Amiga Animation and CHIP RAM versus FAST RAM

[Rowbeartoe]

I used to be a computer salesman back in 1989.  The store had an Amiga 500 and an Atari 1040ST on display.  I have always been an Atarian, but was fascinated by the Amiga.  As I'm sure many of you are aware, in many ways the Amiga was the evolution of the Atari 8-Bit computers.  

Now when I had side by side comparisons I noticed that the Amiga 500 never could do 60fps animations?  We even had Antic software with Cad 3D 2.0 on both computers, but the Amiga was limited to 30fps at best.  I remember having several (albeit slightly downgraded graphicly) Amiga HAM-6 animations such as the juggler, or a Scult 3D demo converted to Spectrum 512 running at 60fps on the ST.  I could never answer the question to customers if the Amiga animation software could match that speed.  

Cyperpaint on the ST was Zoetrope on the Amiga- was the Amiga version capable of 60fps?  My question is does any  Amiga software for the 500,1000, or 2000 allow full screen 320x200 animations at 60fps?  Turbo Silver 3.0, VideoScape 3d, Photon Video Cel Animator, Deluxe Paint III, and Photon Paint II all had animation capabilities on the Amiga.  But none of my magazines mentioned how fast these animations could go.  The reviewers always neglected to mention if it could.  That along with my personal experience suggests the Amiga could not.  Am I wrong?

If not, was it the CHIP RAM in the Amiga preventing 60fps animations?  Was it the slightly slower clock speed (7.1 MHz vs 8.0 MHz) of the 68000?  Was it the more memory intense files of the Amiga- Atari's 4bit versus Amiga's 5bit picture files?  Was it perhaps the Amiga 500 only had 512K?  

Thanks for you help everyone.  

On a side note.  Chip Ram was all that could be used for video correct?  Or could page flipping animations be stored in Fast Ram?

[Rowbeartoe]

On the ST, each function key represented differn't frame speeds.f9 was 30fps and f10 was 60fps.  So when I had the same demons up, the Amiga was always doing either f8 or f9.  The Software on the ST always claimed 60fps as well.

[Rowbeartoe]

It was obvious to me.  For example, I could count the frames of an animation.  It wasn't rocket science.  If it was 15 frames, the ST would flip thru all of them 4 times every second at F10 or 2twice at f9.   And it was easy to match the exact speed on the Amiga Demos I had at the time.  Albeit only a few.  I had the machines side by side and the customers loved it.  

[Rowbeartoe]

Ok, so from the bandwidth point of view, the Amiga could in theory.  But what about the software I mentioned?  Why was the Scult 3D, juggler, and Antic Cad-3d 2.0 never page flipping at 60fps? I may never have had a frame counter, but clearly the Amiga demos converted to the ST could run at least twice as fast on the ST, suggesting to me either 24fps or 30fps.  Now, I want to make it clear, I'm not saying the graphics were better on the ST, they were downgraded slightly in Spectrum 512, but I'm just talking about good old fashion page flipping.  The Atari ST used 16MHz RAM, 8 MHZ for Video and 8 MHz for the 68000- it was cheap and effective for this kind of stuff. I'm just curious as to why the demos I saw, and the software reviews never mentioned up to 60fps animations and if in fact the Amiga software allowed it's user to reach such a speed?

 

[Rowbeartoe]

On the ST, Cyber software (CAD 3D, Cyper Paint etc) let you page flip 16 color 320x200 pictures up to 60fps (NTSC). Spectrum 512 using unispec allowed 512 color pictures to page flip at 60fps. You could make some nice animations with a MEGA ST4 (4 megabytes of RAM).  But on the Amiga 500, when I demonstrated CAD 3D for it, I was able to only get about 30fps (32 color pictures), and I remember some Scult 3D and the juggler animation (HAM-6) graphics, never being able to surpass 30fps.  So Again, I was just curious if the software available to the consumer for the orginal Amigas (500,1000,2000) could let you do 60fps animations, be it 32 color, 64 color half bright, or
the very impressive 4,096 color HAM-6?    

No doubt, the AGA chipset was more than capable.  But I'm trying to settle somthing that has been bothering me when I was a computer salesman back in 1988/1989-- the time when there was only an Amiga 500,1000,2000 and only an Atari 520ST, 1040ST, and Mega ST2/4 in the States.

Thank you EVERYONE for trying to resolve this for me.  Again- I'm sure (not entirely) it was possible for programers to achieve this goal, but I just wanted to know if the software available by 1989 for the Amiga could.  

[Rowbeartoe]

Zac67 wrote:
I'd venture the replay routines on the Amiga were optimized/designed to allow replay of interlaced frames. There are only 30 interlaced fps, so the coders didn't include a special faster non-interlace mode replay of up to 60 fps.
The Ataris lack interlace mode, so you'd code for 60 fps from the start.

Maybe as simple as that.[/quote]

Interesting- so you have a theory that say those Anim files were limited to 30fps because the programers scripted them for interlaced modes?  

This does get to the heart of my question.  Most software by 1989 that allowed non programers such as myself to make animation using programs such as Scupt 3d, or photon paint II, saved the files as ANIM files (?).  So these players much like the Atari ST SPC players, could page flip up to only 30fps?  Unitl that AGA chipset and ANIM6 or ANIM7 came out?  

Thank you everyone for your help.  I'm always much more fascinating is what software allowed the user to do versus the specifications.  If a paint program was faster on an ST, did didn't matter if the Amiga had a Blitter, the software buyer was at the mercy of the programmers.  

[Rowbeartoe]

bloodline wrote:

Zac67 wrote:

bloodline wrote:

It could be that Amiga software was almost always beam synchronised to ensure that the graphics wouldn't tear during redraws... I guess the Amiga was therefore at the mercy of the display device, if that was a TV, then it would be 25fps (PAL) or 30fps (NTSC).

Good point, but non-interlaced runs at 50 resp. 60 fps. However, the synchronized 'Amiga' way is what I was pointing at.

All TV displays are interlaced, regardless of what the Amiga is putting out. :-)

The Atari ST color monitor wasn't interlaced.  I'm sure the Amiga monitor wasn't interlaced as well.  Correct.

[Rowbeartoe]

Zac67 wrote:

bloodline wrote:

It could be that Amiga software was almost always beam synchronised to ensure that the graphics wouldn't tear during redraws... I guess the Amiga was therefore at the mercy of the display device, if that was a TV, then it would be 25fps (PAL) or 30fps (NTSC).

Good point, but non-interlaced runs at 50 resp. 60 fps. However, the synchronized 'Amiga' way is what I was pointing at.[/quote]

All TV displays are interlaced, regardless of what the Amiga is putting out. :-)[/quote]

The Atari ST color monitor wasn't interlaced.  I'm sure the Amiga monitor wasn't interlaced as well.  Correct.[/quote]

Without knowing which model of monitor you are refering to, how are we to know? :-)[/quote]

Well I'm trying to focus on the 1985-1989 time frame.  So the Atari RGB montiors were the sc1224- made from goldstar and JVC i believe.  The Amiga monitors at the time?  not sure- I do know they were bigger than Atari's "large" 12inch displays.

[Rowbeartoe]

platon42 wrote:
The Amiga (OCS/ECS or AGA) is capable of outputting animations at the display refresh rate, which is 60Hz for NTSC and 50Hz for PAL -- or other refresh rates (e.g. AGA modes like Super72 at about 72 Hz) -- and this is independent of the TV or display using interlace technique for half-frames. If the Amiga outputs the display in non-interlace mode, the same display lines will be updated, hence it is full 50/60Hz.

What is displayed during each frame depends on the copper list that selects the memory address for the displayed bitplanes. The Amiga is capable of multi-buffering which only requires a few pointers to be changed to switch between animation frames (with 2 MB chipram, about 25 full frames (320*256*8 bit (or HAM8)) can be stored in memory -- an A500 with 512KB chipmem can hold 8 full frames of HAM6 animation in memory). This means, you could play back 8 frames of uncompressed animation with nearly no CPU use (you could also have some of the bitplanes fixed to some graphics (like a colour gradient) and only update one bitplane, like I used this in the tunnel effect for my Tubes game graphics).

But usually an animation consists of more frames. Hence, only double buffering is used, hence while one frame is displayed, the next frame will be rendered using the CPU or blitter (e.g. for polygon gfx).

The anim5/7/8 etc formats use this technique for specifying the deltas between frame x and x-2, so depending on the amount of changes, not all 60KB for a 320*256*HAM6 frame need to be updated. Even a 68000 running at 7.14 MHz is capable of transferring memory that fast for 60 frames per second. As HAM6 is a hardware compression technique for 12 bit (4096 colours) into 6 bit, HAM6 has usually more delta due to digital noise in the image, for example in raytracing animations or movies. If the source of the anim is stored in fast ram, the cpu usually can operate a bit faster on it.

The iff-anim formats 5/7/8 are more or less the same and only differ in the width of the vertical slices that are used for updating the next frame. AFAIR anim5 uses byte (8 pixel wide) slices, whereas anim7 uses word (16 pixel) and anim8 uses longword (32 pixel) wide slices and thus are less cpu intensive -- at worse compression rate.

In summary: Comparing a 6 bit deep HAM6 animation in anim5 format might not be fair to compare against a 5 bit deep 32 colour animation in some other format using different compression. The Amiga itself is very well capable of real-time "one frame" animations.

Most games have "one frame" engines, such as Turrican, James Pond, Lionheart, Jim Power or Zool. Only a few use "2 frame" updates, such as Banshee or Magic Pockets.

Everything answered by now?

Part of what I orginally asked was-

"when I had side by side comparisons I noticed that the Amiga 500 never could do 60fps animations? We even had Antic software with Cad 3D 2.0 on both computers, but the Amiga was limited to 30fps at best. I remember having several (albeit slightly downgraded graphicly) Amiga HAM-6 animations such as the juggler, or a Scult 3D demo converted to Spectrum 512 running at 60fps on the ST. I could never answer the question to customers if the Amiga animation software could match that speed.

Cyperpaint on the ST was Zoetrope on the Amiga- was the Amiga version capable of 60fps? My question is does any Amiga software for the 500,1000, or 2000 allow full screen 320x200 animations at 60fps? Turbo Silver 3.0, VideoScape 3d, Photon Video Cel Animator, Deluxe Paint III, and Photon Paint II all had animation capabilities on the Amiga. But none of my magazines mentioned how fast these animations could go. The reviewers always neglected to mention if it could. That along with my personal experience suggests the Amiga could not. Am I wrong?

If not, was it the CHIP RAM in the Amiga preventing 60fps animations? Was it the slightly slower clock speed (7.1 MHz vs 8.0 MHz) of the 68000? Was it the more memory intense files of the Amiga- Atari's 4bit versus Amiga's 5bit picture files? Was it perhaps the Amiga 500 only had 512K?

Thanks for you help everyone. "

I'm still at a loss if the Amiga software allowed it's users from 1985-1989 for the orginal Amigas (500,1000,2000) could page flip 60fps animations like I could with my Atari ST (albeit a differn't graphic quality)

Thanks everyone for you time and thoughts.

[Rowbeartoe]

You need to give some better way of proving that the ST version actually ran at 60fps in 320*200*16 since the naked eye has its limitations of noticing frame rates above 25fps.  I'll give you an example how to quantify your results.  Without using the blitter chip and with the sound and copper running in the background, I was able to paint 320*200 full frames at the following rate on an A500 running at 7.16Mhz: at 3 planes (8 colors/pixel) 52 fps, at 4 planes (16 colors/pixel) 39 fps and in HAM mode 19 fps.  The following is the code used to test and it compiles and uploads to the real Amiga with MPDOS Pro (www.mpdos.com):


Thanks again EVERYONE for trying to settle this long time question of mine.

Proof- sigh.

Well, this wasn't rocket science.  For one, the software on the ST said it was 60fps, and for proof all I would have to do is load 30 frames and play it as 60fps and I'd see all of them displayed twice every second- id notice if it went only once.  The HAM-6 juggler demo runs at 24 or 30fps if I recall, and once that was converted to the ST, it was at least twice as fast- but again that was because I tested the speed of the ST and the software package claimed it to be.  While I'd be hard press to tell the differnce between 55 or 65fps, I'm sure  it was, since F10 for full speed with the viewer software, and f9 was half, and the space bar was frame by frame.  Each function keyed allowed a differn't speed, come to think of it, I think the software told me what each funntion key did.  with that knowledge, and placing the two computers side-by-side with 3 of the same animation demos, I was shocked to notice the ST was page flipping at least twice as fast- ableit once again with graphic pictures that took up less memory- (well Spectrum 512 pictures uncompressed took up 50kilobytes- versus uncompressed 16 color 32 kilobyte files on the ST).  

I hope that is proof enough- as for the interlaced issue, I spent days drawing pictures with my eyeball pressed up against my Atari 12" RGB monitor- it was not flickering.  

Thank you everyone for your help.  =)

[Rowbeartoe]

"There could be a software limitation on the application used. What's the format of the 50Kb of Spectrum 512-- is that also 320*200*16 with palette changes every scan line? 50Kb per frame at 60fps would be 3Megabytes/second."


Spectrum 512- well believe it or not this graphic program gave the Atari ST some advantages over Amiga HAM-6.  Spectrum 512 wasn't the standard way (Apple IIGS like) to achieve lots of colors 16 per scan line.  

The enginneers hooked an oscilloscope to teh Atari ST MMU chip and reverse-enginneered its timers.  Using this information, they designed a method to manipulate those times and stuff more colors into extra simlulated bit planes, before the signal even gets to that Atari ST's graphic Shifter chip.  In short- in 1987 Spectrum 512 allowed the ST to display 48 colors every scan line.  Quick math translates into 16 colors about every 100 pixels per scan line.  This gave some advantages over HAM-6- but then again HAM-6 could also put 320 colors on a line- it's just HAM-6 allowed you only to modify 1 of the 3 RGB colors at a time.  

Now I'm not a programmer, but the files took up 50 kilobytes per file uncompressed.  I'm not sure why or how- I understand 4-bit (16 colors) pictures on the ST took only 32 kilobytes uncompressed.  The ST was able to page flip these files 60 times per second as well as it's 16 color picture formats with software back in 1987.  I purchased a 4 megabyte MEGA ST4 at that time, so I could make large page fliping animations at that time.  

Still, I feel I'm getting side tracked.  I'm not arguing about graphic quality- surely the Amiga offered way more versatiltiy- especially with it's highres overscan color pictures mixed with other resolutions (nice!).  And even though I'm an Atarian, to me the Amiga is more of an Atari than the ST was, since it was the evoluation of the Atari 8-bit computers.  

O- to understand the memory in the Atari ST- I read that the engineers gave the ST 16 MHz unified RAM- giving 8-MHz to Video, and 8-MHz to the 68000.  The ST didn't have anything fancing like CHIP RAM and FAST RAM.

Thanks everyone for still trying to resolve this.  I'm starting to accept that perhaps software engineers didn't feel pressed to push the Amiga to 60fps with there animation software.  They appeared to be more focused on graphic quality?  (I'm still speculating).  To bad I just couldn't buy all the animation software, Scult 3D, zoetrope, etc- purchase an Amiga 2000 or an Amiga 500 with a megabyte expansion and benchmark it's software.  I'm still leaning towards Chip RAM, and 7.1 MHz clock speed

[Rowbeartoe]

I have the May/June Magazine of Amiga World about the Juggler.  It's a very in depth interview with how it was made and how HAM-6 works.  Sadly the article doesn't discuss why his animation program was set to 30fps.  Great article about Ray-Tracing etc though.  This is what bothers me though-  I have several magazines dealing the Amiga including Info which was my favorite for Amiga- but none of the graphic animation reviews even in 1989 said any of the programs allowed up to 60fps animation.  That and my personal experience as a Computer Saleman in 1988 and 1989- really bothers me.  Didn't Juggler let you select speeds up to 30fps or was it just one speed only- I can't remember now.  The conversion on the ST, like all animations, let me select speeds from frame by frame to 60fps.  =(

I loved that Amiga demo- my favoriote next to Fuji Boink from Xanth on the Atari ST.

[Rowbeartoe]

xeron wrote:
I suspect that the juggler animation is running at 30FPS because its a 30FPS animation, not because the amiga can't run it faster.

Below is part of the readme file from the juggler program I just found on the internet..



 " Juggler
  (c 1986 by Eric Graham, All Rights Reserved.
 
  Controls:
  Juggling speed is set by typing 0-9 on the numeric keypad.  Speed is   only changed once per complete juggling pass, so it may seem to take   a bit of time before the Juggler responds to your speed change command.  ESC exits the program.


  This program is being made available by Commodore for use on the   Amiga Computer.  We encourage you to copy it for your friends who   own Amigas.  Have fun."

Notice the control speeds- this is much like the Atari ST programs I used.  So why would the Amiga need to stop at 30fps?  The article from the 1987 Amiga World magazine claimed the program ran at 30fps, and that is what I remembered when it was side by side the Atari ST.  I realize this is just one demo- but this along with two others I had from CAD programs (Anitic CAD-3D 2.0 and Cyber Scult) had animations up to "only" 30fps.  

Thanks everyone again for trying to help me.

[Rowbeartoe]

Britelite wrote:
Page-flipping is perfectly possible at full framerate on both machines (well, any machine really), only limit is of course the available memory. I'd say the piece of Amiga-software you tried was limited or badly coded, because there's no reason for page-flipped animations to be less than full framerate.

So no reason to blame chip-ram or the clockspeed, a page-flip takes a few cycles and therefore doesn't require any CPU-power at all.

I was reading a 1988 issue of Amazing Computing and it's review of Videoscape 2.0.  Again nothing about Video speed playback BUT thar article did tell me it's viewers.  

"The technique for saving has been improved: a VideoScape 2.0 animation takes up half as much space as a 1.0 animation.  These new ANIM files can be played back with version 4.0 of ShowANIM or 4.2 of PlayANIM."

Now VideoScape 2.0 allowed Hold and Modify- these animations could be 4,096 pictures.  I wonder did Scult 3D using ShowANIM or PlayANIM?  and did these programs offer 0-9 speed selections as the juggler animation- and most important- how fast for the top speed of these programs.  And if it was limited to 30fps- WHY?

Thanks everyone again-  I'll keep digging thru all more magazines and internet to get more answers if I can find them.

Robert.  =)

[Rowbeartoe]

 

Zac67 wrote:
Actually, there's no sense in running any anim with >30 fps - your eyes wouldn't see the difference anyway (60 fps vs 30 fps with every other frame skipped). That's the exact reason why cinema/PAL/NTSC work with 24/25/30 fps: their designers wouldn't waste film/bandwidth.

The Amiga programmers were obviously aware of this and just coded that way.

No disrespt, but I so strongly disagree- ever play video games that play at 30fps versus 60fps?- try car games, you'll notice the differnece.  In short, especially back in those days, I could see a differnce simply becuase motion blur wasn't working- a trick that works real good with "low" frame rates. Movies drive me crazy at 24 fps when they pan left and right quickly- but this isn't my question- this is a whole entire differn't argument or opinion.  I used to make lots of animations on my Atari ST, and 60fps was clearly better when lots of frames where included.  Boing on the Amiga, would be smoother for example at 60 verus 30fps.