MP_STE 3.02

Version Française

PDF documentation mp_ste.pdf in english.

How do I make a video with my Atari computers!

Go to this special page about the 68030 version of the player for TT/Falcon and compatibles M_PLAYER

Version 3.02 (07/19/2022):
  • Lots of bugs fixed
  • Accessory: more stable and better dialog with FORTH
  • Palette analysis can be saved
  • GEM dialogs to replace the raw text on screen
  • AlberTT gfx card support
  • FLM conversion mono/color regardless of the current resolution
  • FLM conversion without display to be used on non-STE machines

Here is a little video showing the following explanations.

With images, sounds and texts, everything should be clearer!

First of all, it replays videos



Credits dialog of MP_STE
 In this page I'll show you how to view a video taken from the PC world (CAR_RACE.AVI) and how to improve the quality of the replay on a basic 8MHz Atari STE.

Here is the video we'll use, it has 256 colors.

Let's read the original AVI file



Here are the informations of video and audio tracks.

A right clic on Set Sound allows you to select your sound output. The best choice is the DMA sound. If you don't have it (Atari STF) select a sound card, or last choice, the Yamaha chip.
Performances are not so good! Only 28% of frames displayed.

Let's speed up things with a FLM conversion.



Load again the AVI file, clic on Turn to FLM, then on PLAY !.

The fileselector opens, you must specify the filename of the file to be created. I type RACEGREY.FLM because it will be in grey levels.

Version 2.91: a new dialog appears, for this example, just clic on Start Conversion, for more details it's here!

Version 3.00: don't forget to select ST Low for color animation and ST High for monochrome.

The conversion is done, less than 50 secondes to turn the AVI file into a format adapted to the Atari.



This time, load RACEGREY.FLM, note that two options are disabled, they are useless with a FLM. View this animation with PLAY !.

The animation is displayed in grey levels, and really smooth!

Very good performances with a FLM, 15 images per second and 100% frames displayed.

We can do even better adding colors



Reload the AVI file, and clic on 256-16 colors, then on PLAY !.

This runs a color map analysis. The number of colors actually used are counted.The closer to 256, the worse for the color map compression to 16 colors. The lower, the better. Press a key when the analysis is done.

Reload the AVI file and clic both 256-16 colors and Turn to FLM.The previous analysis will be used for color compression to build the FLM file.

Select the file name, I put RACECOLR.FLM. Confirm. You'll notice a pause between "Loading Sound" and the first image displayed: this is the time for colormap compression.

Once the conversion is done, load RACECOLR.FLM.You'll see a very smooth animation in colors!

You don't get the original palette, but the essential is here.

What about the monochrome mode?



The original AVI file is played with low performance, only 24% frames displayed.

Again, a clic on Turn to FLM will enhance things!

I called the file RACEMONO.FLM. Note that the monochrome conversion is slower than the previous one as 1'25" are requiered to achieve it.

Reload RACEMONO.FLM, run the animation with PLAY ! (note that the display size has doubled).

The animation appears in mono using a Bayer filter, really smooth!

Maximal performance as 15 images per second and 100% frames displayed.

Sound and Image reduction

When reading, if the sound doesn't fit into memory, then MP_STE tries to lower its quality following those twocriterias:
  1. first turning stereo into mono
  2. then dividing the frequency by 2, 4 or 8.
If it's the case, then a new box will replace the standard "Loading sound...". It will tell you the choices made toreduce the memory usage.

In this example, the sound was yet mono, but the frequency had to be divided by 4.

In this example, 6 frames out of 8 will be taken. This is 75% of the original frames.
 When creating a FLM video from a MOV, AVI or FLI/C, a new dialog box allows you to select:
  • the type of FLM: monochrome with ST High and color with ST Low
  • the frame ratio to be kept (from 1/8=12,5% to 8/8=100%)
  • if the sound is to be reduced to fit in memory
Those two new options allows you to customize the FLM movie according to the RAM size, the speed of your disk, the global power of your machine.

Downloads


MP_STE Version 3.02 of the player with its RSC file.
CAR_RACE.AVI The original video used in this page. VLC don't seem to accept the video track, please use Windows Media Player.
On the Atari, you can use M_Player on TT/Falcon.
RACEGREY.FLM The video converted in FLM 16 grey levels.
RACECOLR.FLM The video converted in FLM 16 colors.
RACEMONO.FLM The video converted in FLM mono with a Bayer filter.




15 décembre 2007