21-2004, 11:31 AM

Wow! I just read this whole thread, took forever! Very entertaining, so thanks guys. Zork, are you a self-proclaimed expert on everything, or do you just come off as one in your posts? You had me laughing out loud at your posts. Did you actually presume to tell Skeezix about RAM requirements for emulation? Omg, that is too funny. Jeff (Skeezix) (www.codejedi.com) has written XCade (arcade), Castaway (Atari ST), Kronos (Infocom/Magnetic Scrolls), Columbo (Colecovision) and Beats of Rage (BOR paks) emulators, all for the Palm platform. He is also the developer of the ZOT gaming engine for Palms. For you to presume to tell him anything regarding RAM and emulation is laughable, the guy's a genius. Keep it up though, Zork, you're great comedic relief.

Del

Spiral

04-21-2004, 05:57 PM

Originally posted by tovarish
the snes controller has 12 buttons while the cliecontroller has 10, hopefully if all the 10 can be mapped then start and select can be maped to jog push and back.
many snes games just use 8 buttons only.

after the zodiac the clie game controller has the best buttons for any pda.

Clie controller doesn't make second best on any pda. Any PPC w/ a voice record buttons has as many buttons as the Clie Controller. It has Up, Down, Left, Right, (d-pad press in, or "action" button), four contact buttons, and 1 voice record. Also 10 buttons.

Kbranch

04-21-2004, 08:33 PM

Originally posted by Spiral

Clie controller doesn't make second best on any pda. Any PPC w/ a voice record buttons has as many buttons as the Clie Controller. It has Up, Down, Left, Right, (d-pad press in, or "action" button), four contact buttons, and 1 voice record. Also 10 buttons.

Number of buttons means nothing if you can't get to them all easily. PPC controls are meant to be used with a PDA, the game controller is made for games.

Spiral

04-21-2004, 11:12 PM

but it's much more convenient because you don't have to carry around another piece of junk. The controls on the clie controller aren't that great. The seperated direction buttons makes it more difficult for games that use diagnol, the left side is too rounded, making it difficult to press A and B at once. And it's not like you can instantly access x/y start/select. You have 4-directions and under your thumbs on clie controller. I have 4-directions, d-pad in, and a/b under my thumbs on my ppc.

by the same token, ppc's can have controller attachments too, and may soon be able to use a playstation controller.

lightning300

07-30-2006, 09:53 PM

i can't find a SNES emulator for palm os that actually works, does anyone know of another emulator besides little john palm or LJP?

T3_slider

07-30-2006, 11:55 PM

Well, LJP works like a charm for me (Using a T3) and seems to emulate everything absolutely perfectly for each console I've tried (SNES, NES, Genesis). I don't think there is another SNES emulator around (Although there are other NES emulators).

See here: http://www.palmsource.com/interests/emulators/

That has pretty much every emulator except LJP (It shows LJZ).

Perhaps you could explain why LJP isn't working for you and we could go from there?

Maybe you need to use UDMH or overclock your Palm or both?

lightning300

07-31-2006, 05:15 PM

everything looks like LJP is going to work except when i launched the snes rom it said out of memory (except i had plenty of memory free), it doesn't make any sense. :confused:

_Em

07-31-2006, 05:49 PM

It makes plenty of sense. LJP isn't talking about storage memory. Head on over to here:
http://yoyofr.proboards44.com/index.cgi?board=general

Modern Palm devices have multiple kinds of memory. In order for LJP to work with SNES and Genesis emulation, you need to install Dmitry Grinberg's UDMH (http://palmpowerups.com/index.php) -- it gives you more dynamic memory so such programs will run.

lightning300

08-19-2006, 04:15 PM

It Says:

Fatal Alert

DataMgr.c, Line:7399,
DmWrite: DmWriteCheck
failed

what does that mean?

UDMH didn't make it work.

T3_slider

08-19-2006, 04:33 PM

Install UDMH and then set the value to a reasonable amount (Note that you need to have that much storage memory in the first place!). I think there's a guide somewhere that says how much dynamic memory each emulator in LJP needs (Try the LJP documentation). So set UDMH to use that value (Note though that UDMH measures in KB, so you have to multiply the value from the LJP documentation by 1000. For example, if an emulator needs 5 MB of dynamic memory, you would set UDMH to 5000 KB. And, since you've set the value to 5000 KB, you need 5000 KB (ie 5 MB) in storage memory free (I would recommend having a little extra storage memory).

Try that and see if it helps (Unless you already tried everything I said).

I'm sorry in advance if it doesn't work -- I have a T3 and don't need to use UDMH because of the T3's large dynamic memory. I've only had to use UDMH for Hexen2.

Mas

08-21-2006, 09:25 AM

I was just wondering if anyone has found the proper way to make LJP's SNES emulation work smoothly on a NX system (I use an NX80). So far it seems that it still crashes and has a lot o memory leakage as weel as Launcher issues (going back to play other games or other clie programs.

ackmondual

08-21-2006, 11:26 AM

I'm sorry in advance if it doesn't work -- I have a T3 and don't need to use UDMH because of the T3's large dynamic memory. I've only had to use UDMH for Hexen2.

Is Hexen2 also run with an app like zDoom, zQuake, or zHexen, or did you really mean the first one instead?

On a somewhat related note, I was able to run the PC port (that also looks like SNES version) of Flashback on my zod2 just fine.

.

Clie controller doesn't make second best on any pda. Any PPC w/ a voice record buttons has as many buttons as the Clie Controller. It has Up, Down, Left, Right, (d-pad press in, or "action" button), four contact buttons, and 1 voice record. Also 10 buttons.

I've always avoided assigning buttons to center/select. On my z71 and T|T3, I find myself accidently pressing that from time to time as I move heavily with the 5-way.

NES and GB truly work nice on modern PDAs. A, B, select, and start are all covered.

SNES on the otherhand, one could make compromises. not all games use 8 buttons. Some games only use 4 buttons. Other games with 4+ buttons, those 4+ buttons aren't really needed since all they do is scroll up and down or left and right.

T3_slider

08-22-2006, 12:13 AM

Is Hexen2 also run with an app like zDoom, zQuake, or zHexen, or did you really mean the first one instead?
I meant ZHexen2, from here: http://www.metaviewsoft.de/en/Software/PalmOS/Freeware/ZHexen2/index.html (Another awesome port by Henk). I think it only currently runs on a T3 (It's the only device with enough RAM to produce enough dynamic memory using UDMH since all of the newer devices use NVFS instead of RAM). I could be wrong though. ;-)

ackmondual

08-22-2006, 12:18 AM

I never thought it was directly b/c of NVFS, rather a side affect of its architecture. Then again, I could be wrong ;-)

Cyker

08-22-2006, 03:08 AM

The NVFS devices tend to have pretty small RAMs because Palm figured they wouldn't need it because of NVFS.
The generally range from 16MB to 64MB, which is shared between 'dbCache', dynamic stack and OS.
It doesn't leave much.

The BEST Palm device for LJP and most of these games by *far* the Zodiac 2.
It doesn't even *need* UDMH to run most of this stuff (128MB RAM and 11MB Dynamic Stack! *swoon*) and all the hardware accleration stuff it has gets better support than on the Clie's...

Of course, FINDING one now is pretty damned hard... :(

Damnit, why did the two best PalmOS companies have to die, leaving us with the worst one?!

ackmondual

08-22-2006, 12:00 PM

Unfortunately, all 3 together of high end gaming, Palm, and high prices never went well with the mass of consumers :( As for zods, u should be able to find them on ebay... even brand new and sealed units. Probably cost about $300 for a zod2

So what would u say is the best NVFS device for high resource games and emus? I'm guessing the T|X, but i never did check the specs for dyn mem past the real ram handhelds.

Cyker

08-22-2006, 03:24 PM

I have no idea - Palm don't list the specs of the hidden RAM areas and I can't remember what they are.
My TH has a little memory info thing which tells such info, but I don't think the Tungstens have so you'd have to use another utility.

I think ScummVM (Chrilith FTW! :D) has the necessary info in it's About page somewhere; Any Tungsten people want to have a look...?

For the record...
My TH55 has 32MB of Internal RAM and 7MB of Dynamic stack
My Zodiac 2 has 116MB of Internal RAM and 10MB of Dynamic Stack

I do know a lot of old Palms had really poor Dynamic stack, don't know if they learnt with the new ones...

ackmondual

08-22-2006, 04:39 PM

thanks for the reply noneoftheless.

With real RAM hh, it's just internal/user RAM and then dynamic memory. With NVFS devices, there's a 3rd category in there which makes it a bit confusing, but i heard this 3rd cate is important towards dyn mem somehow

_Em

08-22-2006, 06:56 PM

With NVFS devices, regular "RAM" is really more like a memory card -- to run anything, the appropriate data has to be copied to "DB Cache". A simple way of looking at it is like this: a T|X (for example) has around 104MB of NVRAM (storage), 12MB of DBCache (run-time cache), and 8MB of Dynamic Heap memory. Dynamic Heap is sort of like RAM in a computer, and DBCache is kind of like the filespace available for a currently open set of files.

UDMH is a little app made by Dmitry that lets you use more RAM as dynamic memory -- on a T|X that means you can use ~20MB instead of only 8.

Looking at emulators, the questions you have to ask are:

1) Do I have enough free contiguous Dynamic Heap to fully load the emulator software?
2) Do I have enough free contiguous DB Cache to load the datafiles the emulator software needs to read?

With some smart writing, chunks of the datafiles can be swapped in/out of the DB Cache at runtime, sort of like how PSX consoles read only the bits needed from CD when they need them (think "loading...."). If the original app needed more than 20MB of real RAM to run though, you'll likely need more than 20MB of Dynamic Heap to run it in. Thus, you need a Palm device that can provide this -- which precludes all NVFS devices I think.