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take2.lzh
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t2_Update
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1993-06-20
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*********************** TAKE-2 UPDATE REPORT ************************
Date: June 08,1993
Report for version: Take_2 1.7g/1.812
--------------------------- NEW FEATURES ----------------------------
The SpeedCheck options
----------------------
Sometimes doubt arises about the actual speed at which the animation
is displayed. The FlipMode/DBuff option, for instance, tends to slow
down the displayrate dramatically, even more so on recent Kick-start
versions. Using 4 soundtracks simultaneously can also have an effect
on the displayrate of the animation
Although the animation will never be played too fast, the actual
speed is restricted by the hardware configuration.
It is essential for a linetest system to display the tested scene
at the same framerate as the target medium (24 fr/sec for film and
25/30 fr/sec for video). If the hardware can't coop with this speed
at the current resolution the user should know about it, so he can
adjust settings or reshoot the scene in a lower resolution.
Some users, on the other hand, don't care about the actual speed as
long as it has the timing they want and they don't plan to reshoot
the scene on another medium.
For these reasons a new option, "SpeedCheck", has been added to the
Flipper menu. Its 2 suboptions "Flash" and "Warning" can both be
toggled on or off. If neither is on, the actual speed will not be
checked. If "Flash" is on, the screen will flash and a beep will be
heard each time the preset speed couldn't be reached. If "Warning"
is on, a requester will pop up to inform you about the speed failure.
The latter method is more secure, since you could miss a flash for
wathever reason, but it requires to choose 'PROCEED' each time, which
could be annoying.
The speedcheck-requester displays the exact speed in frms/sec the
animation was actually flipped, if it differs from the set speed. It
needs at least 1 second of animation to calculate the actual speed.
Try using it with TURBO to see how fast your Amiga will animate ...
Both SpeedCheck options can be used simultaneously and are saved in
the configuration file.
NOTE:
The flipperspeed is now more accurate and will closely follow the
requested speed. An internal controller tries to keep the actual
speed as close as possible to the speedsetting. Slight inaccuracies
were caused by the time it takes to start and stop the timer, system
load and multitasking. This new 'varispeed' system should make syn-
chronising long samples and storyboard timing very accurate.
A complete rewrite of the flipper routines makes all animation faster
and frees the 680xx much more. Only when many cells are on 'ones' the
speed will suffer as it did before ...A BIG PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT !
'Fast search' in Flipper
------------------------
The slow backward and slow forward gadgets on the Flipper controlpanel
are assigned a second function. By holding down the right mousebutton
when one of these gadgets is selected (slow flipping), the animation
will be advanced very fast, much as the fast search modes on VCR's and
Steenbeck editing tables. Releasing the right mousebutton while still
holding the gadget selected will return you to normal slow flipping.
Holding down the left SHIFT-key together with one of the shortcuts for
these gadgets (left and right arrows) has the same effect.
Unfortunately, on 1.3 Amigas any keyboard event cancels the previous
key, even if it is still pressed. This means you must press the SHIFT-
key before one of the arrow-keys.
On 2.0 or higher machines the shortcuts work exactly as the gadgets.
You can press the left SHIFT-key while holding an arrow-key to enter
fast search mode and release it to return to slow flipping.
NOTE: Don't be fooled by the speed. All this function does is skip a
number of frames, so the speed of your Amiga isn't enhanced without
installing an accelerator board.
The block counter
-----------------
Whenever some cells on the exposure sheet are in a block (red BG),
the exact number of all blocked cells is displayed on top of the
framenumber column. This is useful for measuring parts of the scene
or to find a range of cells that can be used for synchronizing the
animation with a soundtrack.
Fake Cells
----------
Any cell in the exposure sheet that doesn't correspond with a picture
in the PicturePanel, such as BLANKS or the virtual inbetweens used
when testing keydrawings, are now marked with an asterix (*). This
was added on request from several users.
Furthermore, any new pictures will be checked against fake cells in
the xsheet and linked if a match is found. This makes it possible to
create an xsheet and attach the pictures afterwards or to add missing
inbetweens to a linetest made with only the keydrawings.
If you load an .xsht-file first, edit it and then load the whole scene
only the pictures used in the current xsheet will be loaded. This is
useful when you only want so load a part from a very long scene.
Automatic cell creation
-----------------------
Creating an initial xsheet after loading or grabbing some pictures has
always been somewhat unintuitive.It requires you to open the PicPanel,
select the new pictures and then select the 'appendcells'-gadget. It
allows the user to dispatch pictures to different levels and create
as complex an exposure sheet as required. This method tends to confuse
beginners and is unnecessary for simple tests, though.
In practice most linetests are sequentialy arranged in one level. Only
the final animations and dialogue-tests need complex dispatching.
A new option has been added to the 'General'-menu on the main screen.
When 'NewPic->NoAction' is selected, no cells will be created when new
pictures are loaded or grabbed from the digitizer. This is the default
mode, as it leaves the cell creation as it was before.
When 'NewPic->AddCells' is selected a number of new cells (depending
on the multiply number on the CellsPanel) will be appended to the
current level. If the multiply number is zero or negative no cells are
added. Remember to preset the current level on the PicturePanel, if
you want the new pictures to be in a specific level.
This new feature is especially useful when testing key-drawings.
Although a few functions are provided to cater for this, testing keys
was never straightforward. When the KEYS-mode in the digitizer is used
while the AddCells-option is selected, the (fake) inbetween cells will
be created, as well as the normal cells. If the pictures are properly
named, the correct timing will await you when returning to the xsheet.
In many situations there will no longer be any need to open the Cells-
or PicturePanel, as the timing of the automatically created xsheet can
be adjusted by dragging cells. This makes editing more intuitive.
The NewPics option is saved in the configuration file.
Centring the Animation
-----------------------
The Flipperscreen can be positioned freely anywhere on the monitor
by clicking on the displayed picture, then dragging it (by moving
the mouse while holding the left mousebutton pressed).
This can be useful for calibrating the display before transferring
the animation to video and for centring overscanned pictures.
The AutoCentre gadget, located between the slow backward and slow
forward gadgets on the Flip controlpanel, will try to centre the
screen automatically. It can also be used to reset the position of
the display after moving it around.
(This gadget was previously used to stop the animation. Its function
became obsolete, because the controlscreen now disappears whenever
the animation is played at full speed ...)
------------------------- ALTERED FEATURES --------------------------
The CameraMount options
-----------------------
The suboptions 'Straight" and "Overhead", of which one or the other
was set, are replaced by the 'Flip X" and "Flip Y" options. This
allows to flip only 1 axis of the digitized image instead of either
none or both axis. There seems to be some use of flipping only 1
axis when digitizing slides or mixing different scenes together.
These options are saved in the configuration file.
Sample size
-----------
It is now possible to use samples that are longer than the 130K
restriction imposed by the custom sound chip.
Because copying the sampledata from fast to chip-ram, as soundeditor
programs do, would slow the animation down, the samples still have
to reside in chip-ram. Thus, the amount of chip-ram available will
now be the physical size limit for samples.
Speech
------
Workbench 3.0 and higher no longer includes the translator.library and
narrator.device, needed for speech. It seems Commodore's licence for
this facility has been discontinued.
Version 1.812 or higher of Take_2 will no longer insist that these
files are available at start-up. If they arn't found, a simple beep
will be used for any of the beep/male/female options in the digitizer.
AGA compatibility
-----------------
The size of palettes is no longer fixed to a maximum of 32 colours,
which means the new AGA modes should work fine with Take-2.
AGA resolutions should give no problems either, but try turning 'mode
promotion' off in some cases.
There are no more restrictions on the resolutions and rastersizes.
Pictures that are larger than the screen are clipped, smaller pictures
are centred on the screen automatically.
You should try to use a screen width that is a multiple of 64, like
704 for overscan. Because all bitmap widths are padded in this way for
AGA compatibility, more work has to be done to fit pictures with other
sizes, which can slow down the animation.
---------------------------- BUG FIXES ------------------------------
There where some problems with the sound length when the flipspeed
was changed after the samples where loaded. The length calculation
was only done at loadtime. This is now solved.
The double-buffering system has been redone completely. It seems
to work much smoother and shows no screen flickering at the bottom
of the flipper, as was the case with the old DBuff system when used
with a 2.x ROM.
The problem with the sliderbars being slightly incorrect has been sol-
ved. This also makes the cell dragging more easy to use, since this
bug sometimes made the xsheet go up and down 1 frame while dragging.
If a soundchannel was stolen by another program, Take-2 couldn't use
that channel any more, even when it was given back to the system by
the other program. Stolen soundchannels are now reallocated when they
are freed again.
Whenever a warning requester popped up twice without a new action
from the user (such as "File already exists" for a whole scene) the
program crashed or stopped the action. This has been solved.
The PREVIEW function in the MergeLevels requester tended to crash in
low (CHIP) memory conditions. This should no longer be the case.
The digitizer should now work will all kinds of other peripherals,
including GVP and SUPRA harddisks.
When another program changed the currently displayed directory in the
Filerequester, the directory will be updated. Before, a 'Mangled IFF'-
error was displayed when a picture was saved, changed in DPaint, and
then reloaded into Take-2 (the filesize didn't match the IFF size).
Take-2 should now make use of virtual memory, if installed.
For performance reasons, only pictures can be stored in vmem.
The memory display and memory bars will show the added memory. Because
third party vmem systems, (such as GigaMem) have to resort to patching
some of the system vectors, this could still present some problems,
especially on 1.3 machines.
Geert Vergauwe