#IM 9.51 and DCTV
39 messages in this thread
Howdy Ben, Got Version 9.51 of Imagemaster and it STILL WILL NOT OUTPUT
DCTV images. Please make sure that your Programming Staff has the Current
Version. I'm going to put the Old Version back in my Libs Folder and try
that to see if it works with the old version of the DCTV Lib or not.
Other than that I don't have any complaints. I do LOVE that ZOOM Function
tho.
Actually – we've got a ton of people saying "Finally, it outputs DCTV
images!" So something is different in your case… dunno what, but
something. How much memory do you have – chip ram, etc? And what version
of the DCTV library are you using? (version libs:dctv.library will tell
you). How big are the images you are rendering, and what size and mode(s?)
are you using to render to DCTV?
Glad you like, er love, the zoom. :^)
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
What Zoom?
In 9.51, press the Z key (or zoom in the display panel). Now, drag a
rectangle on screen – it zooms in, aspect corrected. To dezoom, press the
">" key. You can zoom in multiple times, any amount you like.
"That zoom". :^)
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
Whoops! I just got the 9.51 disks yesterday after I posted the message, so
'till then I hadda no Zoom. "Now, don't ask me what Voom is. I never will know.
But, boy! Let me tell you It DOES clean up snow!" – Dr. Seuss.
Uh, Benn. Is there a list of keyboard shortcuts for ImageMaster anywhere
in the docs?
I keep coming across keys that do things in different modes, and it would
be nice if I could print up a reference sheet . . .
Thanks,
Erik Flom
Not in one group;
Lesse:
General
——-
FKEYs – start ARexx macros
F1 – defaults to readers
F2 – defaults to writers
F3 – defaults to processes
F4 – defaults to input devices
F5 – defaults to output devices
r – redraw image
z – zoom
> – unzoom
q – undo
p – show/unshow display palette
g – saves current gadget screen as IFF image
c – saves currently drawn main image as IFF image
f – switches filmstrip on and off
u – move gadget screen position (this we hope you never need)
d – move gadget screen position (we hope you don't need this, either :^)
s – swap primary and secondary buffers
L-arrow – shifted, alted and naked – pan
R-arrow – shifted, alted and naked – pan
U-arrow – shifted, alted and naked – pan
D-arrow – shifted, alted and naked – pan
spacebar – aborts operations that show a cancel gadget on progress bar
Morphing
——–
L-arrow – pan left image only
R-arrow – pan right image only
B ——- pan both images
AGA & 24-bit Palette screens
—————————-
w – repaints mixing area white
b – repaints mixing area black
F1 thru F10 control rate of color mix in mixing area
r – redraws mixing area
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
Wow. . . Hey, cool . . . I guess I should RTFM! :^)
Thanks for the list of keystrokes. I was aware of many of them, but there
are a few in there I can tell I am going to start using from now on.
Thanks,
Erik Flom
P.S. LOVE the zoom feature!
But, missed the docs for the new 'Display Aspect' operator? What's the
box-in-a-box wirframe thing supposed to do, and why can I re-size it by
dragging the corners? What am I doing when I do this?
Erik,
The box is a floppy disk! Put a floppy up to your monitor screen.
Resize the floppy outline to match the size of the real floppy and voila!,
images will come up in the correct aspect ration regardless of your
particular monitor's settings. Pretty neat uh?
…AutoPilot Engaged…
-Paul-
Really?!?!? 'A floppy disk'? I guess I see it now . . . . Bizarre!
BBS DOES come up with some interesting stuff, eh?
Thanks,
Erik Flom
Eric
Yeah, it is really quite clever. Even if you correct for the
mathematically correct pixel size the image might still not be correct on
your monitor. Since you are free to adjust your monitor by stretching the
image vertically and/or horizontally with controls on the monitor every
monitor might be slightly different. Add to that the wide variety of
different make and models of monitors and you see the problem. But what is
the one thing that is 100% consistent for all IM users? The size of their
floppy disk!
…AutoPilot Engaged…
-Paul-
ARE YOU SERIOUS???????? Put a Floppy upto the Monitor and resize. I think
yer pulling our legs.
No kidding! Try it . . .You'll like it!
…AutoPilot Engaged…
-Paul-
I'll try it
Set Display Aspect
——————
This feature is designed to provide a way for you to tell Imagemaster
about your monitor, video display settings and so on.
The issue is, if an image is to look aspect correct – that is, the
correct ratio of width to height, not "squished" or "skinny", then
Imagemaster has to know just how wide and high your display is. Since
this varies with a number of things; monitor size and brand, width
and height controls on your monitor, graphics mode, etc.. we have to
tell it. It's not enough to "assume" a particular aspect based on
Amiga display mode.
So, you do this: use Set Display Aspect.. a box appears. Hold a 3.5
in floppy disk (either unused or bad, preferably) up to the display.
Now, resize the wireframe box to fit evenly around the edges of the
floppy. Next, hit "Apply To All Modes". Then press done, and
(important) save your defaults so this information is kept around for
next time you run Imagemaster.
At this point, because we know the size of the floppy, we now know
the size and exact aspect of your monitor setup. That means that
Imagemaster has all the info it needs to display an image *exactly*
as it should appear as long as the image itself carries accurate
aspect information. In many cases, they don't – so you'll go into the
Buffer panel, use Set Current Aspect and DPI, and set the aspect to
the correct values for the image – usually, it's obvious. You can
always get pretty close if the aspect is weird – but is almost always
square (scans, mac and vga images) or one of the video res (toaster,
dctv, Amiga screens) and we have presets for all of these.
If you change your monitor's width and height controls, remember to
use the Set System Aspect operation again – we can't tell you've done
that aand will display distorted images (sizewise) until you
re-inform the program about the new settings.
When both of these situations (informing im of system aspect, and
individual image aspect) are correctly addressed, Imagemaster displays
the image perfectly. You can zoom and etc, and the image *still*
remains perfectly oriented. You can "clip" long, vertical slices out
of an image, and the new buffer with the clip in it will be a (you
guessed it) a long, vertical slice – that looks perfect, and into
which you can zoom if you need to, with panning available at all
times.
One of the things that had been missing from Amiga imaage
manipulation software until we did this was decent support for images
of a non-video aspect ratio. Our exact/entire image modes were
inadequate; other methods in other software also didn't help you out.
Now you can actually edit and design images in aspects meant for
other display hardware, and the images WILL be right. When understood
and used correctly, the exact aspect and associated Set Display
Aspect control are going to be a very powerful tool for inter-machine
work.
Do we take care of you, or what? <grin>
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
Set Display Aspect addresses one of the biggest problems I had in
dealing with images from other platforms. Fabulous! I'm gonna use an IM
9.50 floppy to set the ratio. P^)
Think of it…No more too fat or too skinny bathing suit GIF babes! The
masses will be delighted.
Goin' AP
…..Mark Sterling
Good choice of floppy <amused look>
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
'A very powerful tool for inter-machine work.' You said it!
Talk about service with a smile. :^)
Thanks for the straight poop on the Display Aspect controls. I will set
them up immediately.
Now, was this in the addendum? (I swear, I looked . . .)
Thanks again,
Erik Flom
P.S. If 9.51 is just an incrimental update, I can't wait for v10!
It's just that the term "incremental update" just means something
different to us than to some others. :^) The exact aspect display
mode does, however, qualify as a fairly simple feature. 9.52, which
is retargetable to overlay-capable display cards, has some fairly
radical changes to the display section; but again, they're easy to
use… we're hoping that either no docs or minimal docs will suffice
in order to get the release docs out sooner. We're hoping for 9.53 or
9.54.
No, the aspect stuff didn't get into the Addendum (as far as I know).
If I haven't mentioned it before, the new documentation will be free; it
will be available on request by calling the 800 number; and (of course)
will come with any upgrade ordered once it's available.
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
Can you retarget to the Retina24? Maybe IM just runs normally on the
Retina in real time as well?
–Paul < Motorola Inside >
Now that I've got it setup, the new display aspect modes are a great boon
to working with the images – there's a lot less flipping around to
different display modes now.
I'll be looking forward to the new manual. If I order it, then order
another upgrade later, will you know not to send me a duplicate manual
with the upgrade? Should I save you guys some money/trouble by waiting til
the next upgrade for a manual?
Thanks,
Erik Flom
Ben,
Set display aspect is a great Idea. I can only see one problem for me in
the future. I have a HAM-E running through a C=1081 which has a different
aspect ratio from my Sony 1304 multiscan that I use for IM. When IM
becomes retargetable and IP fades away how am I going to switch between
aspect ratios? How about IM keeping the config files from IP seperately
and loading them with a button in setup panel? Can I already do this? If I
can …..never mind.
Charlie Badalati
APing from Wurselen,Germany
Yep – you can keep the configs separately, under different names. Or, you
can just reset it, it's easy enough to do.
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
I can't believe Paul wasn't joking about the floppy disk held upto the
monitor. Blimey What strange new features shall we see?
Soon, we'll make you hold up your… never mind. :^)
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
>Soon, we'll make you hold up your…
Ha ha ha ha ha ha <- Picking myself up off the floor:)!
…AutoPilot Engaged…
-Paul-
Naughty Naughty Ben. I'll have to send the Amazon womans rights council
after ya soon if ya keep that up heheheheheh
Floppy what?
Goin' AP
…..Mark Sterling
Ok First off I have 2 megs Chipram and 12 megs Fast Ram. I'm using
DCTV 4 Bit plane mode at 736*482 REZ. From the I/O screen I hit
render to disk and it starts and locks up. Will Check the DCTV.Lib
that I have but it's pretty recent, only a few months old. the one
that included Read/Write capabilities. I'll experiment a bit more as
well.
Ok, thanks for the details – I'll pass em to TS.
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
I'm not sure what you are doing wrong Peter, but I just rendered a
few pic's in DCTV mode, using the same resolutions that you were (736
x 482), and had no problems at all. Now I don't have a DCTV to view
them, but IM and ImageFX loaded them in just fine. The version of the
DCTV library I'm using is 3.48.
I dunno what I was doing wrong either cuz DCTV output works fine now. I
musta been doing something stupid that was causing problems.
It wasn't YOUR stupidity – it's ours; if you can figure it out, let us
know and we'll patch the hole… damn thing should work and not crash, no
matter what. Error messages at the worst.
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
I'll try to duplicate the problem I originally had with the DCTV
Render but who knows if I'll be able to. I THINK I had Stretch to new
size set instead of resample to new size if that helps any.
Peter,
I did not yet get 9.51, but I just finished loading 200 736×482 DCTV
frames into 9.50, scaling them to 640×400 (so I could use ViewTek) and
saving them out. All went well. Maybe you got a bum copy of the DCTV
library?
…AutoPilot Engaged…
-Paul-
VERY STRANGE. Maybe I'm doing something wrong then. It's not the
Library otherwise it wouldn't work right in Adpro which it does for
me. I guess I'll have to experiment a bit. it's been a while since I
actually Tried outputting DCTV images from Imagemaster. BTW DCTV
Images LOAD fine, it's rendering 24 bit images as DCTV and saving to
disk that is causing problems.
Peter,
As I said my task was to convert 200 736×482 DCTV frames to 640×400 so
I could try the anim on ViewTek. So IM did have to load DCTV, convert to
24bit, and save back out as DCTV.
BTW I just got 9.51, and there were two "Disk #1"s and no "Disk #2" in
the set :(! I'll have to call on Monday.
…AutoPilot Engaged…
-Paul-
Can't figure what I was doing wrong but all is well with outputting DCTV
images now via IM 9.51