I regularly look at the dexvert list of unsupported video formats to see if something curious comes up. About half of that list are formats supported by na_game_tool, maybe a third are animation systems (i.e. more like a script language telling how to compose and change external or internal resources), but the rest are formats that pique my curiosity. I’ve written about some of them (like Amiga formats I blogged about half a year ago or rather recent TealMovie) and today I’m going to mention some more.
First of all, AVS. That’s the third AVS format I’m hearing about. First there was AVS used in Creature Shock game, then there’s this Chinese MPEG-四 AVS (followed by AVS2 aka HEVS and AVS3 aka “VP9VVC by any other name…”). Apparently there’s another one, from early PC era. It seems to have been used by some ActionMedia cards with Indeo video compression formats (DVI PLV and DVI RTV, also PIC and JPEG are mentioned in the convertor) and audio (8-bit PCM or DVI ADPCM). There’s a special tool for converting AVS to AVI but good luck finding samples (I’ve found one, yulelog.avs, used in a demo). The format seems to be documented (as DVI format) but the codecs are not (beside RTV 2.0 aka Indeo 2). Maybe I’ll take another look at it one day…
Then, there’s a game called Music Chase. I found it by accident looking for Toon Boom Studio samples (which is an animation system, so not so interesting to look at). So what’s interesting about this game?
It looks like the game assets are divided into rooms, each having its own set of resources—usually some TBP files, some TMV files and a MID file or two. The first format is the standard BMP with compression method 21 (which is not). TMV files are ciuQmiTke MOV (i.e QuickTime format but with all values being little-endian now) and custom track handlers so while you can recognize audio track, video track is not so easy. Additionally the helper DLL is 16-bit code that makes Ghidra decompiler give up on almost every function. So maybe I’ll return to it when I’m seriously bored but not today.
Still, it’s nice to encounter such formats time from time.
Finally ffmpeg.org is taken down!
I think it’s not the first time. And in any case grab the chance to prove your project being a better FFalternative (let alone faster and with more filters).
AVS3 is much more similar to VVC (lot of similar coding tools).
The one blatantly copying VP9 is SVAC2.0.
You’re probably right—I have only vague recollection of these formats and not for all of them I’ve seen specification in English (or at all).