#Multimedia Explorer
9 messages in this thread
-John-
—–Just checking—–
Is the windows-driving software, enabling sound to be coupled to
animation, supplied on a diskette or is it locked away in the CD-ROM? If
the latter, it will be beyond reach for those of us for whom such a drive
is a low-priority item.
In using sound, is it possible to converge two different sources,
e.g. Midi files with voice-over?
Stephen
The "Autodesk Animation Player for Windows" (or the windows player) allows
you to link audio to an animation. I'd imagine it's on the diskettes as the
only thing you don't get with the disks is access to the hundreds of
megabytes of sample animation. The install program for the disks should
install Animator, the windows player, sample animations and audio files.
You'll have to process the audio before playback. If you have a midi file
and a voice over in .WAV format, the system can only play one at a time.
I've been playing with the windows recorder and have been able to mix .wav
files but I've not tried to mix .wav and midi files. I think other software
would be needed to do this.
John
John,
From what you say, it seems that I should invest in this product,
doing what I can with it as-is, and perhaps adding software later to fill
in any gaps; one thing about the MM market is its current state of rapid
expansion. The windows slow-down is really bad news, and one can only
hope that this situation will improve in the not too distant future.
Stephen
Let me amend my last message to say "only the hundreds of megabytes of
animations AND SOME of the clips" are not delivered on floppy. I forgot
about the clips.
John
Stephen, perhaps I can help here…
Yesterday, I took a new version of the bouncing ASTlogo that can be found
somewhere in this forum and moved it into the Windows player. I then
digitized the BOUNCE sound on my Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum into the
Windows WAV format with MPC Windows. Then, using the windows player, I
added the sound to the animation. I am having a little trouble in two
areas:
1) I haven't figured out how to sync the sound exactly where I want. But
the Jovian products should help there if and when they support windows…
2) The windows player is SOOOOO SLLLOOOWWWW that is is basically unuseable
in 640x480x256 mode.
I use Gold Disk Animation Works for Windows for my windows MM stuff now,
but as of this time, they do not support FLC format. Hang in there!
(I hope this wasn't intrusive John…I am FEDEXing Andrea's XMAS card FLC
to Gary and Bob Bennet so sniff out a copy. It is pretty neat!)
-Doug
Doug,
Thanks for your comments. I am still in the process of tooling-up
for multimedia and all such info is valuable in guiding one in making wise
purchases.
It is really bad news about windows slowness -which, from what you,
means that much of the ground gained in moving from ANIMATOR to AAPRO must
be given up. When you speak of 640 X 480 X 256 being virtually unusable, I
take it you are talking about flics in RAM rather than being fed from a
hard disk. I also assume that switching from a 386/33 to a 486/33 wouldn't
do much good. Is this assumption correct?
You must be a windows expert de luxe -your outfit's association with
it goes way back, I believe.
Stephen
Well, my quote of 'unuseable' is really in regards to non-Windows Animator
pro or a MAC. Eventually, we will get there. For example, Micrographx has a
Windows graphics library they sell which is MUCH faster than Microsoft's.
It appears to me that the Animator WIndows stuff was written with the stock
Microsoft SDK stuff. I could be wrong, but it just seems that way. BTW, I
don't mean to criticize Animator Player for Windows. I also use Gold Disk's
Animation Works for Windows and it has the same slowness disease.
In regards to the "slowness" of the Windows player — I was very pleased
when I installed the player and called up a couple of 640×480 flc
animations and was able to play them in a window and full screen. Yes,
they were slower. But for technical training diagrams they would be just
fine and I think they could be a valuable part of the presentations I'm
working on.
Doug — what kind of a computer are you using with the Windows Player? How
much ram does it have and how large was the animation being displayed? It
shouldn't be happening as slowly as it sounds like. At least, it plays
reasonably well (considering) on my machine (of course, that's a 486-33
with mondo ram).
Of course, it is true that hi-rez animations will not play adequately for
all purposes under windows. They don't play adequately under DOS for all
purposes, and Windows is necessarily slower than DOS. –Phil