The Best of Mecomp Multimedia 2/MECOMP-CD-II.iso/amiga/sound/amigaamp/amigaamp.readme

Text File | 1998-06-03 | 14.1 KB | 375 lines

Short:    MPEG audio player with GUI (68k/PPC)
Uploader: Thomas Wenzel ([e-mail])
Author:   Thomas Wenzel ([e-mail])
Type:     mus/play
Version:  2.0


Introduction
------------
AmigaAMP is a GUI based MPEG audio player using mpega.library on the 68k
processor or the amp decoding engine in the PPC version.  Sound is played
back using the AHI audio system.  AmigaAMP is NOT another frontend for the
CLI based mpega.  Anyway, if you've got problems not related to the user
interface but with AHI, AsyncIO or mpega.library, PLEASE contact the
corresponding author directly.  I wouldn't be able to help you in this
case.


Requirements (not included in this archive!)
--------------------------------------------
AmigaOS 3.0 or higher
68020 processor or better
mpega.library    (Aminet:util/libs/mpega_library.lha)
asyncio.library  (Aminet:dev/c/AsyncIO.lha)
AHI audio system (Aminet:mus/misc/ahiusr.lha)


Recommended
-----------
PowerUP and ppc.library v45
AmigaOS 3.1 (OS3.1 AND PowerUP are needed for the spectrum analyzer!)

Features
--------
 - FREEWARE!  No beta, no nag requesters and no expiry date!
 - GadTools based font sensitive user interface
 - Alternatively WinAMP compatible user interface (new!)
 - Workbench application (you can drop icons on its window)
 - Easily configurable
 - AHI device-level access (uses default audio mode automatically)
 - PPC (PowerUP) support
 - ID3 tag editor (artist, title, albm, etc.)

Limitations
-----------
 - The PPC version doesn't support MPEG2.5 yet, I'm working on it
 - No realtime spectrum in the 68k version
 - No realtime spectrum when using AmigaOS 3.0 -- sorry guys!
 - No realtime spectrum when playing MP2 files yet

History
-------

v2.0 - so many changes it was worth bumping the version number :-)
     - position of genre listview gadget fixed
     - fixed bugs when playing mono or 22.05 kHz files
     - digital volume control
     - AREXX interface (see AREXX.readme)
     - automatic detection if another AmigaAMP task is already
       running
     - alphabetically sorted playlist (not editable yet)
     - configurable buffersize
     - WinAMP lookalike GUI (see below)
     - Improved fontsensitivity of old GUI
     - cached taginfo -- will be written when the file is closed

v1.1 - name changed to AmigaAMP
     - PPC version
     - ID3 tag editor
     - commandline support

v1.0 - initial release called MPEGAHI

Getting started (configuration)
-------------------------------
Important! You need a properly installed and configured AHI audio system
to run AmigaAMP. Without a correct setup the sound may be very poor!

First of all run the AHI setup program in your Prefs drawer. Select
one of the units from 0 to 3 but not the Music unit. If you don't use
unit 0 for anything already I recommend using that one.

Select one of the "fast stereo++" audiomodes that matches your audio
hardware. For Prelude playback I recommend "Prelude:Fast 16 bit stereo++
realtime".

Now you need to know what sampling rate most of your MPEG files
have. Probably it's 44100 Hz because that's the standard CD rate. If
you have a slow processor you may want to run AmigaAMP in frequency division
mode to reduce CPU load. Have a look at the table below for the recommended
settings.

It is important to set the frequency slider to your mostly used frequency
divided by your chosen frequency divisor. For example, if you're going to
playback lots of 44100 Hz MPEGs and frequency division is 1:2, set the
Frequency slider to 22050 Hz.

If you don't plan to have several programs playing back audio at the
same time, please leave the Channels slider at position 1. The remaining
settings depend on your audio hardware.

Ok, press the "Save" button in the bottom left corner.

Now it's time to configure AmigaAMP itself. If you've chosen another
AHI device than 0, you have to change the AHIUNIT tooltype of AmigaAMP
first. If not, just start it by double clicking on its icon and pop up
the setup window by chosing Config... from the menu.

Set the sliders and checkmarks to the recommended settings, save them using
the menu and close the settings window again.

That's it! AmigaAMP is now configured. You may want to fine-tune the
settings later. The overall performance depends on the speed of mpega.library
AND the the speed of your soundcard's AHI driver.

Recommended settings (tested with Prelude:Fast 16 bit stereo++ realtime)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

          |     Layer 1/2        |        Layer 3
Processor | Quality|FreqDiv|Mono | Quality|FreqDiv|Mono
----------+--------+-------+-----+--------+-------+-----
68040-40  |  high  |  1:2  | off | medium |  1:2  | on
68060-50  |  high  |  1:1  | off |  high  |  1:1  | off
PPC604e   |  high  |  1:1  | off |  high  |  1:1  | off

Note: In fact only the 68k version is affected by these settings.


Advanced settings
-----------------
* Bufsize:
Set the size of the read ahead buffer. Try playing with it until you
get best results. (Normally 16 to 32K is best)

* TaskPri:
Set the running task priority of AmigaAMP. The recommended value for
uninterrupted playback is 1. God knows what happens if some 3rd party
task rescheduler starts fiddling around with AmigaAMP's internal task
priorities...

* Read ID3 TagInfo
Try to read information about artist, title, etc. Because those are stored
at the end of the file it may slow down loading a bit. If this function
is switched off, TagInfo can neither be edited nor saved!

* Allow multiple instances
Normally when you click on an MPEG file project icon while AmigaAMP is
already playing another one, no second AmigaAMP task will be launched but
the already running task will start playing the new file. This behaviour
can be switched off. You have to start AmigaAMP twice manually and then
save the config with "Allow multiple instances" switched on from both
running tasks.

* Limit volume to 0dB
The volume slider ranges from silence to +6dB volume so that you can boost
more silent recordings. If you don't want to turn the volume above normal
accidentally, you can switch on this option.

* ToolType: DIRECTORY
Default directory to display in filerequester.

Usage (how to load and play sounds)
-----------------------------------
Most of the buttons should be self-explanatory because they can be found
on almost every CD player or tapedeck. However, as a computer program,
AmigaAMP is based on files, so there may be slight differences. The bottom
line buttons from left to right are:

 - Eject      Stops playback, empties the current playlist and opens a
              requester to select one or more files
 - Skip back  Moves to the previous track in the playlist if there is one.
 - Stop       Simply stops playback. (What else did you expect? :-)
 - Play       Starts playback if there's at least one track in the current
              playlist. If it's not, opens a requester to select tracks.
 - Skip fwd   Moves to the next track in the playlist if there is one.
 - Pause      Pauses playback at the current position

Just above the control button's there's a position slider. As you play
a file, it's button moves from left to right to display the relative
playback position within the current track. You can use the mouse to drag
this slider to a new position.

About the WinAMP GUI
--------------------
Since WinAMP v1.80 you can load customizeable textures (so called skins) for
the GUI. The skins consist of several bitmapped pictures together in one
directory and contain the the look of the window itself as well as images
for all the gadgets. Because more and more people ask me to make AmigaAMP
look like WinAMP I now included an alternative GUI routine that can load
those WinAMP skins!

I've included my three favourite examples in the "skins" directory. There
are three subdirectories called

 - base      -> the original WinAMP design
 - sex       -> a very colourful appearance :-)
 - eXquisite -> wood case and polished brass knobs :)

To activate one of those GUIs you have to start AmigaAMP with the options
NewGUI and Skin=<subdirectory name>. If you just want the WinAMP like basic
look you can simply type "AmigaAMP NG" where NG is the shortcut for NewGUI.
For the other designs a highcolor display mode on a graphics card
is strongly recommended.

Although the pictures all have the extension .iff they can be any format
that you have a datatype for. If you find a working BMP datatype (try
loading the pictures with multiview first) you can even copy WinAMP skins
direcly. AmigaAMP will try to load pictures with the extensions iff or bmp
automatically.

At the moment not everything of the WinAMP GUI is really functional. For
example there's no spectrum analyzer for MP2, no graphic EQ and the shuffle
button won't work either. Anyway, most of the rest is working!


Legal stuff
-----------
AmigaAMP is copyrighted freeware. It may be distributed freely as long as
no modifications are made to the executable and this document. A nominal
fee may be asked to cover distribution costs.

AmigaAMP may not be used for any commercial purposes or included with any
commercial product without the written permission of the author. It may
NOT be stored on ftp servers or websites that also hold commercial software
products or drivers for commercial hardware. The only exception are servers
of the Aminet archive.

No responsibilities are taken for damaged speakers, amplifiers, Amigas
or any other components or data involved while using AmigaAMP.

Although I've done some beta testing I can't guarantee that AmigaAMP will
not crash! If you find any bugs, let me know.

Here's the original amp.readme:
-------------------------------
amp MPEG audio decoder readme file (version 0.7.5)
(C) Tomislav Uzelac  1996,1997

amp is free software and can be _used_ freely by anyone. If you want to
do anything else with it, be sure to check the Legal section of this
document for legal issues.

THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THIS PROGRAM. Please check out the Legal section
of this document.

1. Introduction
2. Installation
3. Running
4. Feedback
5. Contributing
6. Legal


1. Introduction

amp (Audio Mpeg Player) is an MPEG audio decoder which I originally started
putting together as a side project of the MPEG hardware design project at
FER/Zagreb - just to confirm my knowledge of the standard. It works with
both MPEG1 and MPEG2 audio streams (except for the multichannel extensions
defined in MPEG2), layers 2 and 3.

There is a gui for amp, written in Tcl/Tk by Edouard Lafargue. It is
available at the amp home site ftp://ftp.rasip.fer.hr

Another gui supported is the Sajber Jukebox, written by Joel Lindholm.

The following people contributed their time and knowledge to amp:
Karl Anders Oygard, Ilkka Karvinen, Lutz Vieweg, Dan Nelson,
Edouard Lafargue, Andrew Richards, George Colouris,
Dmitry Boldyrev, Andy Lo A Foe, Thomas Sailer, Justin Frankel

amp home location is
    ftp://ftp.rasip.fer.hr/pub/mpeg/

and the mailing list: send 'HELP' in the body of the message to:
    [e-mail]

If you want to find out more about MPEG, best places to start are
    http://www.mpeg.org
    http://www.mpeg2.de


2. Installation

Installation should be simple enough if amp was ported to your system,
just do a

./configure
make

You can edit the makefile further to suit your system. If configure fails
to make a usable Makefile, you'll _have_ to edit it yourself.

Linux users should try real-time playing support, as described
in doc/realtime.txt. Some people that might pass on this feature are
those with slower machines (i.e. 486's), or SMP systems (see the
doc/linuxrealtime.txt file).
Some versions of the linux C library produce an error when compiling
amp with realtime support. A quick fix is to edit /usr/include/sched.h
and replace _P in the offending line with __P.

./configure --enable-realtime
make
chown root.root amp
chmod u+s amp

... this requires /dev/dsp to be both world readable and writeable. If you
have a special group for people allowed to use the sound device (for
instance, a group called sound), you can do a:

chmod g+s amp

or make your audio card world read/writeable (not recomended)

chmod o+rw /dev/dsp*

3. Running:

'amp -h' gives you usage & options. If your computer is on the slower
side, direct playback might not work, but you can decode it
to .wav or raw pcm and play it later.


4. Feedback

Send in your makefiles, opinions, bugreports, fixes; anything related to this
program. You can also send me unlimited amounts of money, sugar, milk, etc.

If you find any mpeg audio files that amp has trouble decoding, please tell
me about this via e-mail <[e-mail]>.


5. Contributing

Please contribute to amp. If you want to know what is going on in amp
development, you can join the developers mailing list

    [e-mail]

There are certain debugging facilities that I made in amp, but are disabled
in the current release (they are neither nice nor user-friendly). If anyone
enhances them (they are in dump.c) to the point that they're actually
usable I'll be happy to include the changes in the release. I think this
kind of debug output would be very useful to people studying these audio
algorithms.


6. Legal

This software can be used freely for any purpose. It can be distributed
freely, as long as it is not sold commercially without permission from
Tomislav Uzelac <[e-mail]>. However, including this software
on CD_ROMs containing other free software is explicitly permitted even
when a modest distribution fee is charged for the CD, as long as this
software is not a primary selling argument for the CD.

Building derived versions of this software is permitted, as long as they
are not sold commercially without permission from Tomislav Uzelac
<[e-mail]>. Any derived versions must be clearly marked as
such, and must be called by a name other than amp. Any derived versions
must retain this copyright notice.

/* This license is itself copied from Tatu Ylonen's ssh package. It does
 * not mention being copyrighted itself :)
 */

THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THIS PROGRAM - whatsoever. You use it entirely
at your risk, and neither Tomislav Uzelac, nor FER will be liable for
any damages that might occur to your computer, software, etc. in
consequence of you using this freeware program.


Tomislav Uzelac
<[e-mail]>