You're right, it may be considered not to be a demo. It started as a performance test because the previous conversion that was released doesn't run on a real machine and I wondered if it was possible to make a working version. To be really honest I thought it wasn't possible.
What I can say is that I used my old demo skills to code this and that I wasn't sure what kind of reception it would get. The SV orgas were kind enough to add it to the compo but I wouldn't have mind if they didn't (I originally planned a release outside demoparties).
My point here was to demonstrate that the ST was capable of rendering a "pixel perfect" version of it with all the extra storage we now can use of these machines. I think that's quite the point of a demo after all (the snowman demo did the same back in 1987). Let's be honest, most sceners do now use SD cards/CosmosEX on Atari ST... as my goal was 100% quality, I didn't mind the huge file.
In other words I made this for fun, I'm glad people enjoyed it, and I understand negative comments too. Next time I will add a starfield and a scrolltext :p
@Fenarinarsa : sorry but I'm impressed when I see the video player coded by BlaBla and Cyg, here it's a black and white anim. Should have entered the compo as wild in my opinion. Anyway the people who voted for you are to blame, not you :)
The video player by Ppera & Cyg is so amazing I can even try to compete with it! However on real hardware it needs a specially prepared card, which is not needed here (it should work from any HDD). And it's "limited" to 320x158 12.5fps and 25khz mono sound, so you couldn't actually play Bad Apple with the highest quality with it, not to mention the filesize would be 3x or 4x larger. This one uses optimizations tailored for this specific animation :)
That said, I can't completely disagree with your first statement of not being a demo.
Not trying to minimize your work and efforts, organizers should have directed this prod into wild demos, that's it. To me animations or vid players are tech demos, not useless but not "real" demos.
s_t_s is right - it's a great work to build such video player for ST but IT'S NOT A DEMO. And never should take a part in that category. Such wrong assignment can waste your hard work, cause people at demo compo do not expect just presentation of coders and hardware capabilities, and it might be stronly underrated when they discover the truth what it is... You should put it to wild.
Probably the best Bad Apple I've seen on an oldschool platform; the animation is very carefully converted with no noise or mpeg artifacts left what I can tell. Perfect 30 Hz frame rate from start to ending and good quality sound.
The HDD-stream tech works well even if it's not the low-level madness of Cyg's demo.
Please don't stop coding the Atari, we need guys who dare to go beyond the norm of what is considered a demo.
Peace folks. I think that it is demo in some matter, but indeed, it is rather video playback on ST, with sound. Now, because I'm the one, who made first fullscreen video playback on Atari ST at 25 fps - so I'm ppera, I need to say some things. Look first this page: http://atari.8bitchip.info/movpst.php First videos were with 16 colors only. That was fast enough with any little faster hard disk, Flash card solution. But it looks not that good, and needs special conversions to 16 colors only. Then came idea for high-color playback. And no, it was not Cyg's hi-color format and conversion tool in beginning, but Douglas Little's Photochrome. And must say that I did self complete code for playback, + complete HW what allows it (because my experience in mass storage since 19991) . I like to be precise. Fenarinarsa: your demo/player is great. But it works in 16 color mode, or only 2 ? I don't see it well on YT video. What you mentioned is hi-color video playback, and it's datarate is almost 2x bigger than for 16 colors. Therefore limitation of 12.5 fps with US. But it is not only datarate. Hi-color works only when no DMA transfers (ACSI port). Because it will screw whole hi-color displaying. So, we can have disk access only some 30% of time with 200 lines, and that's not enough even for 12.5 fps. Therefore it is lowered to 158 lines. I hope that above explained many things. Keep up good work, and don't get upset because shallow comments. That's part of social life :-)
It's a 320x200 16 greyscale @ 30fps playback. The video is delta-packed using the blitter and generated code. I don't really want to compare with your player Petari, I'm far for being as good as you are in hicolor/video/ACSI development. I know about ACSI transfers not being compatible with hicolor mode, I did some fullscreen/hicolor code back in the 1990s. Actually I learnt the basics of how works ACSI DMA transfers this year :) It's just I wanted to stick with standard GEMDOS calls and not going low level for disk access since I don't have the skills to do it another way. Having the highest quality with this limitation was my goal. And it wouldn't have been possible without your ACSI drivers in the first place :p
I was not clear in my txt. I meant that there are only 2 colors - well, most of time, while mode is 16 colors. Of course it makes it packable, and that makes file shorter. I use delta packing in audio player. But complaining today about file sizes (as some did it in really not nice way at AF) is really stupid in era of multi GB Flash cards. They just can't realize how STE is slow, so no way for some real codec. There is some SW, what can play old codecs from previous Century at some 10 fps, 160x100px - on Falcon . Considering ACSI: that port can more than what stays in literature. Up to 2MB/sec. UltraSatan is not close to it, And speed depends from used card. I think that Jookie should update it, design is old almost 10 years. I have best speed with old 1GB Kingston (1170 KB/sec), and it is lower for instance with some 16GB Sandisk Ultra card - that's just not good. IDE hard disk adapters are better way for video playback - especially for hi-color. Speed is about 1.4 MB/sec, with blitter even more. And you can read straight into shifter (not possible with ACSI) . But I did player for UltraSatan, just to see what is limit, and because most of people has it. With special adapter + little hack in machine 3.6 MB/sec is possible on STE. I will write more about this things at Exxos Atari forum. You are welcome to join there - we need good programmers there :-)
13 comments
Sorry but, NO ! This is not a demo, this is a 34Mb big animation and I'm very sorry to read that it ranked 3rd. Maybe I am missing the point here :(
You're right, it may be considered not to be a demo. It started as a performance test because the previous conversion that was released doesn't run on a real machine and I wondered if it was possible to make a working version. To be really honest I thought it wasn't possible.
What I can say is that I used my old demo skills to code this and that I wasn't sure what kind of reception it would get. The SV orgas were kind enough to add it to the compo but I wouldn't have mind if they didn't (I originally planned a release outside demoparties).
My point here was to demonstrate that the ST was capable of rendering a "pixel perfect" version of it with all the extra storage we now can use of these machines. I think that's quite the point of a demo after all (the snowman demo did the same back in 1987). Let's be honest, most sceners do now use SD cards/CosmosEX on Atari ST... as my goal was 100% quality, I didn't mind the huge file.
In other words I made this for fun, I'm glad people enjoyed it, and I understand negative comments too. Next time I will add a starfield and a scrolltext :p
@Fenarinarsa : sorry but I'm impressed when I see the video player coded by BlaBla and Cyg, here it's a black and white anim. Should have entered the compo as wild in my opinion. Anyway the people who voted for you are to blame, not you :)
The video player by Ppera & Cyg is so amazing I can even try to compete with it!
However on real hardware it needs a specially prepared card, which is not needed here (it should work from any HDD). And it's "limited" to 320x158 12.5fps and 25khz mono sound, so you couldn't actually play Bad Apple with the highest quality with it, not to mention the filesize would be 3x or 4x larger.
This one uses optimizations tailored for this specific animation :)
That said, I can't completely disagree with your first statement of not being a demo.
Not trying to minimize your work and efforts, organizers should have directed this prod into wild demos, that's it. To me animations or vid players are tech demos, not useless but not "real" demos.
s_t_s is right - it's a great work to build such video player for ST but IT'S NOT A DEMO. And never should take a part in that category. Such wrong assignment can waste your hard work, cause people at demo compo do not expect just presentation of coders and hardware capabilities, and it might be stronly underrated when they discover the truth what it is... You should put it to wild.
I like this DEMO.
Probably the best Bad Apple I've seen on an oldschool platform; the animation is very carefully converted with no noise or mpeg artifacts left what I can tell. Perfect 30 Hz frame rate from start to ending and good quality sound.
The HDD-stream tech works well even if it's not the low-level madness of Cyg's demo.
Please don't stop coding the Atari, we need guys who dare to go beyond the norm of what is considered a demo.
Peace folks.
I think that it is demo in some matter, but indeed, it is rather video playback on ST, with sound. Now, because I'm the one, who made first fullscreen video playback on Atari ST at 25 fps - so I'm ppera, I need to say some things.
Look first this page: http://atari.8bitchip.info/movpst.php
First videos were with 16 colors only. That was fast enough with any little faster hard disk, Flash card solution. But it looks not that good, and needs special conversions to 16 colors only.
Then came idea for high-color playback. And no, it was not Cyg's hi-color format and conversion tool in beginning, but Douglas Little's Photochrome. And must say that I did self complete code for playback, + complete HW what allows it (because my experience in mass storage since 19991) .
I like to be precise. Fenarinarsa: your demo/player is great. But it works in 16 color mode, or only 2 ? I don't see it well on YT video. What you mentioned is hi-color video playback, and it's datarate is almost 2x bigger than for 16 colors. Therefore limitation of 12.5 fps with US. But it is not only datarate. Hi-color works only when no DMA transfers (ACSI port). Because it will screw whole hi-color displaying. So, we can have disk access only some 30% of time with 200 lines, and that's not enough even for 12.5 fps. Therefore it is lowered to 158 lines.
I hope that above explained many things. Keep up good work, and don't get upset because shallow comments. That's part of social life :-)
It's a 320x200 16 greyscale @ 30fps playback. The video is delta-packed using the blitter and generated code.
I don't really want to compare with your player Petari, I'm far for being as good as you are in hicolor/video/ACSI development. I know about ACSI transfers not being compatible with hicolor mode, I did some fullscreen/hicolor code back in the 1990s. Actually I learnt the basics of how works ACSI DMA transfers this year :) It's just I wanted to stick with standard GEMDOS calls and not going low level for disk access since I don't have the skills to do it another way. Having the highest quality with this limitation was my goal.
And it wouldn't have been possible without your ACSI drivers in the first place :p
I was not clear in my txt. I meant that there are only 2 colors - well, most of time, while mode is 16 colors.
Of course it makes it packable, and that makes file shorter. I use delta packing in audio player.
But complaining today about file sizes (as some did it in really not nice way at AF) is really stupid in era of multi GB Flash cards. They just can't realize how STE is slow, so no way for some real codec. There is some SW, what can play old codecs from previous Century at some 10 fps, 160x100px - on Falcon .
Considering ACSI: that port can more than what stays in literature. Up to 2MB/sec. UltraSatan is not close to it, And speed depends from used card. I think that Jookie should update it, design is old almost 10 years. I have best speed with old 1GB Kingston (1170 KB/sec), and it is lower for instance with some 16GB Sandisk Ultra card - that's just not good.
IDE hard disk adapters are better way for video playback - especially for hi-color. Speed is about 1.4 MB/sec, with blitter even more. And you can read straight into shifter (not possible with ACSI) . But I did player for UltraSatan, just to see what is limit, and because most of people has it.
With special adapter + little hack in machine 3.6 MB/sec is possible on STE.
I will write more about this things at Exxos Atari forum. You are welcome to join there - we need good programmers there :-)
The author released a nice video showing the making of this video on a humble ATARI STe ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j66Nu7BoCE
Final version released (I modified the first download link). Now also works in high-res and with HDDRIVER thanks to Petari.
High-res capture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIeAIgGnx0M
Source code
https://fenarinarsa.com/badapple/fenarinarsa_badapple_final.zip
My bad, the source code is located here: https://fenarinarsa.com/badapple/fenarinarsa_badapple_source.zip