More codecs to look at

Here’s a list of video codecs I found with the help of discmaster.textfiles.com (mostly by looking for .inf files with “vidc” in them). Maybe I’ll look at them one day, maybe somebody will beat me to it. In either case, it’s a nice reminder for myself.

  • CSMX.dll—reportedly used for CSM0 codec, was bundled with some player, no known samples. Considering its small size it’s likely to be either raw YUV format or lossless codec;
  • d3dgearcodec.dll—D3DGear lossless codec;
  • elsaeqkx.dll—some Elsa quick codec;
  • Esdll.dll—bundled with the same player, the strings inside it hint on it being an unholy mix of ZIP and MELP-based speech codec;
  • ICS422.DRVS422 or SuperMatch YUV 4:2:2 codec (I suspect it’s raw YUV);
  • ICSMS0.DRVSMS0 or SuperMatch VideoSpigot codec (from SuperMac, later bought by Radius);
  • MCTCOD.DRV—MCTPlus Draw driver, supposedly offering 2:1 compression and has a bunch of FOURCCs registered to it: DRAW, MC16, MC24, MR16, MR24, MY16, MY24
  • MyFlashZip0.axMFZ0 lossless codec. Looks like ordinary deflate wrapper really;
  • NTCodec.dll—NewTek nt00 codec (I expect lossless or an intermediate codec). Looks like a simple fixed-fields packing;
  • RGBACodec.dll—apparently Lightworks lossless RGBA codec. Simple RLE inside;
  • Sx73p32.dll—Lucent Technologies SX7300P speech codec;
  • TRICODC.DRV—Trident draw codec with a bunch of compressed RGB and YUV formats: rtc3, rtc5, rtc6, ty0n, ty2d, ty2n, ty2c, r0y1… Compressed in this context means packed using fixed-length bitfields;
  • UCLZSS.DRV—Ulead LZSS codec aka uclz (obviously a simple lossless codec). As expected, it’s yuyv data compressed with LZSS;
  • UCYUVC.DRV—Ulead compressed YUV 411 aka yuvc. Apparently it’s just 8/12/16-bpp YUV (fixed packing scheme, and 16-bit is simply YUYV/YUY2 and such);
  • V422.DRV—Vitec Multimedia V422. Most likely simply raw YUV;
  • V655.DRV—Vitec Multimedia V655 (I’ll venture a guess this means 6-bit luma and 5-bit chroma instead of improbable YUV 6:5:5 subsampling);
  • VDCT.DRV—Vitec Multimedia VDCT.

Oh, and I’ve also found Eloquent elvid32.dll for EL02 FOURCC but it’s different since it has samples and it’s yet another H.263 rip-off.

That’s it for now, I’ll talk about FLAC video some other time.

11 Responses to “More codecs to look at”

  1. compn says:

    according to the ultimate fourcc list:
    https://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php/Category_talk:Video_FourCCs

    CSMX.dll is in mplayer already

    codecs.conf entry:
    videocodec csmscreen
    info “csmscreen AVI lossless video codec”
    comment “requires Esdll.dll”
    status working
    fourcc CSM0
    driver vfw
    dll “csmx.dll” ; b6cfb690fe5997da0f07506c8982334f *CSMX.dll
    out BGR32,BGR24,BGR16 flip

    i dont have SMS0, but in the list:
    VIDC.SMSC=Radius proprietary codec
    VIDC.SMSD=Radius proprietary codec

    i suspect some of those .drv codecs are 16bit (e.g. have to use win95 to play with them).

  2. compn says:

    some old codecs in the picsearch list . some ones that no one ever wanted to look at . https://ffmpeg.org/~compn/uncommon_video_codecs_final.txt

    http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~dfk/papers/kotz-umiacs.slides.mov pdf / 0x20666470, 612×791
    404 now, have to use http://web.archive.org/web/20100619002459if_/http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~dfk/papers/kotz-umiacs.slides.mov

    pdf in mov? 😀 nah probably just bad fourcc. right??

    i get one jpg if i do mplayer kotz-umiacs.slides.mov -vc +ffmjpeg

  3. Kostya says:

    I saw some of the FOURCCs mentioned in your list but quite often they listed a different driver from different vendor (probably because those are raw YUV formats).

    And yes, a lot of those codecs are 16-bit—but for me it rather means “Ghidra won’t be able to decompile them properly” as I have no intention to run them.

    Also I remember Picsearch and their list and I think I looked at the more exotic codecs there (and even implemented something).

    Regarding that particular sample, I had a look at it (can ffmpeg extract raw frames from MOV after all this years BTW?) and streams 1-12 have single frames, each being a single-page PDF file indeed (except stream 2, which is RPZA-encoded but a single frame too).

  4. madja says:

    Hi,any mention of PYV5 codec? never saw it
    PAL 720×576 camera 25 fps,RIFF AVI, and unknown fourcc ‘pyv5’
    any help please

  5. Kostya says:

    The only mentions on Internet I could find are apparently your attempts to find out anything about it.

    From what I see in the file it’s an intra-only format, something likely to be based on JPEG (or, less probably, wavelets). Beside that it’s impossible to say anything about it without a decoder (or at least an encoder).

  6. madja says:

    Thank you! Is there anything that could help identify the manufacturer or decoder? Audio sample rate is 12800 Hz (512 × 25fps PAL) — could that narrow it down? any help,please.

  7. madja says:

    I havent decoder or smthing, camera too,can you help me to open this video?

  8. Kostya says:

    Sorry, you’re out of luck here.

    Sometimes you can deduce format from what you have, but this is not that case. From the frame sizes and what I see in them I conclude it’s likely to be something JPEG-based and not likely some standard codec (unless it’s encrypted, which does not help things at all).

    The only realistic way I see to find more information about it is brute force search for camera software from all known vendors (before certain date, I expect this file to be rather old) and see if it has “PYV5” mentioned somewhere inside. And that’s not something I’m bored or desperate enough to do.

  9. madja says:

    thanks,file is from 2023,not too old,i tried about 40+companies,so will finding more

  10. Kostya says:

    It is hard to imagine anything modern to recording into 576p and with JPEG-level compression (I can expect it from my photo camera but I bought it in 2007, nowadays even cheapest webcams can do 720p with H.264 apparently with the same or smaller bitrate).

    In either case, good luck!

  11. madja says:

    thanks,still no reults,found 2018 thread about yvf5 codec,i guess its the same company 1 codec,guess that player was portable and no registry edits

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