CompuServe Thread

Yes, I've had pretty good luck manipulating DCTV images in The Director, though there are a couple of things that are helpful to know. 1. DCTV works in Hi-Res, but each DCTV pixel consists of multiple hi-res pixels together. There may actually be different modes, but one thing I know for sure that works, if you consider every 4 horizontal hi-res pixels a single DCTV pixel, and set the DISSMODE width to a multiple of 4, or do all of your BLIT operations on 4-pixel boundaries, everything should work fine. I'm not sure, but there may also be a 3 or 2 pixel wide DCTV mode as well, but you'd have to experiment with it to find out for sure. The only other issue, is if you are operating in overscan, and the image is sufficiently large that the centering pushes the upper left corner off screen, it will interfere with the magic-cookie and cause it to bounce out of DCTV display mode. Default image centering is centered around preferences. In the event adjusting preferences is not desired, you can use the POSITION command to explicitly position the screen wherever you might need so that the DCTV magic-cookie is on screen. ANIM files work as well in DCTV, though you will want to use the latest version of the PD MakeANIM program as earlier versions have problems with DCTV sized images, there are also probably other programs that can be used to compress ANIMs and I believe the IFF_MOD module that is available in the vendor forum works properly with DCTV images as well. Set the DISSMODE to a width multiple of 4 or 8 and you will get some great DCTV transitions, multiples of 8 will usually be significantly faster because it causes the processor to be used instead of the blitter in a mode that is faster than the blitter. Keith

Dave, My friend Steve uses the Director II for DCTV, with very good results. It seems that you would combine the two projects in order to: * Page flip DCTV stills to provide the fastest, highest quality DCTV animations possible. You need some serious RAM to use it this way effectively…Steve has 9 megs total, and he is limited to just a few seconds of animation this way. * The Director allows for screen transitions…and they work in DCTV! Probably has to do with the fact that the palette is always the same. However, using fonts with DCTV does not work (very well). Jonathan – via Whap!