CRI Middleware

Last updated
CRI Middleware Co., Ltd.
Native name
株式会社CRIミドルウェア
Romanized name
Kabushiki gaisha Kuri Midoruwea
FormerlyCSK Research Institute Corporation
Company type Public
Industry Video game
FoundedOctober 1983;40 years ago (October 1983)
Headquarters Shibuya, Tokyo
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
  • Masao Oshimi
  • (president)
  • Masahiko Suzumi
  • (chairman)
Products Middleware
Revenue¥767 million (2021)
Number of employees
187 (2021)
Subsidiaries
  • CRI Middlware China
  • R-Force
  • Two-Five
  • Web Technology
Website criware.com/en

CRI Middleware Co., Ltd. [1] (formerly CSK Research Institute Corp.) is a Japanese developer providing middleware for use in the video game industry. From the early nineties, CRI was a video game developer, but shifted focus in 2001.

Contents

History

CRI started out as CSK Research Institute, subsidiary of CSK, producing video games for the Mega Drive/Genesis. Throughout the 1990s, CRI gradually transitioned its focus, evolving into a provider of audio middleware tools like ADX and Sofdec. It went on to develop games for the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast before it was incorporated as CRI Middleware in 2001. In 2006, CRI Middleware introduced the CRIWARE brand.

Games

Developed

NamePlatform(s)Release date(s)
Galaxy Force II Mega Drive/Genesis 1991
Dyna BrothersMega Drive/Genesis1992
After Burner III Mega CD/Sega CD 1993
Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra Mega CD/Sega CD1993
Dyna Brothers 2Mega Drive/Genesis1993
Zaxxon's Motherbase 2000 32X 1995
Puzzle & Action: Treasure Hunt Sega Saturn 1996
Virtual On: Cyber Troopers Sega Saturn1996
Kunoichi TorimonochouSega Saturn1998
AeroWings Dreamcast 1999
TNN Motorsports HardCore Heat Dreamcast1999
Aero Dancing: Torodoki Taichou no Himitsu Disc Dreamcast2000
AeroWings 2: Air Strike Dreamcast2000
Aero Dancing F: Todoroki Tsubasa no Hatsu Hikou Dreamcast2000
Aero Dancing i: Jikai Sakuma de Machite Mase Dreamcast2001
Power Jet Racing 2001 Dreamcast2001

Published

NamePlatform(s)Release date(s)
Speedball 2 Mega Drive/Genesis1992
Mega-Lo-Mania Mega Drive/Genesis1993

CRIWARE

CRI ADX

ADX ADX logo.png
ADX

CRI ADX is a streamed audio format which allows for multiple audio streams, seamless looping and continuous playback (allowing two or more files to be crossfaded or played in sequence) with low, predictable CPU usage. The format uses the ADPCM framework.

CRI Sofdec

Sofdec Sofdec logo.png
Sofdec

CRI Sofdec is a streamed video format supporting up to 24bit color which includes multistreaming and seamless playback with a frame rate of up to 60 frames per second. It is essentially a repackaging of MPEG-1/MPEG-2 video with CRI's proprietary ADX codec for audio playback.

CRI Clipper

CRI Clipper is an automated lip-syncing program which analyzes waveforms and outputs an appropriate lip pattern into a text file, for later substitution into the facial animations of the (in-game) speaker.

CRI ROFS

CRI ROFS is a file management system for handling a virtual disc image, an extension of the CD-ROM standard. It has no limitations on file name format, or number of directories or files, and has been designed with compatibility with ADX and Sofdec in mind.

CRI Sound Factory

CRI Sound Factory is a GUI-based video game audio tool for effective sound design without input from programmers. It has support for the previewing and playback of generated audio.

CRI Movie Encode

CRI Movie Encode is a video encoding service by which CRI generates Sofdec or MPEG files from other media. For a fee (designated by the length of the file to be encoded), files are converted to the desired format with the quality specified by the client.

CRI Audio

The Precursor to Cri ADX2

CRI Movie

CRI Movie 2

CRI Movie with High Definition video support.

CRI Vibe

CRI CP Sound Craft

CRI FileMajik

CRI FileMajik - file system with features such as: asynchronous file requests, prioritized loads, zero-buffer decompression and UMD speed emulation for the PlayStation Portable. [2]

Related Research Articles

A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. Codec is a portmanteau of coder/decoder.

QuickTime is a discontinued extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term QuickTime also refers to the QuickTime Player front-end media player application, which is built-into macOS, and was formerly available for Windows.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Video CD</span> CD-based format meant for digital video distribution

Video CD is a home video format and the first format for distributing films on standard 120 mm (4.7 in) optical discs. The format was widely adopted in Southeast Asia, South Asia, East Asia, Central Asia and West Asia, superseding the VHS and Betamax systems in the regions until DVD-Video finally became affordable in the first decade of the 21st century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DivX</span> Brand of video codec products by DivX, LLC

DivX is a brand of video codec products developed by DivX, LLC. There are three DivX codecs: the original MPEG-4 Part 2 DivX codec, the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC DivX Plus HD codec and the High Efficiency Video Coding DivX HEVC Ultra HD codec. The most recent version of the codec itself is version 6.9.2, which is several years old. New version numbers on the packages now reflect updates to the media player, converter, etc.

Motion JPEG is a video compression format in which each video frame or interlaced field of a digital video sequence is compressed separately as a JPEG image.

Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is an audio coding standard for lossy digital audio compression. It was designed to be the successor of the MP3 format and generally achieves higher sound quality than MP3 at the same bit rate.

SMPTE 421, informally known as VC-1, is a video coding format. Most of it was initially developed as Microsoft's proprietary video format Windows Media Video 9 in 2003. With some enhancements including the development of a new Advanced Profile, it was officially approved as a SMPTE standard on April 3, 2006. It was primarily marketed as a lower-complexity competitor to the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC standard. After its development, several companies other than Microsoft asserted that they held patents that applied to the technology, including Panasonic, LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics.

DVR-MS is a proprietary video and audio file container format, developed by Microsoft used for storing TV content recorded by Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rockbox</span> Firmware replacement for various devices

Rockbox is a free and open-source software replacement for the OEM firmware in various forms of digital audio players (DAPs) with an original kernel. It offers an alternative to the player's operating system, in many cases without removing the original firmware, which provides a plug-in architecture for adding various enhancements and functions. Enhancements include personal digital assistant (PDA) functions, applications, utilities, and games. Rockbox can also retrofit video playback functions on players first released in mid-2000. Rockbox includes a voice-driven user-interface suitable for operation by visually impaired users.

A container format or metafile is a file format that allows multiple data streams to be embedded into a single file, usually along with metadata for identifying and further detailing those streams. Notable examples of container formats include archive files and formats used for multimedia playback. Among the earliest cross-platform container formats were Distinguished Encoding Rules and the 1985 Interchange File Format.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LiVES</span> Video editing software

LiVES (LiVES Editing System) is a free and open-source video editing software and VJ tool, released under the GNU General Public License version 3 or later. There are binary versions available for most popular Linux distributions (including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, Gentoo, Slackware, Arch Linux, Mandriva and Mageia). There are also ports for BSD, and it will run under Solaris and IRIX. It has been compiled under OS X Leopard, but not thoroughly tested on that platform. In early 2019, a version for Microsoft Windows was announced, with a release slated for in the second half of 2019.

Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are two different Flash Video file formats: FLV and F4V. The audio and video data within FLV files are encoded in the same way as SWF files. The F4V file format is based on the ISO base media file format, starting with Flash Player 9 update 3. Both formats are supported in Adobe Flash Player and developed by Adobe Systems. FLV was originally developed by Macromedia. In the early 2000s, Flash Video was the de facto standard for web-based streaming video. Users include Hulu, VEVO, Yahoo! Video, metacafe, Reuters.com, and many other news providers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avidemux</span> Free and open-source transcoding and video editing software

Avidemux is a free and open-source software application for non-linear video editing and transcoding multimedia files. The developers intend it as "a simple tool for simple video processing tasks" and to allow users "to do elementary things in a very straightforward way". It is written in C++ and uses Qt for its graphical user interface, and FFmpeg for its multimedia functions. Starting with version 2.4, Avidemux also offers a command-line interface, and since version 2.6, the original GTK port has not been maintained and is now discontinued.

MPEG Surround, also known as Spatial Audio Coding (SAC) is a lossy compression format for surround sound that provides a method for extending mono or stereo audio services to multi-channel audio in a backwards compatible fashion. The total bit rates used for the core and the MPEG Surround data are typically only slightly higher than the bit rates used for coding of the core. MPEG Surround adds a side-information stream to the core bit stream, containing spatial image data. Legacy stereo playback systems will ignore this side-information while players supporting MPEG Surround decoding will output the reconstructed multi-channel audio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ADX (file format)</span> File format family developed by CRI Middleware

CRI ADX is a proprietary audio container and compression format developed by CRI Middleware specifically for use in video games; it is derived from ADPCM but with lossy compression. Its most notable feature is a looping function that has proved useful for background sounds in various games that have adopted the format, including many games for the Sega Dreamcast as well as some PlayStation 2, GameCube and Wii games. One of the first games to use ADX was Burning Rangers, on the Sega Saturn. Notably, the Sonic the Hedgehog series since the Dreamcast generation and the majority of Sega games for home video consoles and PCs since the Dreamcast continue to use this format for sound and voice recordings. Jet Set Radio Future for original Xbox also used this format.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DVD-Video</span> Format used to store digital video on DVD discs

DVD-Video is a consumer video format used to store digital video on DVDs. DVD-Video was the dominant consumer home video format in Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia in the 2000s until it was supplanted by the high-definition Blu-ray Disc, before eventually both were replaced by streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+. Discs using the DVD-Video specification require a DVD drive and an MPEG-2 decoder. Commercial DVD movies are encoded using a combination of MPEG-2 compressed video and audio of varying formats. Typically, the data rate for DVD movies ranges from 3 to 9.5 Mbit/s, and the bit rate is usually adaptive. DVD-Video was first available in Japan on November 1, 1996, followed by a release on March 26, 1997, in the United States—to line up with the 69th Academy Awards that same day.

HTTP Live Streaming is an HTTP-based adaptive bitrate streaming communications protocol developed by Apple Inc. and released in 2009. Support for the protocol is widespread in media players, web browsers, mobile devices, and streaming media servers. As of 2022, an annual video industry survey has consistently found it to be the most popular streaming format.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Opus (audio format)</span> Lossy audio coding format

Opus is a lossy audio coding format developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force, designed to efficiently code speech and general audio in a single format, while remaining low-latency enough for real-time interactive communication and low-complexity enough for low-end embedded processors. Opus replaces both Vorbis and Speex for new applications, and several blind listening tests have ranked it higher-quality than any other standard audio format at any given bitrate until transparency is reached, including MP3, AAC, and HE-AAC.

References

  1. Japanese: 株式会社CRI・ミドルウェア, Hepburn: Kabushiki gaisha Kuri Midoruwea
  2. "CRI Middleware, Inc. announces CRI FileMajik: A cross-platform file system for the next generation of games" (Press release). San Francisco, California: CRI Middleware. February 18, 2008. Archived from the original on May 6, 2016. Retrieved April 18, 2016.