Accelerating FLC files
4 messages in this thread
Does anybody know of a good hardware accelerator card for .FLC files that works
in windows, preferably with an MCI interface. We have been using the available
software only drivers and the quality is not sufficient. If there is anybody
out there that has used such a card and can point me in the right direction,
I'd appreciate it.
It would be preferable of the card can also do a higher resolution than the
320×240. Excuse me if this question seems sophmoric, I'm new to this.
George Breen
George,
Sorry, I am not aware of any hardware cards that will accelerate the FLIC
playback in the Windows environment. The best playback is if you can load the
entire memory in RAM of the computer. Reading an animation off the hard driver
is much slower.
-Brian
In general, the speed of FLC playing corresponds to speed of data transfer over
the bus and the 'blit' speed of the hardware. For example, the fastest
technology we have seen for playing FLICs is the Dell DGX, basically a video
board that mapped video ram as system memory. The slowest for FLIC playing is
TIGA, which involves switching to real-mode and call a TSR for output to the
board, which invovles a lot of overhead.
Your best bet is to pick a VLB or PCI local-bus board with fast memory and some
kind of blit engine. Most accelerators for Windows include some of this.
Chuck Walbourn – Vibrant Graphics
You might also want to look at NEWAGE flic compressor/player found in the
utility section under NEWAGE.ZIP.