AGABlaster - New CDXL Player Released

[movec]

Originally Posted by drluking

solved (problem in the transfer file, from PC to Amiga ... ); please upload in google drive .lha/.lzx/.zip file, not the .exe file !

great software !!!

some stats:
Lores 17fps from IDE pio0 cybppc060@50 A4k PFS3AIO
Lores 24fps from UWSCSI cybppc060@50 A4k PFS3AIO
Hires 22fps from UWSCSI cybppc060@50 A4k PFS3AIO
Hires 24fps from RAM cybppc060@50 A4k PFS3AIO

possible to download the full Hires 16:9 video ?

22 FPS for Hires is faster than on my Amiga. I have added the hires versions for the full video, have fun!

[drluking]

are you using a cyberstorm mk2 060 + fast ata Z3 ?

thank you very much !!!

[movec]

Originally Posted by drluking

are you using a cyberstorm mk2 060 + fast ata Z3 ?

I have a GVP 68060/50 + Fast ATA MK III (in PIO 3). PIO 4 doesn't give higher FPS, also with the DENEB USB 2.0 I get the exact same FPS. So I wonder why yours is faster.

[movec]

Originally Posted by drluking

some stats:
Hires 22fps from UWSCSI cybppc060@50 A4k PFS3AIO
Hires 24fps from RAM cybppc060@50 A4k PFS3AIO

I just measured this again. With hires I actually get 15 FPS in PIO 4 , this makes more sense now (with PIO 5 it's the same as with PIO 4). From RAM Disk I get 17 FPS with hires.

[drluking]

with full video hires, from HD, I have 22 fps (probably because the UWSCSI controller of cyberstormppc is DMA)
I like a lot your software

[movec]

Originally Posted by thairacerjp

my test on CD32 with TF330 030 CPU, not bad, but in HI resolution it show slowdown and glitches, but congratulation !

Hi thairacerjp, I just uploaded a new version 0.9.65. This version reduces the "glitches" in case the I/O bandwidth is very low in comparison to the bitrate of the video. It also fixes the crashes that occurred sometimes.
The next version will have some additional video control features and the glitches should be eliminated entirely.

[thairacerjp]

Originally Posted by movec

Hi thairacerjp, I just uploaded a new version 0.9.65. This version reduces the "glitches" in case the I/O bandwidth is very low in comparison to the bitrate of the video. It also fixes the crashes that occurred sometimes.
The next version will have some additional video control features and the glitches should be eliminated entirely.

good job ! , did you managed to make a more user friendly conversion ? i'd like to test with some vidéo .

[thairacerjp]

Hi Markus, I've just tested the latest version 0.9.65 and it's very good, as you said, on CD32 TF330 68030 I have no more glitches, clear picture ! wow , of course in hi resolution it's slow but soon with the 68060 it will be awesome, did you have found a way to convert more user friendly ? I can't wait to test this amazing tool. this I a capture via usb easycap from my CD32(in low resolution).
[ Show youtube player ]

[hUMUNGUs]

This player has so much potential, great work buddy.
Do you have any plans to support any "modern" formats ? I know its a big ask, and it might not even be in your future for this player. But i thought i´d ask.

[BULI]

It look amazing- WOW
I have 15 FPS on A1200 with Fast RAM, and about 2MB/s transfer HDD with sample:zoraia_short_cropped_lo_aga7.cdxl


On A4000 with FastATA in PIO4, a have 24FPS with full file:
zoraia_cropped_lo_aga8.cdxl


Great WORK
When will be available the converter?

Originally Posted by movec

The initial alpha release of my CDXL player AGABlaster is available.

I have tested it on an A4000/60 with a Fast ATA 4000 MK-III disk controller (expansion card) and different PIO settings. AGABlaster can play videos with 24 FPS, 320x256 Lores resolution, and 8-bit stereo sound at 22050 Hz directly from disk, with the MK-III in PIO3 setting. Only chip memory is required. Alternatively, playing from an USB 2.0 memory stick connected to a DENEB USB 2.0 expansion card is also fast enough.

In contrast to other CDXL/ANIM players it can skip video frames on disk. This should allow to play videos also on slower Amiga hardware. Audio is always read from disk. It supports 24 bit colors.

This is my very first program for my AGA Amiga, I haven't tested it on any other system yet. It comes with a bunch of test videos, in case somebody wants to give it a try:
http://mschordan.github.io/amiga/agablaster.html

Youtube videos are here:
Playing from disk:
[ Show youtube player ]

Playing from USB memory stick:
[ Show youtube player ]

[damex]

@movec: Did you consider running AGABlaster over the network?

I'm thinking about a transcoder hosted in the cloud that would take YouTube videos and convert them into CDXL on the fly. This way we could watch YouTube with AGABlaster.

[BULI]

Originally Posted by damex

@movec: Did you consider running AGABlaster over the network?

I'm thinking about a transcoder hosted in the cloud that would take YouTube videos and convert them into CDXL on the fly. This way we could watch YouTube with AGABlaster.

Great IDEA!!!!

[movec]

Hi guys,

Thanks for all the feedback! I just released the CDXL Video converter AGAConv 0.9.4, you are welcome to test it.

I have tested it on Ubuntu 18.04. Thanks to thairacerjp for testing it on Windows 10.

Webpage: https://mschordan.github.io/amiga/agaconv.html

You can run it on Linux/Ubuntu or Windows 10 (with the ubuntu App) - instructions are on the webpage. Conversion time is now down to about the same as the run time of the video (a 2min video takes about 2min to convert).

Once it's installed it's quite easy to use:
./agaconv-script --in=myvideo.mp4 --out=myvideo.cdxl --fps=25 --frequency=24000

This converts the MP4 video to a 24-bit color CDXL with 25 frames per second and stereo sound with 24000 Hz. It runs fine on my A4000/60 with agablaster.
There are also options for --width and --height, in case you need to rescale the video (by default it uses 320x256 lores).

agaconv-script is a little convenience wrapper script that takes care of running ffmpeg and provides all the right options to agaconv to encode the video. The options for both are explained on the webpage, but I guess above example line is what most people will want to use (with adjusted width/height if the height of the video is not full screen or for different resolutions).

agaconv requires ffmpeg in the background (to extract the frames and remap them as PNG files). Hence, the quality of the video is defined by what ffmpeg can do, agaconv only encodes the converted frames and 8-bit audio stream into a CDXL file. It also supports IFF files as input (this allows to also encode HAM or EHB frames).

It's certainly more fun, when you can convert your own videos, I hope it works for you guys

[movec]

Originally Posted by hUMUNGUs

This player has so much potential, great work buddy.
Do you have any plans to support any "modern" formats ? I know its a big ask, and it might not even be in your future for this player. But i thought i´d ask.

Newer video formats require a faster processor, if you have a Vampire I'd suggest to use the RIVA player (link is at the bottom of the agablaster webpage). Even on my A4000/60 RIVA can play MPEG1 videos without sound at about 20 FPS and it uses nice small MPEG1 files - but that's about the speed limit. MP4 would require even more compute power AFAIK.

I also found a way to convert a video to AVI such that cyberavi can run it. It only works well for small videos (about 128x128), but it works with the direct output of ffmpeg and directly on Workbench.

I think both those tools are written very well, utilize graphics cards, and show what is possible with the respective video format and the available CPU.

In contrast, AGABlaster is specifically designed to run well on original Amiga hardware, in particular slower models. Note that you can also "tune" videos to your respective hardware (making the files smaller), now that AGAConv is available.

[thairacerjp]

Hi movec ! it was such a honour to test your beta converter tool, it's working faultless on Ubuntu, need some steps before working, windows 10 only used me to install ubuntu above Win10 for easy install . my goal was to convert a entire movie, it was a mess at the beginning but thanks to you and some many bugs (memory overflow) it was a succes and the result is beautifull but as you said the 320x254 resolution is ok in my tests with:

CD 32 TF328 68020 : little jerky
CD 32 TF330 68030 : fine

640x252 :
CD 32 TF330 68030 : very jerky, about 10 fps

there are higher resolutions but it will need 68060 i think !

but you can reduce colours and use 15 fps for make about 50 % less the size of the cdxl file.

for exemples :
i have converted in 2 files a movie for empire strike back (120 mn)
result was two files of 4gb in 320x254 / 15fps
result was two files of 7 gb in 320x254 / 25 fps
the result in 64 colours 15 fps was 3 gb.
for a clip of about 4mn, 450 mb .

some exemples i done and run on my CD32 TF330 :

[ Show youtube player ]
ROGUE ONE CDXL 320X254 15FPS 22050 HTZ CD32 TF330

[ Show youtube player ]
HOTH BATTLE CDXL ON CD32 TF330 320X254 25FPS

[ Show youtube player ]
ROGUE LEADER CD32 TF330 PREVIEW TEST CDXL HI & LOW

[ Show youtube player ]
blackpink CDXL lowres near FULLSCREEN on CD32 TF330 68030 !

[ Show youtube player ]
AGABlaster New CDXL Player 320X256 15FPS TEST TF328 CD32

i have bought a 128 GB flash card with double ide for put the big CDXL files but i have some problem cause the psf3 format cannot handle more than 2 GB, so i try to install SmartFileSystem but it delete my boot , i must try again to update my scsi.device version ??

so, enjoy this great converter, it's worth the try !! thanks markus, now it's your turn, Amigafans, to test



CONVERTION WITH TERMINAL UNDER UBUNTU



TEST IN 62 COLOURS

[BULI]

Originally Posted by movec

Newer video formats require a faster processor, if you have a Vampire I'd suggest to use the RIVA player (link is at the bottom of the agablaster webpage). Even on my A4000/60 RIVA can play MPEG1 videos without sound at about 20 FPS and it uses nice small MPEG1 files - but that's about the speed limit. MP4 would require even more compute power AFAIK.

I also found a way to convert a video to AVI such that cyberavi can run it. It only works well for small videos (about 128x128), but it works with the direct output of ffmpeg and directly on Workbench.

I think both those tools are written very well, utilize graphics cards, and show what is possible with the respective video format and the available CPU.

In contrast, AGABlaster is specifically designed to run well on original Amiga hardware, in particular slower models. Note that you can also "tune" videos to your respective hardware (making the files smaller), now that AGAConv is available.

Great and Big Thanks
I just going to install Ubnuntu now, on my Windows10

[SKOLMAN_MWS]

Originally Posted by movec

Newer video formats require a faster processor

YAFA Player uses XPK-FAST compression on 68020

sample animation in ham8 packed in xpk-fast
http://aminet.net/package/pix/anim/creamed

[BULI]

I tested this converter on Ubuntu in Win10, and it works

I think about use --width=320 --height=180 to have correct aspect ratio of 16:9 source video to my CRT TV, and less FPS (I want play it on my A1200/CD32 with Fast RAM) with sound about 16000hz

[movec]

Originally Posted by BULI

I tested this converter on Ubuntu in Win10, and it works

I think about use --width=320 --height=180 to have correct aspect ratio of 16:9 source video to my CRT TV, and less FPS (I want play it on my A1200/CD32 with Fast RAM) with sound about 16000hz

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.

[movec]

Originally Posted by SKOLMAN_MWS

YAFA Player uses XPK-FAST compression on 68020

sample animation in ham8 packed in xpk-fast
http://aminet.net/package/pix/anim/creamed

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

If you can run the compressor on files, it would be interesting to know to what size it can compress the 17s CDXL example files (from the agablaster webpage).