Motion piQtures

[Cristian]

But its not really a program, just a proof of concept sketch. Its a bit like the nail in the nail soup scam

Well, I don't know if GitHub is for big and detailed programs only... I suppose it can accept also "minor" softwares. Anyway I think your software deserves to be noted somehow. If I hadn't put my silly animations here... (have you seen the last added?)
One thing leads to another!

[QLvsJAGUAR]

There appears to be more interest in indulging in nostalgia over 30 year old games than trying to create new stuff. I was never really into QL games, so it kinda washes over me. Well, each to his own.

I'm fully with you Per.

My contribution is a further updated QPlayer.

Great stuff!

This will probably be my last iteration of the "program", as Ive proved (to myself) what I set out to do. After this comes sound and compression, which is serious stuff, best left to those with long fingers, or who have studied computer science at college or something.

Looking at the sprite files, which all vary in size, it looks to me that they are already in a compressed file format. Inside each file one can spot a string RLE which may indicate that those files are Run-Length Encoded.

Way back in the 80s I wrote two QL animation packages. One monolithic, called QTop-Animator (released as part of the QTop package, can be found on THE DISTRIBUTION and QL/E) and one modular, called TURBO-ANIMATION which was never really completed. Maybe one day I have a look at it again and see if it can be completed.

[QLvsJAGUAR]

Goodtime.jpg
In the left turquoise pane you see the clip data, in the right grey pane you see the player's functional code, and in the middle you see the output.

Just curious, what's that FastFind program running in the top right of your screenshot?

[pjw]

But its not really a program, just a proof of concept sketch. Its a bit like the nail in the nail soup scam

Well, I don't know if GitHub is for big and detailed programs only... I suppose it can accept also "minor" softwares. Anyway I think your software deserves to be noted somehow. If I hadn't put my silly animations here... (have you seen the last added?)
One thing leads to another!

However live video evolves on the "QL", my method is unlikely to be part of it, hence the nail soup analogy. But hey, its free to distribute and use and abuse, so feel free. You will see that your original inspiration is mentioned in the accompanying documentation Yes, I checked out your software. The reason I did my own thing was that it was difficult to get it to work in my standard setup (my screen is not located at $20000) so I thought of a way to let the OS sort out the details of where to put things and fiddle with line lengths, modes and resolutions. Its basically your idea in a sprite wrapper..

Per

[pjw]

Goodtime.jpg
In the left turquoise pane you see the clip data, in the right grey pane you see the player's functional code, and in the middle you see the output.

Just curious, what's that FastFind program running in the top right of your screenshot?

Ah, yes, FastFind. Its a program I wrote some years ago to search for files using advanced search criteria (wildcards, date-range, search-within-results, etc). It indexes all the hard drives you want to include. It turned out that the data structure I devised to compress the index doesnt lend itself to easy updating, so the index has to be re-created rather than trickle-updated, as I had intended. This takes time and is a bloody nuisance. Until Ive sorted that out, the program has been deprecated by me (although I admit to using it myself every day!) Lack of time and energy means a new version wont happen anytime soon. However, the program sported a number of interesting programming features for its time, with which I had hoped to titillate budding (and creaking) programmers to emulate and improve upon Although I now consider it an embarrassment, it is still available from Dilwyn's.

Per

[Cristian]

You will see that your original inspiration is mentioned in the accompanying documentation Yes, I checked out your software. The reason I did my own thing was that it was difficult to get it to work in my standard setup (my screen is not located at $20000) so I thought of a way to let the OS sort out the details of where to put things and fiddle with line lengths, modes and resolutions.
Per

Yes I noticed your mention
Yes I got your philosophy about compatibility issues, it's right.

[pjw]

This will probably be my last iteration of the "program", as Ive proved (to myself) what I set out to do. After this comes sound and compression, which is serious stuff, best left to those with long fingers, or who have studied computer science at college or something.

Looking at the sprite files, which all vary in size, it looks to me that they are already in a compressed file format. Inside each file one can spot a string RLE which may indicate that those files are Run-Length Encoded.

Im not sure that PNGConvert uses the highest mode of compression available to SMSQ/E. Zip manages to compress these files to below 50% on top, so theres room for improvement somewhere. I did think of using Zip as the container file for clip files and extracting them on the fly. Certainly within the capacity of QPC2 on a modern PC. Not sure about the rest. A first step towards compression might be to weed out more or less identical files (like a black lead-in and lead-out) and keep a time counter for each frame instead (display this frame for 1..n frames). But the ideal way to go would be to devise a format that only records the changes between one frame and the next, with complete reference frames only for major changes of scene (eg more that 50% change). It wouldnt matter much how long encoding the clip took, as long as decoding was relatively fast. But these are just vague ideas. I speak as an amateur, please excuse..

Way back in the 80s I wrote two QL animation packages. One monolithic, called QTop-Animator (released as part of the QTop package, can be found on THE DISTRIBUTION and QL/E) and one modular, called TURBO-ANIMATION which was never really completed. Maybe one day I have a look at it again and see if it can be completed.

Had a peek

Per

[pjw]

I know I said I wouldnt, but curiosity (and a bad cold) got the better of me I made a version of QPlayer that sort of works with a zip file as the qlip container. Simply zipping the qlip folder without any other tricks reduces its size to about 50% (which is still 10x larger than the original mpeg clip, so not that impressive). Each frame is unzipped on the fly (and deleted again after use). It slows things down quite a bit, but it is still perfectly playable in QPC2 on my 2.6GHz machine. After some trial and error I came up with the following convoluted and wasteful arrangement (in quasi meta code):

Code: Select all

nul = FOP_IN(nul)
For each frame
   EW ram1_unzip, #nul; qlipfile.zip frame_no to ram1_
   LBYTES ram1_frame_no to address
   SPRW address
   DELETE ram1_frame_no
next frame

where #nul is an open channel to the nul device, to prevent unzip opening windows.

Had EXEP been able to handle the same parameters as EW, some considerable savings could have been achieved by loading unzip as a(n impure) executable Thing. Avoiding to have to LRESPR the frame, but have unzip put it directly into RAM would save some more. In other words, it could work with almost no speed penalty if a special version of unzip could be made: One that would take its instructions via a pipe, and output directly to RAM. Is anyone able to do this?

Code: Select all

    EX unzip qlipfile.zip  instruction_pipe output_address

(ie "Keep working that qlipfile with instructions via the pipe (until instructed to quit) and outputting to output_address)

Ive had no feedback as to whether QPlayer works on (S)GC/Aurora, Qx0 etc, but if it did work, the chances are that, with a suitably prepared unzip, playing video clips, on high end QL systems at least, is viable. With suitable tools to batch convert bmp or png images to mode 0 sprites, it may be viable even on lowly, but expanded QLs..

[Cristian]

I know I said I wouldnt,

reduces its size to about 50%

With suitable tools to batch convert bmp or png images to mode 0 sprites, it may be viable even on lowly, but expanded QLs..

[vanpeebles]

I've nearly finished my master frame and ready to add a slight animation to each frame.

http://www.zen70509.zen.co.uk/ql/ani11.png