AGABlaster - New CDXL Player Released

[movec]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

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

It's not tied to HAM. AGABlaster can handle graphics modes with 0-8 planes, HAM6, HAM8. Lores/Hires/Superhires.

Hence, yes, any number of colors/planes is possible.

With AGAConv you can generate videos also with 16 colors. You would need to specify 14 colors, it will reserve 1 color for the background color, and 1 may be added by ffmpeg (because of a bug)) to stay within 16 colors.

[Retro1234]

Thanks for you Reply-

I don't know if you saw the CDTV thread but the problem is getting a resolution above 160×100 at 12 frame/s with 11025 Hz 8-bit mono audio on a single speed CD drive the CDTV with a . A single-speed (150 kB/s) CD-ROM drive

Something more like 240 x 200 I know it sounds like alot but the original CDXL format was based on HAM wasn't it ......Anyway any ideas

[Glen M]

Originally Posted by 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).

Awesome work, I can't wait to try it tonight.

[Glen M]

I've been playing with the aga blaster tonight only on emulation but its fantastic. Love the new copper effects. Gonna hook my CD32 up to the projector and see if the 4x display will work. Think it'll look cool on a 100" screen!

[movec]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Thanks for you Reply-

I don't know if you saw the CDTV thread but the problem is getting a resolution above 160×100 at 12 frame/s with 11025 Hz 8-bit mono audio on a single speed CD drive the CDTV with a . A single-speed (150 kB/s) CD-ROM drive

Something more like 240 x 200 I know it sounds like alot but the original CDXL format was based on HAM wasn't it ......Anyway any ideas

No, I don't know this CDTV thread, but 160x100@12FPS is what I would also expect to be possible with 150kB/s. A player could scale it up to 320x200, but the upscaling would slow it down to some degree.
Are you running Kick 1.3 on your CDTV? AGABlaster requires at least 2.0.
CDXL was not resricted to HAM6, but on these systems HAM6 gave the best looking pictures, that's why I guess you mostly see HAM6 videos.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by movec

No, I don't know this CDTV thread, but 160x100@12FPS is what I would also expect to be possible with 150kB/s. A player could scale it up to 320x200, but the upscaling would slow it down to some degree.
Are you running Kick 1.3 on your CDTV? AGABlaster requires at least 2.0.
CDXL was not resricted to HAM6, but on these systems HAM6 gave the best looking pictures, that's why I guess you mostly see HAM6 videos.

It was mine thread here:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=100562

Not really focused on converting, but as it happens sometimes, I started wandering what could be done to increase the CDTV library of movies.
I've started some simple conversion.

I'll definitely try your app, and thanks a lot for the tips (suggested res and framerate), and appreciate anything else you could advice.

Cheers!

[BULI]

Originally Posted by 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).

Wow
Great

[movec]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

It was mine thread here:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=100562

Not really focused on converting, but as it happens sometimes, I started wandering what could be done to increase the CDTV library of movies.
I've started some simple conversion.

I'll definitely try your app, and thanks a lot for the tips (suggested res and framerate), and appreciate anything else you could advice.

Cheers!

The x-dimension is currently limited to multiples of 320, but basically it should work - there might be some details to address for OCS/CDTV, since it's setting up all registers for AGA.

However, an easy test would be this one here:
https://amigaanimecd.wordpress.com/downloads/
For example, the akira1.cdxl - that's way too big for the CDTV (320x196 with 24000Hz stereo and I think 15 FPS), however, it may still "run" - my guess is with about 3-4 Frames on a CDTV. If it's not running properly (the audio should always be OK) then try the additional command line arguments: FB=8 CFD=5 and increase both numbers by 1 until the audio is fine (at some point it will run out of memory).

[thairacerjp]

Hi Markus, I've just tried and it's awesome, back & forward speed is ok, but how I activate the copper effect ? anyway, I successfully find a way to play multiple CDXL on the fly, we even no see the transition

edit : ok, found the command on your website, great

[BULI]

I tested Copper option and - WoW - impressive

[movec]

@thairacerjp: thanks for posting the keys!
@BULI: good to know you like the Copper effects!
@d4rk3lf: looked into supporting A500 mode (that's close to CDTV, isn't it?) - got it working even on Kickstart 1.3 (nice to see this blue screen again ).

Added videos showing the new effects and an experimental non-AGA OCS mode on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgaBlaster

[Retro1234]

Originally Posted by movec

looked into supporting A500 mode (that's close to CDTV, isn't it?) -

Thats good news Yes the CDTV is just a A500 with CD Drive.

[BULI]

Originally Posted by movec

@thairacerjp: thanks for posting the keys!
@BULI: good to know you like the Copper effects!
@d4rk3lf: looked into supporting A500 mode (that's close to CDTV, isn't it?) - got it working even on Kickstart 1.3 (nice to see this blue screen again ).

Added videos showing the new effects and an experimental non-AGA OCS mode on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgaBlaster

Nice, my A600 is so happy now


How, did you convert this video (ZORAIA) to Ham6 format?

[Retro1234]

chomping at the bit to know if a larger resolution can be had on CDTV in 16 colour, I don't really have access to decent PC for a couple of weeks

Also I was wondering probably rather stupidly if it would be worth converting my MPG to 16 colour before converting to CDXL if this would make any difference.

[BULI]

New AGA Blaster haven't "auto exit" when finished?
Earlier version had this function.

EDIT

Function "auto exit" works fine if you don't use any shortcuts key (like volume, pause, copper etc)

[movec]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

chomping at the bit to know if a larger resolution can be had on CDTV in 16 colour, I don't really have access to decent PC for a couple of weeks

Yes, with less bitplanes (than 6) it can run with higher resolution. It's just the total amount of data/s (i.e. the bitrate) that is the limiting factor.

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Also I was wondering probably rather stupidly if it would be worth converting my MPG to 16 colour before converting to CDXL if this would make any difference.

If you use agaconv, leaving the video untouched is best. It will convert it to a lower number of colors based on the distribution of colors in the original video, and the better the quality of the input video the better is the quality of the CDXL video. It uses ffmpeg to extract the frames, hence, you can use any input format that ffmpeg supports.

[movec]

Originally Posted by BULI

New AGA Blaster haven't "auto exit" when finished?
Earlier version had this function.

EDIT

Function "auto exit" works fine if you don't use any shortcuts key (like volume, pause, copper etc)

Yes, I forgot to mention this, otherwise it would be quite annoying if you hit cursor-right a couple of times and all of a sudden the player exits - therefore it tracks if you hit any key, and if yes, it stops at the last frame (assuming you want to do more than just look at it).

[Retro1234]

Sounds brilliant, I try and have a go with agaconv soon Thanks Dude

[BULI]

Originally Posted by movec

Yes, with less bitplanes (than 6) it can run with higher resolution. It's just the total amount of data/s (i.e. the bitrate) that is the limiting factor.



If you use agaconv, leaving the video untouched is best. It will convert it to a lower number of colors based on the distribution of colors in the original video, and the better the quality of the input video the better is the quality of the CDXL video. It uses ffmpeg to extract the frames, hence, you can use any input format that ffmpeg supports.

Two questions:
1. How large could be file .cdxl (2GB)?
2. How max colors for ECS we could have via AGACONV?
32 colors? 64 colors (EHB)?

[Retro1234]

I presume ECS = HAM6
But I'm interested in smaller file sizes with larger resolution for use on the CDTV that has limited Data transfer Speed.