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'' using Bink Video .]] Full motion video, usually abbreviated as '''FMV''', is pre-recorded TV -quality Movie or Animation in a Video Game . ORIGINS The first use of FMV was in 1983 with Dragon's Lair , a Laserdisc Video Game by Cinematronics . Another early instance of FMV was Hasbro's unreleased Video Game System named NEMO . The NEMO home system created games with VHS Tapes rather than ROM Cartridges or 3.5 disks. In the early '' (1995). These FMV Game s frequently used D-list (or Worse ) movie and TV Actor s and promised to create the experience of playing an interactive movie. However, production values were quite low with amateurish sets, lighting, costumes, and special effects. In addition, the video quality in these early games was low, and the gameplay frequently did not live up to the Hype becoming Well-known Failures In Video Gaming . At this time, consoles like 3DO , CD-i , and Sega CD borrowed this concept for several low-quality Interactive Games . A part of the interest consumers had in FMV was caused by the rise of the Internet . Also, the " Multimedia " phenomenon that was exploding in popularity at the time increased the popularity of FMV because consumers were excited by this new emerging interactive technology. The personal computer was rapidly evolving during the early-mid 1990s from a simple text-based productivity device into a home entertainment machine. Gaming itself was also emerging from its niche market into the mainstream with the release of easier-to-use and more powerful operating systems, such as Microsoft's Windows 95 , that leveraged continually evolving processing capabilities. Video game consoles too saw incredible gains in presentation quality and contributed to the mass market's growth in awareness of gaming. It was during the 1990s that the video/computer game industry first beat Hollywood in earnings. Sony made its debut in the console market with the release of the 32-bit PlayStation . The PlayStation was probably the first console to popularize FMVs (as opposed to earlier usage of FMV which was seen as a passing fad). A part of the machine's hardware was a dedicated M-JPEG processing unit which enabled far superior quality relative to other platforms of the time. The FMVs in '' Final Fantasy VIII '', for example, were marketed as movie-quality at the time. FMV in games today consists almost completely of extremely high-quality pre-rendered video sequences ( CGI ). These sequences are created in similar ways as computer generated effects in movies. Usage of FMV as a selling point or focus has diminished in modern times. This is primarily due to graphical advancements in modern video game systems making it possible for in-game cinematics to have just-as-impressive visual quality. The use of real actors in games generally ended for mainstream games at the end of the 1990s. FORMATS With the popularization of FMV games in the early 1990s with the advent of the CD-ROM, higher-end developers usually created their own custom FMV formats to suit their needs. Early FMV titles used game-specific proprietary video renderers optimized for the content of the video (e.g. Live-action vs. Animated ) because CPUs of the day were incapable of playing back real-time MPEG-1 until the fastest 486 and Pentium CPUs arrived. Consoles, on the other hand, either used a third-party codec (e.g. Cinepak for Sega CD games) or used their own proprietary format (e.g. the Philips CD-i ). Video quality steadily increased as CPUs became more powerful to support higher quality video compression and decompression. '' The 7th Guest '', one of the first megahit multiple-CD-ROM games, was one of the first games to feature near- Lossless quality 640x320 FMV at 15 frames per second in a custom format designed by programmer Graeme Devine . , frequently came under fire for their low quality. This cutscene is limited to 256 colours, limiting colour detail, and is also " Interlaced ", a space-saving device that was often criticized as making the videos hard to see.]] Other examples of this would be ''. These video formats initially offered very limited video quality, due to the limitations of the machines the games needed to run on. Ghosting and distortion of high-motion scenes, heavy pixelization, and limited color palettes were prominent visual problems. However, each game pushed the technological envelope and was typically seen as impressive even with quality issues. Lower-cost games, often not having the time or budgets to develop their own formats, typically used the then very low resolution AVI and QuickTime formats. '''', used a similar custom movie codec in its CD-ROM release, but a later limited-volume DVD-ROM release saw MPEG-2 DVD-quality movies that entirely eclipsed the original CD release in quality. A hardware decoder card was required at the time to play back the DVD-quality video on a PC. An exception to the rule was '' The 11th Hour '', the sequel to '' The 7th Guest ''. ''11th Hour'' featured 640x480 FMV at 30 frames-per-second on 4 CDs. The development team had worked for three years on developing a format that could handle the video, as the director of the live-action sequences had not shot the FMV sequences in a way that could be easily compressed. However, this proved to be the game's downfall, as most computers of the day could not play the full-resolution video. Users were usually forced to select an option which played the videos at a quarter-size resolution in black-and-white. As FMV established itself in the market as a growing game technology, a small company called RAD Game Tools appeared on the market with their 256-colour FMV format Smacker . Developers took to the format, and the format ended up being used in over 3,000 games. As the popularity of games loaded with live-action and FMV faded out in the late 1990s, and with Smacker becoming outdated in the world of 16-bit Colour games, RAD introduced a new true-colour format, Bink Video . Developers quickly took to the format because of its high compression ratios and videogame-tailored features. The format is still one of the most popular FMV formats used in games today. 4,000 games have used Bink, and the number is still growing. ''. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS |
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