Amiga movies possible on stock OCS machine?

[DDNI]

Will record direct output from my 030 and 060 this w/e. Both streaming from CF and CD.

[ImmortalA1000]

Would it be feasible to write a test for this in Blitz Basic?

It's been a while since any kind of serious time critical/performance stuff related to I/O on Blitz Basic but if all that is happening is setting screen display area and loading 48k blocks maybe using a fast drive I could do a quick mock up on an A600?

[gulliver]

Good idea, go for the test!

[DDNI]

I recorded the direct output from my A1200 with 030. The quality is almost exactly as I see it on the Amiga. There is no Youtube conversion degradation.

The files can be found here;
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a1dh...CHOS_zopen.zip
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a1dh...CHOS_shiki.zip


EDIT New links, as I didn't realise Raidshare only gave 10 download slots.

[gulliver]

Wow! I watched the videos, quality is much better than i expected!

Hope you can share the program

It is really great!

[ImmortalA1000]

They look very good, especially the anime clip which hides the 4bit RGB palette of the OCS/ECS chipset better. Both are still very good.

Now all I need to do is find a program for converting images to HAM6 specific images. I know Digi-View 4 will load in 24bit pictures but that would take forever. And is it RGB?

Tortuous speed DPaint4 AGA also loads in 24bit IFFs too I think from memory to display in the selected screen mode but doubt they would look great.

Other than that I don't know of any PC Windows software to do it and Google doesn't help unless you are looking for some nice ham on the bone recipes or pictures of ham and eggs

[DDNI]

Hi all, I have been speaking to the author of the HAM6 encoding software and playback app (T.J Edminster).
He has agreed for it to be released into the public domain.
The archive should be kept intact and any new software derived from this should credit him as the original author.

The files can be found in the zone.
I will upload the existing .hv movies files to the web later.

[gulliver]

Thanks @DDNI. I have a new toy to play with

[Retro1234]

Thanks ill check it out.

[Photon]

Hey, Mr. Edminster hero \o/

Thanks for upload DDNI, will try it on A500 OCS with 68000 and 68040. Sometime in the future when I have time

btw Animes are a "bad" example, they usually have low framerates in the original and can't really be compared to normal movies' color gradients and more chaotic frame content. (But good too I guess, since that kinda masks any low framerates and low palette depth on Amigas :P)

[DDNI]

@photon yes you are right, that is why I added a live video example too.

[ImmortalA1000]

I can't believe there isn't a single package for super fast wintel machines to convert or batch convert should I say, BMP/PNG/PCX/JPG images to HAM6 or HAM8. This is a major stumbling block!

Without the frames there's no point in writing even a test player.

[yaqube]

I have recorded my Minimig playing a HAM6 video clip at 24 fps with stereo sound. You can watch the recording on [ Show youtube player ].

The clip resolution is 320x160 pixels and with 2 channels of audio sampled at 22 kHz it requires a throughput of 950 KB/s.

The player doesn't use double buffering for its copper list and since video playback is synced to audio stream and not vbl sometimes some glitches are visible.

The encoding software did a pretty good job but could handle better horizontal smearing.

[DDNI]

Hi all,
Some comments from TJ the author of the HAM6 software.
Glad to see that he got it working.

A few comments on the EAB thread...

Anyone who wants to experiment with seeing how images look in the
different Amiga OCS screenmodes should check out the program HAMlab. A
link was posted on a.org a while back saying that it is now freeware.

When I tried playback on the A2000 in standard 68000 mode it could only
hit 7-8fps. Since there isn't much code to execute in between DMA
transfers from disk to chipmem, I guess the overhead of calling the OS for
each disk read is holding it back. IIRC it uses two screen buffers and
syncs up by polling the interrupt status register to check for the audio
DMA restart. Maybe this can be improved by using a larger circular buffer,
doing fewer system calls and using the audio interrupt to swap screen
pointers? I have at least the partial source code for the player around
here somewhere if folks are interested (converter also).

The static palette could be used better to combat the HAM fringing also.
Currently it is only used for the first color of each line and for
full-white/black pixels.

[FOL]

Originally Posted by yaqube

I have recorded my Minimig playing a HAM6 video clip at 24 fps with stereo sound. You can watch the recording on [ Show youtube player ].

The clip resolution is 320x160 pixels and with 2 channels of audio sampled at 22 kHz it requires a throughput of 950 KB/s.

The player doesn't use double buffering for its copper list and since video playback is synced to audio stream and not vbl sometimes some glitches are visible.

The encoding software did a pretty good job but could handle better horizontal smearing.

Now that is frelling awesome, the quality was great, .

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by yaqube

I have recorded my Minimig playing a HAM6 video clip at 24 fps with stereo sound. You can watch the recording on [ Show youtube player ].

The clip resolution is 320x160 pixels and with 2 channels of audio sampled at 22 kHz it requires a throughput of 950 KB/s.

The player doesn't use double buffering for its copper list and since video playback is synced to audio stream and not vbl sometimes some glitches are visible.

The encoding software did a pretty good job but could handle better horizontal smearing.

Looks fantastic

What software did you use to create the HAM6 images/anim from the original movie file?, which player is this?

[yaqube]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

Looks fantastic

What software did you use to create the HAM6 images/anim from the original movie file?, which player is this?

As stated in the YouTube video description the software for playing and converting the video files has been written by T.J. Edminster. I also used VirtualDub for initial video and audio conversion.

The quality of the recording seems to be better than the original Amiga/Minimig output due to video compression (reduction of the colour fringing at the edges).

[ImmortalA1000]

OK I have to ask if it is those routines are you using a Minimig with ARM controller upgrade and running the 68k @ 28mhz?

Because the original is 15fps and required an 030 etc.

Also I read std Minimig is 500kb/s max transfer.

[Jack Burton]

It would be cool if someone could make a kind of tutorial about how to make an animation/clip/movie HAM6 conversion (ie. tools used and platform (Linux, Windows etc.)) to use with DamageX software.

[DDNI]

@ Jack, Look at the readme in the archive that I put in the zone. avi4hv.zip

AVI to HV converter 2009 NOV 16
damage_x@hyakushiki.net
http://www.hyakushiki.net/

contents:

HAMP.RUN - Amiga 68K executable for video playback, requires filename as
argument eg. HAMP.RUN WHATEVER.HV

AVI3HV.EXE - original converter program written in QuickBASIC for DOS
(slow, and may not work on recent versions of Windows)

AVI4VH.EXE - updated converter compiled using freeBASIC for win32

Instructions for using this program

First, create an AVI file with 15-bit RGB uncompressed video,
and with the desired framerate. (Must be 320 pixels wide and max.
216 lines.) Save the audio as a separate uncompressed 8-bit WAV file.
(mono and stereo are both supported, sample rate must be less than 29KHz.)
Virtualdub is a good program for this purpose.

Run AVI4HV with the AVI file specified on the command line.
Example:

AVI4HV RAWVIDEO.AVI

The program will attempt to parse the AVI header and will
display some information like resolution, framerate, etc.
If this info is wrong then there is some kind of problem and
it probably isn't going to work. Otherwise, it will then ask
you for the path/filename of the audio file, and then the
output file.

When the conversion is running some rubbish will be displayed
on the screen (DOS version) or input video (Windows version).

Playback may be limitted by the speed of the CPU and disk on
the Amiga. I have tested on an '030 accelerated A2000 and an A1200
with a 1.3GB IDE drive and full screen videos at 15fps were possible.