I realized that I had been collecting a bunch of CD-ROMs over the years and that many of them probably contain multimedia of one sort or another. Let's look through some random discs.
Even more interesting than the data files is the presence of a file called smackw32.dll, ostensibly a Win32 DLL that decodes Smacker files. These are the functions that it exports to the outside world:
Folloup: For a more detailed discussion of some of the more interesting Smacker functions listed below, read Multimedia APIs in the Other Multimedia Topics section.
Number of Exported Functions = 33 (decimal) Addr:00401940 Ord: 1 (0001h) Name: _SmackBufferBlit Addr:00401570 Ord: 2 (0002h) Name: _SmackBufferClear Addr:00401644 Ord: 3 (0003h) Name: _SmackBufferClose Addr:00401030 Ord: 4 (0004h) Name: _SmackBufferCopyPalette Addr:00401100 Ord: 5 (0005h) Name: _SmackBufferFromScreen Addr:00406380 Ord: 6 (0006h) Name: _donemarker@20 Addr:00401700 Ord: 7 (0007h) Name: _SmackBufferNewPalette Addr:00401CD8 Ord: 8 (0008h) Name: _SmackBufferOpen Addr:00401900 Ord: 9 (0009h) Name: _SmackBufferFocused Addr:004015B0 Ord: 10 (000Ah) Name: _SmackBufferSetPalette Addr:00402640 Ord: 11 (000Bh) Name: _SmackBufferString Addr:00401480 Ord: 12 (000Ch) Name: _SmackBufferToBuffer Addr:00401390 Ord: 13 (000Dh) Name: _SmackBufferToBufferTrans Addr:00403F20 Ord: 14 (000Eh) Name: _SmackClose Addr:00402F3C Ord: 15 (000Fh) Name: _SmackColorRemap Addr:00403180 Ord: 16 (0010h) Name: _SmackColorTrans Addr:00403B40 Ord: 17 (0011h) Name: _SmackDoFrame Addr:00404050 Ord: 18 (0012h) Name: _SmackFrameRate Addr:00402E10 Ord: 19 (0013h) Name: _SmackGetTrackData Addr:00402DE0 Ord: 20 (0014h) Name: _SmackGoto Addr:004038C0 Ord: 21 (0015h) Name: _SmackNextFrame Addr:004042F0 Ord: 22 (0016h) Name: _SmackOpen Addr:004042E0 Ord: 23 (0017h) Name: _SmackSimulate Addr:00402A60 Ord: 24 (0018h) Name: _SmackSoundCheck Addr:00402B40 Ord: 25 (0019h) Name: _SmackSoundInTrack Addr:004040E0 Ord: 26 (001Ah) Name: _SmackSoundOnOff Addr:00403960 Ord: 27 (001Bh) Name: _SmackSummary Addr:004031A0 Ord: 28 (001Ch) Name: _SmackToBuffer Addr:00402BB0 Ord: 29 (001Dh) Name: _SmackToBufferRect Addr:00403340 Ord: 30 (001Eh) Name: _SmackToScreen Addr:00402A80 Ord: 31 (001Fh) Name: _SmackVolume Addr:00402960 Ord: 32 (0020h) Name: _SmackWait Addr:00406180 Ord: 33 (0021h) Name: _TimerFunc@20
The videos were meant to showcase the MPEG capabilities of the ATI card. The videos include several clips of ATI products showcased on PCTV, some short 3D animation-type films, some Canadian tourism videos featuring British Columbia, Toronto, Ontario, and a Canadian theme park (ATI is a Canadian company), and some pretty aerospace videos from Betacorp (domain no longer held by any entity named Betacorp).
Far and away, the most entertaining pieces on this CD are the trailers for some games by a company named Tsunami media.
[Link: Duck Truemotion v2 sample files from Final Fantasy VII for the PC]
00000000 45 54 56 0A 40 01 00 00 F0 00 00 00That looks like a file signature ("ETV\x0a") and 320x240 encoded as little-endian 32-bit numbers.
What file format and video codec could it be? My best guess (and this is just a guess) is that this comes from eTreppid.
Each game is a very faithful reproduction on the original game. Each game also has a large (in file size, ~25 MB) FLI file flaunting a Capcom logo animation. The FLI file is a regular 320x200 AF11-type FLI animation that lasts for 30 seconds and is the most photo-realistic FLI file I have seen (which is clearly not what the format is designed for).
The Mega Man X disc also contains a demo for a game called Tang Chi. The tangdemo/ directory contains 6 AVI files encoded with Cinepak but with no audio. Instead, the files appear to have corresponding MIDI files.
I have examined this disc before. It has a number of large QT files encoded Cinepak and PCM. The QT videos showcase the Boeing's assorted aircraft. There are also tourism videos for several locales where major Boeing offices are located.
The disc also includes several very large files with the extension .dxr. These files carry text indicating they were created by Macromedia tools. Each file comes as part of a pair: 1 file with '16' in the filename, the other with '8' in the filename. This indicates to me that they must be 8- and 16-bit versions of the same files.
At any rate, I don't think this is an official CD-i disc.
There are lots more WAV and AVI files on the disc, but nothing unusual, at least not in terms of multimedia encoding. In terms of content, well...that's another story.
The MSN preview has a bunch of cloying actors as MSN hosts explaining the personal advantages of the service and how MSN has enriched their lives. There is even one host that puts Ellen Feiss to shame.
There are also some other brief game demos that I already saw on the Microsoft Interactive CD Sampler. Finally, the CD also has AVI tours of using MS Money 98. AVI files encoded with MS RLE and PCM. These are the largest MS RLE files I have seen yet.
Most of the files have no audio. They are predominantly 320x240 Cinepak files but there are also quite a few Motion-JPEG and 16bpp QT RLE files thrown in, mostly when a still image is needed.
by Mike Melanson (mike at multimedia.cx).
Multimedia Exploration Journal
Multimedia Research Institute Main Page