AGABlaster - New CDXL Player Released

[BULI]

Originally Posted by movec

Great, I don't have Win 10, glad to hear it works. Aspect ratio needs to be taken care of, yes. Depends on whether your monitor is set to stretch the picture or not, etc.

Resolution 320x180 works fine on my CRT TV.
The option of centering the image vertically in AGA_Blaster could be used.


I tested on Micro Drive 5GB, because CF card is slower.


On CD32 with fast ram (WicherCD32, transfer about 3,5MB/s) i have 20FPS in 320x180, sound 22050hz



On A1200 with fast ram (transfer about 2,1MB/s) i have 17FPS in 320x180, sound 16000hz



In my opinion wery well results- BIG thanks

[SKOLMAN_MWS]

@movec

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Originally Posted by movec

What's the video size and the frame rate? Does it include sound?

movec if it can help here are the info found on the file "Creamedbg.yafa"

[BULI]

In default resolution 350x256 in 254 colors, and Sound 22050 I have on WicherCD32 14 FPS.

My Friend with the same movie on CD32 SX PRO (68030, and transfer from HDD about 1.7MBps) had about 17 FPS- better than me- that mean the speed of RAM (and CPU) is important.

[movec]

Originally Posted by SKOLMAN_MWS

@movec

For this video with 176x120, 224 frames , HAM8, (one byte per pixel) and a files size of 3.67 MB, it's reducing the raw graphics data to about 78%.

Just for a rough comparison, if I simply run zip on my 17sec test video file, I also get about 78%. So there is some room for loss-less compression, but it isn't that dramatic either.

Is wildfire (from 1996) the only available yafa encoder?
https://aminet.net/package/gfx/misc/YAFA

Unfortunately, ffmpeg doesn't support the yafa format.

[movec]

Originally Posted by BULI

In default resolution 350x256 in 254 colors, and Sound 22050 I have on WicherCD32 14 FPS.

My Friend with the same movie on CD32 SX PRO (68030, and transfer from HDD about 1.7MBps) had about 17 FPS- better than me- that mean the speed of RAM (and CPU) is important.

If you run agablaster with option 'stats' what number do you (and your friend) get in lines
* Number of skipped video frames
* Max VERTB interrupt finish pos
* Audio frame buffer delays
* Video frame buffer delays

From that one can see how well the default config fits your system.

[BULI]

Originally Posted by movec

If you run agablaster with option 'stats' what number do you (and your friend) get in lines
* Number of skipped video frames
* Max VERTB interrupt finish pos
* Audio frame buffer delays
* Video frame buffer delays

From that one can see how well the default config fits your system.

False alarm.
My Friend made mistake.
He has about 12FPS in 320x256, and 17FPS in 320x180 in 256 colors.


BTW
If we have Black&White movie to convert, 64 colors are perfect (exactly 62 colors)- enough quality, less size, and more FPS
On my Friend's hardware (CD32 SX PRO 6030) in 64 colors in 320x256, frame rate get increase from 12 to 17 FPS :-)

[BULI]

About proper aspect ratio when we want to convert 16:9 video to screen Amiga PAL 320x256.
I thought that 320x180 is correct to TV CRT (4:3) screen, but isn't true, because Amiga make full screen in 320x256, not 320x240. So, if we want have proper aspect ratio, we must convert material 16:9 (eg 1920 x 1080) to 320x196.

[BULI]

AGABlaster use setting of Overscan?
We could use bigger resolution in NTSC!

[Glen M]

I've been meaning to have a play with this software so I've downloaded the latest version along with the samples to try out later on my CD32.

I'll also have a go at the encoding process later but one quick question. Is there any requirement for the format of the original video file and is the any benefit in using say a 720 or 1080p video rather than say 480p or other lower resolutions?

[BULI]

Originally Posted by Glen M

I've been meaning to have a play with this software so I've downloaded the latest version along with the samples to try out later on my CD32.

I'll also have a go at the encoding process later but one quick question. Is there any requirement for the format of the original video file and is the any benefit in using say a 720 or 1080p video rather than say 480p or other lower resolutions?

About requirements:
Resolution of source video, don't have any matter (off course bether quality of source, bether final result).
I tried only mp4 files, but it work on FFMPEG, so probably will support formats accepted for FFMPEG? You must check this on your own.

[Glen M]

According to the stats screen playing the low res zoraia scaled gets a solid 24fps with 0 frames skipped. Am I reading it correctly? The frames per second listed at the bottom of the output?

In any case all I can is I'm astonished by the quality. I really can't get over just how clear the image is. Certainly puts the like of VCD to shame, its just a pity the file size is so big or Commodore might of had a home movie format on their hands.

[movec]

Originally Posted by BULI

About requirements:
Resolution of source video, don't have any matter (off course bether quality of source, bether final result).
I tried only mp4 files, but it work on FFMPEG, so probably will support formats accepted for FFMPEG? You must check this on your own.

Yes, every format that ffmpeg accepts can be used. agaconv-script simply calls ffmpeg to extract the frames and sound data (with a bunch of options).

[movec]

Originally Posted by Glen M

According to the stats screen playing the low res zoraia scaled gets a solid 24fps with 0 frames skipped. Am I reading it correctly? The frames per second listed at the bottom of the output?

Yes, that's the correct number. Always nice to see it works well on other systems as well.

Originally Posted by Glen M

In any case all I can is I'm astonished by the quality. I really can't get over just how clear the image is. Certainly puts the like of VCD to shame, its just a pity the file size is so big or Commodore might of had a home movie format on their hands.

It could be used for cut-scenes in games, very short movies in a way

BTW, I will soon release an update which allows to seek forward/backward and halt the player.

[Glen M]

Originally Posted by movec

It could be used for cut-scenes in games, very short movies in a way

BTW, I will soon release an update which allows to seek forward/backward and halt the player.

Yeah, its a shame the likes of the CD32 didn't make more use of cut-scenes in games and I've said before I think that FMV games could have been exploited more, while laughed at today they were a big talking point in the early 90s.

Looking forward to the new version. Would be nice to pause the image for sake of comparisons. If I could add a wish feature would it be possible to the video in a window on workbench?

[movec]

Originally Posted by BULI

The option of centering the image vertically in AGA_Blaster could be used.

Thanks for the suggestion. The new version 0.9.70 (just released) supports this by default (option NOCENTER turns it off). There is also an option for YOFFSET=NUMBER (for playing around with it).

[movec]

Originally Posted by Glen M

Yeah, its a shame the likes of the CD32 didn't make more use of cut-scenes in games and I've said before I think that FMV games could have been exploited more, while laughed at today they were a big talking point in the early 90s.

In the 1st Issue of Amiga CD32 Gamer (1994) there is a feature article on the FMV module - with a text box "The future of home entertainment?", nice read indeed.

Originally Posted by Glen M

If I could add a wish feature would it be possible to the video in a window on workbench?

AGABlaster runs on the original AGA hardware and the video quality largely relies on changing all 256 colors in every frame (selected from the 24 bit color range in every frame). Hence, with an 8-bit WB this would be quite "flashy" To run it in a window requires graphics card support (which I may add at some point).

[movec]

Hi guys, AGABlaster 0.9.70 is now available:

[https://mschordan.github.io/amiga/agablaster.html

* Added keyboard video controls (forward/backward/halt/restart/volume)
The backward seek on disk is very slow on the original OS3.x. Therefore AGABlaster 0.9.70 computes an internal offset table (while playing) to compute a single seek for +-10 secs. This keeps it within reasonable time range (1-2 secs). Forward is always fast.
* Added automatic video centering (y-axis)
* Added copper effects (duplicates video 4x and 12x) - 4x works fine on my A4000/60, 12x shows some flickering sometimes on my A4000/60 (it runs fine in the emulator). Something to figure out about this one.
* Activated AGA border blank feature - that's a feature on the AGA architecture to turn off the border - this means it's black, even if color register 0 (background color) has a color different to black. Therefore any CDXL video will run without "flashy" background (with agaconv this is not an issue because it already encodes videos with black background color).

[Retro1234]

Is CDXL possible in 16 colour or is it tied to HAM?

[movec]

Originally Posted by BULI

AGABlaster use setting of Overscan?
We could use bigger resolution in NTSC!

I have a PAL system, so I cannot test this, but with the new version 0.9.70 it will set the end of the video whereever it ends. This may extend the video into Y-overscan range on your system. You can also try the new option YOFFSET with a negative offset, this may get you into the overscan range at the top of the screen as well.

The NTSC command line option also takes the 60Hz frequency into consideration for the speed of the video (I am not trying to detect automatically NTSC systems yet, therefore the command line option). Same as above, I cannot test this, but if you compare it to the original video (running on a PC), this option should be necessary to get the speed right on an NTSC Amiga system (the sound will always be in sync with the video, so this isn't that easy to spot .