[The E]

As per this discussion, MNG seems to have most developer votes going for it as an addition to the supported image formats for FSO.

Obviously, the actual implementation will take some time (seeing as noone has started it yet), but I figure it would be good to give out some information here.

MNG is one of the forgotten formats of the web. It was designed as a companion to png; Just as png was designed to replace GIF, mng was designed to replace animated gifs. MNG, at least on paper, offers several cool features that will be useful for us (provided a free converter can be found that supports everything we want to do).

In its most basic form, an mng can be created using a commandline tool like convert from the imagemagick package. There are other tools linked to from the libmng site, but most of them are commercial-only or no longer available.

Now, there some unresolved issues left. One is that mng playback, as implemented in irfanview and other packages, seems buggy. If you create an mng animation from images with an alpha channel, the frames won't be updated properly, and you get a sort of smear effect. The only viewer I found that handles this correctly is XNView.
In addition, filesize is only marginally smaller than existing anis; this is undoubtedly due to using the most inefficient packing method available in the mng standard (The standard allows for video-file like keyframe compression, which should cut down on space usage immensely, but I haven't yet found the right switches for imagemagick that would turn this on).

[Dragon]

Interesting, could be a nice thing to have.

[mjn.mixael]

This has my full support. Is there anything I can provide to make this happen?

[Woolie Wool]

I have strong reservations about such an obscure and uncommon file format being used. TGA and DDS are well-known and commonly used formats; this sounds very exotic and dependent on some sort of specialized software (there seems to be only one library for it, and if the only freely available tool using it is command line, I consider that unacceptable). I therefore oppose support for it at least for now.

[The E]

Additional stuff:

A bit of hunting around the intarwebs reveals this pack of tools: http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/comp-readme.html

Using the advmng.exe, I did a little test. BP2 includes several cb anis as eff'ed pngs. One of them, CB_Indus, has 250 frames, and occupies 22 MB of disk space. Using advmng, I could turn it into a single file with a filesize of 8 MB. This is a very, very good thing IMHO.

I have strong reservations about such an obscure and uncommon file format being used. TGA and DDS are well-known and commonly used formats; this sounds very exotic and dependent on some sort of specialized software. I therefore oppose support for it at least for now.

Which is one of the reasons why I've started this thread. There are tools out there that can create mngs, and as mentioned above, the savings in filesize compared to effs make this a rather attractive option.

[Iss Mneur]

I have strong reservations about such an obscure and uncommon file format being used. TGA and DDS are well-known and commonly used formats; this sounds very exotic and dependent on some sort of specialized software (there seems to be only one library for it, and if the only freely available tool using it is command line, I consider that unacceptable). I therefore oppose support for it at least for now.

Gimp apparently has an exporter for MNG. There are also some plugins for MNG that work with Photoshop.

[Zacam]

I have strong reservations about such an obscure and uncommon file format being used. TGA and DDS are well-known and commonly used formats; this sounds very exotic and dependent on some sort of specialized software (there seems to be only one library for it, and if the only freely available tool using it is command line, I consider that unacceptable). I therefore oppose support for it at least for now.

Gimp apparently has an exporter for MNG. There are also some plugins for MNG that work with Photoshop.

And both TGA and DDS started out just as obscurely as this. DDS _still_ requires plugins for any photo editing software (though gimp and paint.net bundle them in) and you are restricted by how and what controls they choose to implement. With PNG, the source is open and usable enough that if we don't like a default operation, we can change it.

With the source as well, we can _build_ tools (or anybody in the community can) that can streamline the usability process. Don't like that there are cmdline converters or the GUI apps that are out there? I'm pretty sure somebody can make a better one. Hell, we used to only have ModelView. We now have PCS2. The same can be said for AniBuilder.

**Edit: http://www.libpng.org/pub/mng/mngaped.html
Gimp supports MNG as well apparently, thoug to what fashion I don't know. Checking Paint.Net now.

[mjn.mixael]

I have strong reservations about such an obscure and uncommon file format being used. TGA and DDS are well-known and commonly used formats; this sounds very exotic and dependent on some sort of specialized software (there seems to be only one library for it, and if the only freely available tool using it is command line, I consider that unacceptable). I therefore oppose support for it at least for now.

The best OGG converter is still commandline...

With what The_E has been posting, I am even more positive that this is the best choice.

[chief1983]

The best DDS converter is also arguably still command line.

[Zacam]

Command line may be the best method for MNG as well. I've just tried a few applications (like Alchemy MindWorks PNG/MNG Construction Set)

Not only is the interface a bit on the cumbersome and awkward side, but the results are a little disappointing. I got an MNG that total, was exactly the same size as the original files.

Course, that's still a win in my opinion because well, there is now only one file.

[mjn.mixael]

I'm actually all for command line converters.. If you read the documentation it's arguably simpler.

To get back on topic though...

[Herra Tohtori]

There are two PNG based animated image formats; MNG (multiple-image network graphics) and APNG (Animated PNG). I have no idea how they differ but it might be worthwhile to check out which one would work better for our purposes.

[Iss Mneur]

There are two PNG based animated image formats; MNG (multiple-image network graphics) and APNG (Animated PNG). I have no idea how they differ but it might be worthwhile to check out which one would work better for our purposes.

Yes, both were mentioned when I first brought MNG up in the ANI File Formats thread.

Basically, MNG won becuase it supports both PNG and JPEG compression and it has good inter-frame compression support like a real video format does.  The hope is that implementing MNG support for command briefing animations will be easier than OGG because MNG is a pseudo video file format.

APNG seems to be more along the lines of "a bunch of PNGs with animation control data".  Which when you get down to it is what .eff is (with or without the container), but supporting more image file types.

[The E]

Yeah, APNG is basically a subset of MNG. Implementing the full mng format is only marginally more complicated, and offers increased functionality (as mentioned by Iss).

The only problem is that the converters that can create these files are few and far between.

[Galemp]

But if we have a command-line tool and GIMP, that's all we need... right?

[The E]

It's certainly sufficient for me, for the moment.

And, as Iss said, we have the library, so it's not too hard to write a converter of our own, if we really want to.

[Iss Mneur]

It's certainly sufficient for me, for the moment.

Same here, not that is likely I will ever create one though.

And, as Iss said, we have the library, so it's not too hard to write a converter of our own, if we really want to.

I said what?  I think  you are thinking of Zacam.

[mjn.mixael]

So... sorry to be THAT guy...

But is this going to be worked on at all or should I just let this thread fall to the depths of the SCP board and start the whole conversation over again same time next year? 

[The E]

Excuse me?

Of course this will be worked on. However, there are a few things you should be aware of.
1) libmng needs a set of supporting libraries in order to compile. Hunting them down, and then compiling a binary for us to use, takes time.
2) As desirable as this thing is, it is also rather low-priority.
3) It will get done when it's done
4) It can't be done in a day, or a week, or a month.
5) Well, maybe a month, if someone dedicates himself to it
6) Someone will need to do the same job of setting this up for Linux and MacOS

[FUBAR-BDHR]

You left out:

7) If you want it done faster get off your ass and learn to code.........