Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: RandomTiger on October 25, 2003, 07:13:44 am
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Ani's (correct me if Im wrong) are a collection of PCX files in one file. It would be nice to have a 32bit replacement, what would be the best way?
A file full of jpg or tga?
Avi?
Something else?
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hmm i think high quality jpg are the best or avi but not tga
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TGA would probably lead to huge file sizes but why not avi?
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i have only written not tga read carefully ;)
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Mmm... I think I need to sleep more.
If ANI's need to use alpha at all then we might have to go back to the green for alpha system.
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mayb suport for avi/mpeg
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Well whatever you do make sure we can loop them.
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gif
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Originally posted by kasperl
gif
:wtf: they are in 256 colors
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Or some coder could make a ani builder that goes through 16 million clor pcx files and selects the best color palette so there's minimal color loss. Kinda like 2-pass avi encoding.
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Originally posted by FreeTerran
:wtf: they are in 256 colors
sure?
my fault then, i haven't been doing any serious PSP stuff for some time now.
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not to mention gif liscences cost a ****load of money
www.burnallgifs.org
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liscences. never tought of that.
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Originally posted by HotSnoJ
Or some coder could make a ani builder that goes through 16 million clor pcx files and selects the best color palette so there's minimal color loss. Kinda like 2-pass avi encoding.
Bright already does that. It's still not as good as having 24/32 bit images.
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Animated PNGs?
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Originally posted by karajorma
Bright already does that. It's still not as good as having 24/32 bit images.
where can I get bright?!
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Just so long as they get automatically resized in hi-res mode I'll be happy. :)
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Definately png. A quick way would be to make the new ani format just a tar of pngs in sequential order. Maybe in the future use zlib to compress them or something. Although I believe pngs are already compressed, so that may not even be necessary.
EDIT:
Upon more reading, actually jpeg may be the way to go. PNGs do better with continuous color tones rather than subtle hue changes. JPEG may not be the most computationally conservative option, though.
Use the DivX codec!;)
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AVI + DivX
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Originally posted by Kazan
AVI + DivX
*Seconds That*
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Actually, that was kinda a joke. AFAIK, DivX decoding is fairly computationally expensive. However, for message and briefing anims, I think this would actually work out ok.
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One thing about the ANI format....there are just PCX files...the overhead on those guys has to be really small. Conversly, MPEG has to be much much more...
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Originally posted by Sticks
Actually, that was kinda a joke. AFAIK, DivX decoding is fairly computationally expensive. However, for message and briefing anims, I think this would actually work out ok.
:o Whoops. Well, I've never pretended to be knowledgable on this. But I agreed because AVI's are extremely easy to create with all of the softwares floating about here and there. And the DiVx codecs supposedly make them better, so I put one and one together...
Oh well, my opinion doesn't matter anyway.
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DivX makes it smaller. But at the cost of CPU time.
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I think an mpeg4 format would be nice. Preferably not DivX or a Microsoft format.
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Doesn't PCX support colors higher than 8-bit? I have several pcx's that are listed as 24-bit images. Or does the compression decrease the quality?
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File size may be an issue for downloading on 56kbps, but reducing the frame rates will have everyone screaming bloody murder. Go with what runs the fastest.
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yeah, especially since there are already some problems on that front with the latest build.
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I think an mpeg4 format would be nice. Preferably not DivX or a Microsoft format.
And that leaves us with... xvid or quicktime 6. O_0
XviD support wouldn't be a bad idea, but make sure to restrict it to only the Simple Profile. As long as none of the Simple Advanced features are used, playback should be reasonable (of course, hi-res videos won't be a good idea, the current size of the anis should be fine).
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you're forgetting...
3ivx
nAVI
OpenDivx
(ther're probably more)
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XVID + OGG support.
...or OGM as a whole.
Why not plain DivX?
XVid is opensource freeware IIRC.
So is OGG - an alternative for mp3.
Beside OGM is just as good as MPEG-4 (actually it is quite the same IMHO in several aspects).
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Well, the more compressed the file is, the more CPU time it takes to uncompress when the game is running, it might even be advisable to have a kind of PCX system running, but with the 256 colour pallette running for each frame?
Flipside :D
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Originally posted by ChronoReverse
DivX makes it smaller. But at the cost of CPU time.
(quote taken coz it's the latest one I've seen, it's not against you, CR, it's a general remark )
Come on, what PC can run FS2 and would have problems with a 320*200 divx file? what the hell is that CPU time cost? If that pauses any resource problem, the whole game deserves to be burnt down and stamped.
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it would be decompressed udring load into the internal format that FS uses, CPU time is vurtualy irrelevent
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And I also mentioned how such small videos wouldn't use much cpu in the very next paragraph =)
3vix is pretty much a non-illegal version of divx3.11;-) in terms of the output file. It doesn't actually follow the mpeg4 spec.
Opendivx has died ages ago.
Never heard of nAVI =\
Technically it's possible to use ogg vorbis and xvid in an avi container but generally it didn't work well and it was an ugly hack (hence the need for the ogm container).
Ogg audio, wouldn't be a bad idea I suppose. But what do the coders say (I bet this isn't easy or else someone would've done it ages ago)?
Since DivX cutscenes are in FSO now I suppose that the mpeg4 licensing issue isn't anymore? Or is it just using directshow?
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Originally posted by ChronoReverse
Ogg audio, wouldn't be a bad idea I suppose. But what do the coders say (I bet this isn't easy or else someone would've done it ages ago)?
:nod:
Since DivX cutscenes are in FSO now I suppose that the mpeg4 licensing issue isn't anymore? Or is it just using directshow?
No, no, no. FSO does not include DivX. It opens a Windows Media Player window, which means that it can run anything that WMP can run. Hence, it can only run DivX if WMP has the codec installed.
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So it uses directshow... in a manner of speaking (at least for divx video). Although bobbeau seems to have hinted that it could be possible for the avi's to be decompressed to a FS2 format before playing in the window.
[edit] What I mean is that if it opens up a WMP window and since WMP uses the DivX dshow filter to playback divx, FSO is kinda using dshow XD [/edit]
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I was of course talking out of my ass there, no idea on how to do that, just thinking of posabilities
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Be careful, we take your words like that of the Immortals :D
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mmm I absolutely don't know about the quality of the format, the compression, or the license, but....
what about quicktime movies?
I'm naming them just because in photoshop with the same tool you use for animated gifs you can create .mov or .qt files.
And if it wasn't for the license, I'd go for gifs too, althought the colour limit, mainly because you can have a transparent background and they are very easy to do.
I always thought the licensing problems were only with the compression algorithms, and that there were alternative algorithms, and therefore only the programs to create gifs could have problems, but I may be wrong...I'll read phreak's link.
->well it seem that for all the programs using LZW compression method (it means not only GIFs) must be payed a license, both for compression and decompression, no matter if you are making a non commercial product; I suppose you will have to use this LZW to add gif support wich could lead to some patent violations
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pffff, that gif license thing. there's millions of sites on the web, 80% of them are full of gif pics. Like hell they even caren at Unisys ( btw, those guys at burnallgifs.org are morons ).
Anyway, I think the most sensible choice is WMV. Tools to make wmv files comes with every legal windows copy, it's free to use, it's not that bad, so it clears all worries. well, that's my two cents.
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but the problem as far as I've understood aren't the single images, but the programs using this LZW compression method to compress or decompress images ( not only gifs ), and I suppose that, in order to add gif support in FSO, this compression method should be used.
Anyway, I think you guys should choose a format considering
If there is a license
how easy it is to create an animation in that format
how easy it is to implement this format into fso
what is the quality of the format
what is the resulting filesize in this format
what is the performance hit
I think most of us -surely me- really don't have the knowledge to discuss about those points, so personally I trust your choice:)
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KARMA: Don't forget about looping!
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why not just load the AVI into the VRAM or sumthing; wouldnt that take the load of the CPU?
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Tehnically, instead of PNG, there's MNG, which is basically exactly what's needed as a file-format, but adunno about how much support it has as a format, so I don't know about which programs actually support saving to that format.
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I would die for OGG audio - it'd be fantastic for anyone who wanted to do extensive voice-acted campaigns, because WAVs are so huge.
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DivX is mpeg4
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load a movie into VRAM! *looks at 100+ meg filesizes* ARE YOU INSANE :D
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The LZW patent is no longer binding in the US.
I'm totally against WMV - it's unportable. Besides, Microsoft control enough fields of computing as-is. Don't give 'em more power. Besides, H.264 (aka MPEG4 part 10, H.26L) is much nicer :)
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I'm against WMV for the same reason. FS2 now runs on more than just Windows we should try to make sure that things stay that way.
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Agreed there, though it depends how DivX or the like performs in game, the availability of freeware converters to that video type, for people who don't have one, and whether it can convert still images etc. It would actually make life easier for me, since I can render animation straight to DivX format, as can most people with 3D animation software, but are there free BMP or JPG series to DivX video converters out there for those that work frame by frame?
Flipside :D
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Why shouldn't we use Xvid?
For all I know, that's good even license wise.
...or there's open divx, though I know little about it.
BTW ogm files are good, because they are not as valnurable as simple avi files - they have backward framing too, so skimming through them is faster as well.
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I think using a video file is less likely considering the overhead.