Rendering an Amiga animation to a modern format?

[Ral-Clan]

What is the best way to render an animation created in an Amiga to a modern format (i.e. ultimately MPEG2 or DVD).

What I would like to do is create video animations using DPaint, ImageFX and Aladdin4D.

Then I need some way to distribute these on DVD.

There are products for the Amiga (i.e. DPS PAR Zorro Card).  Which will allow you to output the Amiga's video to an external video recorder (like a DVD recorder).

But I'm wondering if in today's day and age, it would be better to just put all the frames of the animation in a directory, and have an application (on the Amiga or PC) render the frames into MPEG2 video which can then be burned onto DVD.

Something tells me the second way would result in higher quality rather than real-time recording.

But I'm just wondering if this is in fact is do-able and what software can do it (on the Amiga or PC)?

The reason I ask is that I know where I can get a PAR (Personal Animation Recorder card) but don't know if I should spend the money when MPEG rendering might be the way to go.

I should note that I have an A2000 with B&W composite output so that's not an option.  I do have an A520 RF adaptor for the RGB port, but the quality is not up to professional standards (unless someone knows of a S-VIDEO hack for the NTSC version - I've only seen the PAL version hack).

Recommendations?

[arnljot]

If you want to use MPEG/DIVX etc which are not animation formats, but video formats I'd just run them in UAE and use UAE to record them.

[Ral-Clan]

If you want to use MPEG/DIVX etc which are not animation formats, but video formats I'd just run them in UAE and use UAE to record them.

Yes, I understand that that MPEG/DIVX are video formats.  But ultimately, Amiga animation creators have to get their .anims out to the "real" world in a video format useable in the "industry".  This means either recording it straight to an external video recorder (VHS, U-Matic, BetaCAM in the old days - today a DVD recorder or as a digital video file like MPEG2 or .AVI, etc.)

It's quite possible to render Amiga animations to MPEG-1 video using a variety of Amiga software (ImageFX, or others).  Generally you separate the ANIM into its individual frames, then run it through such an application which assembles the frames into an MPEG-1 video.

However, MPEG-1 is limited to VCD resolutions (I think).  So I was wondering about MPEG-2 rendering solutions.  Once the animation is rendered as an MPEG-2 video, I can burn it to DVD, as that is the native video format of DVD.

But the problem is that I don't know if there are any Amiga apps that render MPEG-2 video.  So I was asking.  Alternatively, I can burn the individual frames of any Amiga animation to CD-R, and use a PC program to assemble them to a digital video file (MPEG-2, etc.) if anyone can recommend one (preferably freeware!).

Recording from UAE is sort of a hack, and the real-time recording of an MPEG-2 video (or DIVX or whatever) is usually inferior to frame-by-frame rendering of the video file.  With real-time MPEG-2 recording, the software & hardware doesn't have a lot of time to analyse the frames.  With non-real time MPEG-2 rendering (like professional DVD authoring places use), the individual frames are analysed one by one, compared to the frames coming before and after, and the most optimal compression is used for best image quality in the assembled video.

[Piru]

Obviously you re-encode the saved avi.

If you're worried about quality, choose "Full Frames (Uncompressed)".

[Ral-Clan]

Piru wrote:
Obviously you re-encode the saved avi.

If you're worried about quality, choose "Full Frames (Uncompressed)".

Yes, obviously.

But that doesn't answer what I was asking.  I'm looking for the best method of transferring Amiga animations to MPEG2 video.  The UAE method you guys are suggesting is real-time video encoding (inferior) and then transcoding to another format (another degradation).

I was wondering if there was any MPEG2 encoders for Amiga, or a good shareware/freeware one on PC that would take a series of still images (making up an animation) and encode it to an MPEG2 video file.

Or barring that, I was looking for some feedback from DPS PAR users, or anyone else who had used methods to convert Amiga anims to digital video formats.

[Piru]

The UAE method you guys are suggesting is real-time video encoding (inferior) and then transcoding to another format (another degradation).

"Full Frames (Uncompressed)" is lossless.

You then encode the video to whatever format you like. This is not real-time video encoding. The level of "degradation" depends directly on the encoding options you choose.

[Ral-Clan]

Okay, that's great.  Seems like buying a hardware solution, etc. etc. is not necessary, due the many software solutions available, including this UAE method.

Now, if UAE runs perfectly smoothly, (i.e. no skipped frames, good timing), everything should work.

[jmbattle]

I would render/output separate, individual frames at either PAL/NTSC resolution, in 24bit.

Then use software on the PC (e.g. VirtualDub) to combine all of the frames into an AVI (use a lossless compression codec, such as Lagarith), before finally converting the video to MPEG2 with your favourite encoder.

Good luck!

Cheers,
James
x

[Ral-Clan]

Thanks!  Someone on the ImageFX forum also told me that VirtualDub could assemble video from individual frames.  That is great news, as I already have the program (but did not know of this feature).

[yorgle]

As a sidenote, for doing this on a Mac, you can use Quicktime Pro to assemble a series of frames into a movie.

Then you can take this movie, and transcode it for .dv, and bring it into Final Cut (Express|Pro), or iMovie.

I've done this many times, works really well for me. (Visual Hub does a nice job of transcoding various formats to .DV for editing as well... which I believe is based on the ffmpeg library.

[Colani1200]

Avidemux2 is also a great tool for this task.

[Superfer]

Hi,
I've done as follows:
1- I've installed 'Amiga Forever' (www.amigaforever.com)on my pc, and RTFM!
2- connected my A4000 to the pc: nullmodem cable between serial ports of A4000 and pc,
3- in windows explorer I could see my A4000 with all partitions and directories. I then moved the content of my "Work"-partition to the pc. It took about 2 hours to finish this operation!
4- installed 'Pro Motion' (http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/index.php). Ik looks like DPaint and it can read amiga files like the animations I've have imported, see 3.
5- saved all animation files as avi, divx.

Hope it will work for you all!

Superfer  

[Merax]

yorgle wrote:
As a sidenote, for doing this on a Mac, you can use Quicktime Pro to assemble a series of frames into a movie.

The Windows version of Quicktime Pro can do this too.  I use it at work to assemble frame sequences into movies.  It's a good deal at $30.

[Superfer]

Hi,
I've also tryed  Avidemux2 but it won't read .anim files, how did you do that?

[whabang]

I did something similar a way back. I split the amin into separate images, transferred them to a PC, and used Jasc Animation shop to re-assemble the files into an AVI-file.