Someone crammed a full-length movie onto a 1.44MB floppy disk

[Shawn Knight]

Through the looking glass: In the world of multimedia, bigger is almost always better. More data, higher resolutions, larger screens… these all contribute to an enhanced viewing experience. But have you ever wondered what would be possible on the opposite end of the spectrum, where excess is the enemy?

Reddit user GreedyPaint recently embarked on such a journey and in the process, managed to cram an entire feature-length film (90 minutes) onto a single 1.44MB floppy drive, complete with audio. Let that sink in for a moment.

How’s that possible, you ask? Compression, lots of compression.

Along with a Raspberry Pi, the Redditor employed a custom x265 codec to shrink the movie down to a minuscule 120 x 96 pixel resolution. Worse yet, playback is limited to just four frames per second.

It’s one of those classic cases of being “so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn’t stop to think if they should.” In other words, it’s incredibly impressive while being about as far from practical as humanly possible.

Earlier this year, we shared the story of a YouTuber that managed to work out a method to record video onto a standard audio cassette tape. This is sort of in the same wheelhouse.

The best part of the whole project might be the hardware. GreedyPaint created a faux “VCR” complete with custom splash screen that automatically plays the contents of the disk when inserted.

Found is a TechSpot feature where we share clever, funny or otherwise interesting stuff from around the web.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/88113-someone-crammed-full-length-movie-onto-144mb-floppy.html

 

[Crinkles]

Good try, the only thing missing are 160,000 frames.
Work it out in the next version.

 

[amghwk]

What he did is useless, but HOW he did it is commendable.

 

[psycros]

If only the movie had been Dwayne Johnson in "Doom".

 

[madboyv1]

It's a thing of beauty.

 

[veLa]

I'm doing something retro. Go get the old analog camera.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

So using this same tech, I wonder how high a resolution with the native 24 fps he could manage on a zip disk

 

[Jpe1701]

I want to see that audio cassette story too. I love this kind of story. Regardless of the obvious less-than useful nature of the project, it's a preview of what can be thought up by just ordinary tinkerers.

 

[hahahanoobs]

What he did is useless, but HOW he did it is commendable.

"In other words, it’s incredibly impressive while being about as far from practical as humanly possible."

 

[redhat]

There are many KGB archive files that contain big application in very small archive sizes, one of them is office 2007 suite which is just few megabytes but the decompression takes several hours. hope somebody test it on threadripper

 

[veLa]

Are we really impressed that someone was able to use compression to shrink a video file down to ~1.44MB?

 

[Endymio]

Are we really impressed that someone was able to use compression to shrink a video file down to ~1.44MB?

Had he done so, that would have been impressive. But most of the reduction came from his cutting the resolution down to 1/1000 the original. Rather humdrum ... and even more so was this statement:

"... we shared the story of a YouTuber that managed to work out a method to record video onto a standard audio cassette tape...."

This was being done by PCs as far back as the 1970s. It was rather clever then. Today, it's simply banal.

 

[Vulcanproject]

If it doesn't run the full framerate then it's hardly full length.

I know it's a pedantic technicality but movie literally means the picture is in motion to the human eye, at 4FPS it's basically closer to a fast slideshow than an actual movie lol

 

[MaestroIT]

Really? just few days ago a college sent me a 30 second video clip to use in a project that was 1GB :/

 

[Markoni35]

It's not a movie, it's a slide-show. Where the picture is made of small-stones mosaic. A prehistoric slide show. But at least it's got its practical side, because now everyone having a 3.5" floppy can watch the video. All 20 users.

 

[jaydear]

I think I get why he did it but why was the posted video recorded on analog tape with creases and noise bars?

 

[mbk34]

Normal compression on a 90 min film gives a file size of around 700mb. It's frame rate is normally 24 frames per sec so with just 4 frames per sec you'd expect a reduced file size of 117mb (700/6). The resolution on a 720p film is 1280x720 so this film's 120x96 is 80 times smaller meaning that it should take up 1.4mb (117/80). That's exactly what was produced.

So the headline of this article should really be "person reduces settings and gets smaller file"!

 

[captaincranky]

It's not a movie, it's a slide-show. Where the picture is made of small-stones mosaic. A prehistoric slide show. But at least it's got its practical side, because now everyone having a 3.5" floppy can watch the video. All 20 users.

Hey wait, I could do this. I have a brand new floppy drive, which I bought at Micro Center for $5.00..!

Oh wait, all the 3 1/2" slots in my cases are blocked up with USB adapters. Never mind.

Now if only this guy would get together with the 8 Ghz Celeron guy, we'd have a real cinematic extravaganza. If only they could find a way to harness the hear coming off the CPU, and put it to work making popcorn.

 

[wizardB]

Hey wait, I could do this. I have a brand new floppy drive, which I bought at Micro Center for $5.00..!

Oh wait, all the 3 1/2" slots in my cases are blocked up with USB adapters. Never mind.

Now if only this guy would get together with the 8 Ghz Celeron guy, we'd have a real cinematic extravaganza. If only they could find a way to harness the hear coming off the CPU, and put it to work making popcorn.

I have a USB floppy drive I can sell you. ">
"

 

[captaincranky]

I have a USB floppy drive I can sell you. ">

EDIT: I misread your kind offer of a USB floppy drive. Unfortunately, that would leave the drive dangling from the front of any of my machines in which I chose to plug it.

My answer thus firmly remains, "thanks, but no thanks"

 

[Hidden Tap]

I want to see that audio cassette story too. I love this kind of story. Regardless of the obvious less-than useful nature of the project, it's a preview of what can be thought up by just ordinary tinkerers.

My exposure to computing started with coding onto an ordinary cassette tape. I maybe used 3 feet of the tape reel in class.

 

[Hidden Tap]

1.44MB floppy disk is compatible in the old SuperDisk drive at 120MB/disk. New headline: "guy compresses movie to 120MB!"

 

[Reehahs]

Now all you need as an AI to make up the information between frames to ramp up the fps to something watchable.

 

[Danny101]

I was impressed when I could put a 90 minute DVD quality movie on a CD-R, and 4-5 such movies on a DVD-R . Thanks XVID. Putting an HD movie on a CD? Isn't that possible now?

 

[stewi0001]

I was impressed when I could put a 90 minute DVD quality movie on a CD-R, and 4-5 such movies on a DVD-R . Thanks XVID. Putting an HD movie on a CD? Isn't that possible now?

It is possible but all depends on storage space of the optical disk and the compression of the video(s).
- CD up to 700 MB
- DVD up to 8.4 GB
- Blu-ray up to 50 GB