Amiga Animation and CHIP RAM versus FAST RAM

[stefcep2]

Brilliance (at least) lets you set the frame rate to 60 frames/second.  Note that using Ham animations is probably the slowest way to animate on the amiga, so comparing ham animation speeds on the amiga with 32 color animations on the atari is not a valid way to do it. i found that when animating-because each frame is on for a short time and because each fame can have its own palette-then ham is usually not needed and indeed a hindrance.

Later Amiga software(eg brilliance, Mainactor, buildanim,Scala, Clarissa) used newer animation formats such as anim8 and anim7, ssa which give smooth playback(50 frames/sec on PAL or 60 frames/sec on NTSC) in resolutions upto 720x 512 hires laced in 256 colors. And yes these utilities late you choose the playback speed upto 60 frames/sec. However I can only confirm this for for AGA machines not OCS/ECS that you mention because thats all I have.  There are several software utilities which let you convert the standard anim5 to these animation formats to speed-up playback.  You maybe right: the OCS/ECs chipsets may have had the 30 frames/sec limitation but the AGA definately did not

[stefcep2]

The topic was about a comparison of the Atari ST to the Amiga on an animation program - I don't see what point dragging the PC and what it might and might not be able to do compared to an Amiga has to do do with that anyways...

Thats because you are on an amiga site where too many people can't forget that the amiga was ONCE the king (or is it queen) of video.

Going on-topic: the guy wants to know : could a stock A500 do animations at 50/60 frames/sec because he only saw 25/30 frames/sec or was this due to software not letting you create anims that playback at 50/60 frames/sec:

1. The hardware could playback 300x200 at 60 fps.

2. 60 fps is not really 60 full frames every second: its really one frame that has every even scan line displayed, followed by the same frame where every odd scan line is shown ie interlaced, and this flickers.  Was the Atari running an interlaced mode?  If not are you absolutely sure that it was running at 60 fps?  Did the animation look smoother but flicker on the Atari?  

2.  Its likely that 30 frames per second was chosen because the animations on the amiga were ham6, and this was by far the slowest format.  Further AFAIK anim5 was EA's animation format, used by dpaint at the time and I have just run dpaint 2 and 3 and i cannot see a way to change the fps, it seems to be hardcoded to do animations at 30 fps.

3.  Its likely that the whilst the A500 could have done 60 fps at 300x200, the animations that you viewed were made to run at 30 fps because a) they were in Ham6 format and b) this was a software limitation of the anim5 format.

[stefcep2]

An important thing to consider here is the critical flicker fusion frequency
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_fusion_threshold

For the average person under low light levels this about 60 Hz and under bright light this is about 30 hz ( thats why using a  refresh of 50 hz ie pal or DBLpal flickers at night and not so much in daytime).  Its also why NTSC flickers less than PAL.