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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga Software News => Topic started by: platon42 on June 23, 2008, 12:38:42 AM

Title: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: platon42 on June 23, 2008, 12:38:42 AM
Eric Schwartz released a tribute to the Amiga called  "Still  Alive"  a  few months ago on YouTube. There's also an MP4 version of it, but so far, there was no Amiga native playback even though the animation itself is  not  very demanding  (320x200  in 4 colours). The main problem was sync'ing the video with the music -- especially when the  frame  rate  of  the  video  is  not exactly  50  Hz  or  60  Hz.  Latter  also needed a playback routine of the original mp3, with less CPU demand (otherwise only 68060th would be able to play it back).

This is an Amiga  and  MorphOS  compatible  playback  with  ECS/AGA/P96/CGX support.  The  audio has been converted from 44 KHz 16 Bit stereo to 22 KHz 16 Bit mono with ADPCM encoding as a compromise. A 68020+ should be enough, but this has not been tested.

The playback needs AHI, but otherwise should find a  suitable  screen  mode itself.

The only difference to the version shipped with the Deneb USB board is that under  MorphOS  it opens a 16 bit screen as somehow otherwise the rendering is not correct.

Enjoy and send your feedback to Eric Schwartz ;-)

The animation (3.3 MB) can be downloaded from

http://www.platon42.de/cgi-local/navbar.pl?0000&download.html#demos
Title: Re: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: weirdami on June 23, 2008, 01:22:28 AM
Moviesetter?
Title: Re: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: platon42 on June 23, 2008, 06:55:50 AM
Quote

Moviesetter?


No. Moviesetter AFAIK can't playback four minutes of continous audio sample and keep that in sync.
Title: Re: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: starf81 on June 23, 2008, 09:05:44 AM
Just tested on my A1200 (Blizz1230 - OS3.1 + AHI5)... it works PERFECTLY.

Thank you!!!  :-D  :-D  :-D
Title: Re: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: Hodgkinson on June 23, 2008, 10:49:55 AM
Server error?
Title: Re: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: weirdami on June 23, 2008, 11:14:17 AM
Quote
Server error?


No. Server error AFAIK can't playback four minutes of continous audio sample and keep that in sync.
Title: Re: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: Cammy on June 23, 2008, 01:23:20 PM
I can't get it to work with the music. I have installed AHI on my A1200 030/50, and selected Paula audio, and when I click on the StillAlive file, there's no music. :(
Title: Re: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: Hodgkinson on June 23, 2008, 02:40:37 PM
Doh. I meant the link. It's working now anyway.
Title: Re: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: redrumloa on June 23, 2008, 05:10:53 PM
Good stuff, bravo!  :-)
Title: Re: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: leirbag28 on June 23, 2008, 06:35:07 PM
@platon42

There is a much much better way to do this....... just make the animation an Anim5 or Anim8  and convert the audio to IFF/8svx 20hz (or is it khz?) on Digital Sound Studio 3.0..........then the animation is simply synced with SCALA MM300 or MM400

Eric Shwarz really needs to get this app.

also one can play back the MP3 with a MASPlayer or Delphina.  But I would go for the 8svx option and it will sound pretty darn good.

Im still not sure why Eric chose to use a Mac for editing....all he needed was SCALA, or perhaps a standalone DVD recorder or DV Cam with S-Video input. You can get both for less than $150
Title: Re: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: platon42 on June 23, 2008, 09:09:30 PM
Quote

I can't get it to work with the music...


Be sure you have AHI unit 0 configured correctly.
Title: Re: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: platon42 on June 23, 2008, 09:09:46 PM
Quote

There is a much much better way to do this....... just make the animation an Anim5 or Anim8 and convert the audio to IFF/8svx 20hz (or is it khz?) on Digital Sound Studio 3.0..........then the animation is simply synced with SCALA MM300 or MM400


You are free to try it yourself. I am sure Eric will provide you with the 3.7 MB anim5 format file and the mp3 which in IFF/8SVX 8 bit mono in 22 KHz has a 3.8 MB file size (and this does not include the credits tune) which will sound much worse than the 16 bit resolution IMA-ADPCM file used here (the archive is only 3.3 MB in total).

And I doubt the Scala player will keep the lip-sync necessary -- I *really* doubt it. Moreover, the player won't work on RTG nor on MorphOS.

But please, try it. I'd like to see the results.
Title: Re: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: Cammy on June 24, 2008, 01:24:02 AM
Does anyone know why the music won't play on my A1200? I have AHI installed, and I have selected Paula in the AHI settings. I've got 16MB RAM, so that couldn't be an issue.

Can anyone help?
Title: Re: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: rkauer on June 24, 2008, 01:45:26 AM
Quote
Cammy  Posted: 2008/6/23 22:24:02

Does anyone know why the music won't play on my A1200? I have AHI installed, and I have selected Paula in the AHI settings. I've got 16MB RAM, so that couldn't be an issue.

Can anyone help?


 As Chris said, set AHI unit 0 (zero) as default sound output.
Title: Re: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: Cammy on June 24, 2008, 03:22:52 AM
Ooh, thank you for helping, I got it to work, I just had to  choose the 14bit Paula option.

Wow, that was so beautiful, I'm glad to finally see it running on a real Amiga instead of YouTube.

Eric is the best, he fills me with hope.
Title: Re: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: LoadWB on June 24, 2008, 05:54:04 AM
Thanks, Cammie.  I had my Unit 0 set for 8-bit Paula.  Set it for 14-bit and WOWEE!

BTW, for those who don't know, AHI is up to v6.0 stable and v6.7 beta.  Just installed v6.0 on my 1200-060 and it works quite well (as expected.)

Tin-canny sound, though.  The main music sounds almost like the extro music heheheheh :-)  I'll play around with the playback frequency.
Title: Re: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: leirbag28 on June 24, 2008, 07:38:29 PM
@platon42

SCALA can sync perfectly.

But lets see...........

anyhow, how the heck do you get this to work?  what software does it need? it has no icon info......how do I execute it?  am I crazy?

Do I need MovieSetter?  how do I run it.......I double click it and it does nothing.

Can you get the original anim5 for me? or post it up since you already got this?
Title: Re: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: Seiya on June 26, 2008, 08:57:44 AM
the video run very whell on my system :)
i think it would run very well with audio in 44 kHz :D
Title: Re: Still Alive Tribute by Eric Schwartz for Amiga playback
Post by: LoadWB on June 29, 2008, 11:18:07 AM
Quick recommendation.  In AHI Unit 0, set it for 14-bit Paula Mono at 22050Hz.  That matches the audio sampling and in my testing is the best quality.

I'm using on a 50MHz 060 AGA 1200, so I cannot say how well this performs on a lower spec'd system.
Title: Re: Magic Lantern 2
Post by: Nautilus on June 29, 2008, 05:22:56 PM
Magic Lantern v2 (a forgotten software gem) could be used for creating smooth video playback. It still available from Softhut (http://www.softhut.com/cgi-bin/test/Web_store/web_store.cgi?page=catalog/software/graphics_sound/gen_magiclantern.html). The player is freely distributable.