It's working! Full motion video on a VIC-20 (+3K)

[tokra]

I was wondering if colour was possible for the video as well. Using the 192x160-mode you would only transfer 240 more bytes per picture, or you could just reduce the image-size a little bit. I know that Mike has a fantastic converter for the Minigrafik-format which can use mixed highres and multicolor-chars which can probably be easily adapted to any similar resolution.

[Ghislain]

This is really cool. What I am most impressed by is that this is the actual VIC chip playing the audio.

[Victragic]

Very cool project, I've been waiting for someone to create FMV for the Vic since I saw a Dragon's Lair port for the ZX81. The frame rate is very acceptable, and to produce 4-bit sound as well is fantastic.

The image quality reminds me of analogue TV stations that were just a bit too far out of range.. you can make out what it is.
I would imagine some cartoon-style video could be optimised to look much sharper than say William Shatner's commercial.

I would also be interested to see what is possible with colour.. (give the sun, they will ask for the moon.. )

[pixel]

You could have quite some colours using only black, red, green and cyan + a little vertical dithering. (See screenshot.) Simulated that in JavaScript some time ago.

[topcat]

There is a weird echo at one point in the video, suggesting that the VIC sound is playing in parallel with another sound source?
A fantastic achievement nonetheless.

[JanD]

Hi Topcat,
could you be a little bit more specific about the "echo" you seem to hear?

But rest assured, all audio is really coming from the monitor connected to the VIC20.
The youtube video was made with a low cost camera, on an attic, using the cameras build in microphone the sound was recorded as it came from the speaker of the monitor. So, seriously, please do not expect sound-studio-audio-quality.

The vic-20 full motion video project is a little bit slowed down at the moment, but I will continue working on it next year. Because I really want to make some sort of fmv like game. Problem is the crappy resolution, which limits the possibilities, but also the huge effort in filming all scenes for a decent game (and I'm no movie director either). But as soon as there is any serious progress, I will make a youtube video for it and I'll try to improve the quality of the recording where possible. If people have suggestions, feel free to share them.
PS: games like "Dragon's Lair" are FMV games, but due to their difficult gameplay, colorfull detailed graphics, they are not really suited for conversion to a VIC-20, simply because it will be unwatchable and to be honest, to complicated/unplayable (how do you play this with a simple joystick). Games like mad-dog mc cree, are interesting, but the material cannot be converted, as vic resolution is to low, so you can't really see what you are shooting. Unless it's really big and if so then what's the fun in the gameplay, but variation could be possible, yet need to be recorded from scratch.

[orion70]

No need for a joystick to control Dragon's Lair... A simple keypress system would do.