Batch-rendering locked-pallet IFFs

[vodley]

ADPRO 2.51 will lock a pallet for rendering split-up video frames into amiga-mode frames. This worked fine in the past for short bits, but now I wish to automate this for larger quantities of frames.

Suggestions, or alternative solutions to batching unified-pallet IFFs?

[hit]

i was about suggesting http://aminet.net/package/gfx/misc/SView5-68k but i cant start the program.
it can also interact with different gfx packages, like adpro, imagefx.
for sure its a problem on my side, so give it a try.

[Cammy]

Image Studio can batch process images, remapping them to a saved, locked palette. It's very easy to use, the AREXX commands for the process would be something like:

PALETTE_LOAD FILE "Palettes/custom256.palette" DITHER "FS"

Make sure you resize the window to the smallest size so the redrawing of each image doesn't slow down the batch rendering process.

[vodley]

I uncovered an important part to an easy solution on Aminet. http://aminet.net/package/gfx/conv/PicConvert

This single app batch-renders nice 12-bit and 18-bit HAM/HAM8 IFFs, based on one unifying gray scale gradient pallet.

I needed a solution for unifying the pallet for picking up and compositing video-elements (digitized video frame sequences) in Dpaint5 under WinUAE.

source video - AVI or Mpg1,2

Video to PNG batch - Virtualdub PNG

PNG to HAM8 batch - PicConvert - HAM8

HAM8 batch to HAM8Anim - DPaint5 Anim, Animbrush

A HAM8 animbrush can be remapped to the other Amiga modes in DPaint5, with dithering option.

Not nice as results from twisting up a script to direct ADPro or what have you, but nice results.
(EDIT: took out xnview PNG to IFF24 step, I see PicConvert accepts a few useful file types, including PNG. EDIT: inclusion - 12-bit HAM to unified gray scale pallet.)

[Cammy]

Just out of curiousity, what is all this image conversion for? Are you working on a CDXL animation by chance?

[vodley]

Hi, Princess Cammy. I'm doing some Desktop Video, playing with converting video snips into animbrushes to use as elements in DPaint5 compositions, using the move requester to make them and other design elements scroll, crawl, tumble and fly. Maybe some spot editing, or special effects, such as lightning, blast-beams, humorous or surreal imagery.

WinUAE and a low cost digicam makes it possible to load short video sequences into DPaint on a "SuperAmiga," but a unified pallet is crucial.

I'll use this method to build a video and title montage, then save it out as an avi from virtualdub to make it ready for my Windows platform video workflow.

Amiga-side, I'll eventually load up Elan Performer with some video anims.

[Cammy]

Ooh, cool that sounds like a really interesting project, I'd love to see the finished results. I've seen some really clever tricks done with the DPaint move requestor, like a Star Wars-style text scroller that disappears into the distance, and a title for a game that flew at the screen from a small point in the background, spinning as it grew larger.

I'll have to check out PicConvert and see if it does a better/faster job than Image Studio. Image Studio has some very nice dithering options too, more than just the standard FS and Ordered dithering that most programs have.

Did you manage to make a locked 12bit HAM6 palette? Does it have all 4,096 possible colours in it? That's one thing I'd love to have, a locked 12bit 4,096 colour palette I can remap my images to to use in CDXLs that won't make the colours go all funny when the pens in the palette start changing with each new frame.

[vodley]

If you can twist up an arexx script to control your commercial Amiga image processing package, you probably don't need PicConvert to render batches. But, yeah, it's the first thing I've come across that batches unified pallet HAM frames for the rest of us, making some wild full-motion Amiga desktop-video possible in DPaint5.

For batching HAM, PicConvert provides by default a base-pallet of 16 or 64 grays. I'm thrilled because DPaint5 anims and their animbrushes display consistantly, frame-to-frame, HAM colors based on one 16 or 64 register pallet.

I have not heard of CDXL.
How I mean a locked pallet is in the function of a graphics rendering program option. The images themselves are only unified.

PicConvert is pre-directed to render HAM colors from default gray scale base-registers, as opposed to other programs that instead automatically generate an adaptive base-register pallet to best represent each individual image.

As far as I can tell, when I load 24-bit IFF images into DPaint, the program will always compute and assign an adaptive pallet for each single F1 batch-loaded frame of animation.

However, video first processed to HAM by PicConvert load as animations that provide a very flexible DPaint animbrush.

When loaded into other pallet modes, HAM8 animbrushes remap nicely to the fewer, thoughtfully selected colors. Picking up whole screen-sized animbrushes permit entire animations to be converted to fewer colors in a few steps.