STV: A Full-Motion Video Codec for the Atari ST

When porting Command & Conquer to the Atari ST, Jonas Eschenburg faced the challenge of playing Westwood's VQA videos on hardware limited to 16 colors and an 8 MHz CPU. Instead of giving up, he created STV, a custom codec that uses an 8x8 tile codebook, dynamic updates, and a clever encoder to achieve smooth full-motion video. The player stays simple, relying on assembly-optimized tile drawing and DMA audio, while the encoder handles complex tasks like YUV conversion, frequency-domain comparisons, and palette optimization. The result: surprisingly watchable FMV on a 1985 machine.