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---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rend24 - A Batch Image Conversion System Written by Thomas Krehbiel Copyright © 1991,1992 Thomas Krehbiel All Rights Reserved ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTE This documentation assumes a basic familiarity with AmigaDOS and the Amiga interface. If you aren't familiar with the concepts of files, directories, gadgets, windows, etc. you should consult your "Introduction to the Amiga" manual. Another excellent source of information is your local Amiga users group. DISTRIBUTION Rend24 is being distributed as Shareware. If you find this program useful, please consider sending a donation of $30 or so to the author (address given at the end of this document). There is no longer any difference between the Shareware version of Rend24 and the Registered version of Rend24, so you will not be getting anything new by sending me a donation. If you choose to send a donation, please state that you already have version 1.05. Rend24 may be freely distributed in its original form to any bulletin board, network, or through any public domain library collection, so long as no fees (beyond reasonable media costs) are charged for such distribution. This product is being distributed "as is", with no warranties expressed or implied as to the use or misuse of the program. The author cannot be held responsible for any damages resulting from the use of this program. Note that the 1.05 series will very likely be the final releases. If you find it lacking features, you may want to consider purchasing ImageFX from GVP; it includes a batch processor very similar to Rend24 (coincidentally :) and a wealth of image manipulation features. I will continue to fix bugs in Rend24 as I get time, but major new features will probably not happen. OOPS! Previous versions of the Rend24 documentation left out a very important statement: This software is based in part on the work of the Independant JPEG Group. I'd just like to apologize to the Independant JPEG Group for not having included this, they deserve full credit for their work in bringing this popular compression format to the computer world at large. CHANGES IN 1.05a Fixed a couple of horrendous bugs in the AGA implementation; it would crash loading any non 24-bit ILBM file, and second and subsequent HAM8 renderings would be basically screwed, preventing the rendering of, for example, HAM8 animations. These are fixed. Rend24 now defaults to using the small version of Viewtek (included) to show pictures and animations, instead of ShowAnim. Viewtek, however, requires Workbench 2.0 to run. For more details about Viewtek, look on a BBS near you for the complete release. It's a cool viewer... :) A couple problems with loading GIFs were fixed, including the problems with loading odd-width images, and crashes on certain types of GIFs. The ASL requester opens a lot taller now. CHANGES IN 1.05 AGA support was the biggest priority in this version. To support the new modes and such, a somewhat signficant change had to be made in the way that the output format was chosen in the front end. The one cycle gadget was broken into six cycle gadgets... :) Support for processing frames that do not progress by 1 has been added (ie. support for processing every other frame, etc.). Sorry, 1.05 prefs are not compatible with older versions. You'll have to resave your prefs. INTRODUCTION Rend24 was originally written as an excercise in converting 24-Bit IFF files into displayable resolutions. At that time, I was working with the Toaster's Lightwave 3D often, and without the benefit of a single-frame controller, it was somewhat awkward getting a displayable animation out of Lightwave. Lightwave is capable of saving each frame it generates as a 24-Bit IFF file; hence, an idea was born. What I needed was a program that would wait around in the background while Lightwave generated a frame. Then, when the frame was saved to disk, the program would jump in and convert the 24-bit file down to an Amiga-displayable format and pack it into an IFF Animation file and return to waiting for the next frame. So I set out to write my own program to do the job. Along the way it has acquired a number of useful features which don't relate at all to the original plan. You can use it to convert GIF files to Amiga format. You can use it to view JPEG files directly. You can use it interactively convert VistaPro generated files into DCTV animations. This program does a lot for the money... Version 1.05 now fully supports the AGA chipset, for rendering to the new modes. It is one of the few programs at this time that does. CONCEPT Rend24's purpose is to convert one or more input images into individual viewable ILBM images or a single viewable ANIM animation. The input images may be 24-bit ILBMs, GIF format images, or even JPEG compressed images. You control the format of the output images and/or animations, including the color depth, dithering, and size. Rend24's strength lies in its ability to convert batches of images at a time. You tell Rend24 where to find the input images, how many there are, and then sit back and watch it go. FEATURES o Runs under Workbench 1.3, 2.0, and 3.0. o Generally fast conversion times. o Supports most standard IFF-ILBM image formats, from 2-color through HAM all the way up to 8- and 24-bit. o Supports reading Compuserve GIF format images directly. o Supports reading JPEG/JFIF compressed images directly (thanks to the Independant JPEG Group). o Can generate individual pictures or a standard IFF-ANIM Op 5 animation, with or without palette locking. o Supports HAM-E and DCTV format rendering. o Supports Floyd-Steinberg dithering to increase the number of apparent colors. o Now includes a handy-dandy front-end for CLI-phobes. o Supports arbitrary scaling of input images. o Full support of AGA modes (as of 1.05). HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS Rend24 should run on any Amiga with any amount of chip and fast memory. However, due to the nature of 24-bit image manipulation, Rend24 can use up quite a bit of memory loading and converting an image. Working with 320x200x24 images I would say you would need 1Meg minimum. Working with 768x480x24 images you will probably need at least 3Meg of free memory. Rend24 always uses fast memory except for the memory to open the display screen, so chip memory should not be a problem. Rend24 is fully Workbench 2.0 compatible (as of the time of this writing, at least). In fact, it takes advantage of a couple of features in 2.0 which make Amiga mode conversion times a tad faster. As of version 1.05, Rend24 also excels under Workbench 3.0. INSTALLATION Rend24 is fairly easy to install. Simply drag the program icon to wherever you would like it to reside. It doesn't have to be in your C: directory (although if you plan to use the program from CLI you might want to put it in your command path somewhere). Certain features of Rend24 require some libraries to be installed in your LIBS: directory. There should be an installation program accompanying the main program, which will guide you through installing the libraries. The libraries are: hame.library Required for generating HAM-E images. dctv.library Required for generating DCTV images. arp.library Required under version 1.3 of the operating system to have a file requester available in the front end. That's it! That wasn't so hard, was it? :) An INSTALL script should be included to automate the installation process for you. RUNNING THE PROGRAM FROM WORKBENCH Couldn't be easier... simply double click the Rend24 icon and in a few seconds a window will appear on your Workbench with a whole bunch of gadgets in it. This is what I call the "Front End" window, and is where you tell Rend24 what you want to do in a (hopefully) convienient manner. Source Image Pattern This is where you enter input file(s). Click in the string gadget and just type the full pathname of image you want to convert. Or, you can click on the Choose gadget to the right to open a file requester where you can choose the input image. You can specify a standard wildcard pattern for the source image, to convert more than one at a time. The pattern is the same used by standard AmigaDOS commands (#?)... you may also use the Unix-style '*' character as a wildcard. So if you specify "DollFace*.pic" as the source image pattern, then all files matching that pattern will be converted. If you are using the Frame Count gadget (see below), then enter only the filename "base" without any numbered extensions. ** NOTE ** Be sure you press RETURN after entering text into the string gadget, or Rend24 will not accept it. Source Frame Count This is used when you are converting a series of frames output by, for example, Lightwave or VistaPro. It expects the source image filenames to be in the format "Picture001", "Picture002", "Picture003", etc. You enter the base name of the files (eg. what you entered in Lightwave or VistaPro for the file prefixes; do NOT include the numbers afterward!) into the Source Image Pattern gadget, and then enter the number of frames you want to convert in the Source Frame Count gadget. Start You can use this gadget to enter a different starting frame number when converting a series of frames (using the Frame Count gadget above). Normally, Rend24 will start at frame 1, but there may be occasions when you would need to start somewhere else (when generating only a portion of an animation, for instance). Skip This number is the number of frames to skip when processing a numbered sequence of frames. For example, a value of 1 will process every frame, a value of 2 will process every other frame, etc. Dest Picture Pattern: If you want to generate individual IFF-ILBM pictures, you enter the full pathname of the output file here. You can also click on the Choose gadget to the right to bring up a file requester to make you selection easier. If you are converting more than one input file, you will probably want to specify a pattern for the output pictures. The pattern is just like a standard pathname, except there should be a single '*' character in the path somewhere. For each file converted, the '*' character will be replaced with the name of the input image currently being converted, minus any extensions. So if the current input image is "DollFace.pic" and your output pattern is "mydrive:*.ham" then the output filename for "Dollface.pic" will by "mydrive:Dollface.ham". Note that you do not *have* to specify any outputs at all; if you don't then each input file will simply be rendered and viewed. This can be used as a simple (but effective) deep color image viewer for stock Amigas. Dest Animation: If you want to create an animation file, then enter the full pathname of the destination animation file here. Once again, you can click on the Choose gadget to bring up a file requester. All files converted will be packed into this animation file. Note that you cannot append to an existing animation file; you can only create an animation from the conversions done in a single Rend24 session. So to create an animation you need to either use an input pattern or specify a frame count. Otherwise the animation will only have one frame in it. Note that you do not *have* to specify any outputs at all; if you don't then each input file will simply be rendered and viewed. This can be used as a simple (but effective) deep color image viewer for stock Amigas. Device: Allows you to select the output display device for the rendered images. You can choose from a standard Amiga display, DCTV display (in either 3 or 4 bitplanes), or HAM-E display (Register or HAM mode). Format: Color format selection. Choices are "Luma", for NTSC luminence conversion, "Grey", for an average greyscale conversion, "Color", for a standard register mode color image, "HAM", for a 6-bitplane HAM image (4096 colors), and "HAM8", for an 8-bitplane HAM8 image (262,000 colors). HAM8 will only function on an Amiga equipped with the AGA chipset. Mntr: Amiga Output Monitor selection. "Monitors" are used under Workbench 2.0 or later for varying display formats. Rend24 gives you the choices of Default, NTSC, DBLNTSC, PAL, DBLPAL, VGA, and Super72. In most cases you will want to use Default. Default User's preferred monitor setting. NTSC Force NTSC. DBLNTSC Force scan-doubled NTSC (AGA only). PAL Force PAL. DBLPAL Force scan-doubled PAL (AGA only). VGA VGA modes (Productivity, etc.). Super72 Super72 mode (eg. 800x600). Col: Selection for the number of colors in Amiga rendered images (HAM-E and DCTV images always use a fixed number of colors). Choices are "Max", and 2 through 256 colors. Selecting "Max" will always render the maximum amount of colors available to the mode you have chosen. Certain combinations of modes and colors may not work without an AGA-equipped Amiga (eg. 256-color Super72). HAM modes always used a fixed number of colors (16 or 64). Hor: Amiga Horizontal resolution selection. Choices are "Lores", "Hires", and "Super Hires". This affects the size of the pixels in the horizontal direction. Ver: Amiga Vertical resolution selection. Choices are "No Lace" and "Lace". This affects the size of the pixels in the vertical direction. Auto Mode: When selected, Rend24 will attempt to determine the proper screen mode to use for each picture it loads. This is the way that Rend24 always used to work. Otherwise, the screen mode selected with the above gadgets will be used for each picture. Auto Mode always uses the Default monitor, so if you need to render to Super72 or VGA you cannot use Auto Mode. High Quality: This gadget only has meaning for DCTV and HAM-E rendering formats. For DCTV images, if High Quality is checked then Rend24 will use 4 bitplanes instead of 3. For HAM-E images, if High Quality is checked then Rend24 will generate a palette with a higher degree of accuracy, which can take significantly longer. Run "Convert": If checked, then Rend24 will attempt to run Black Belt Systems' "Convert" program on each input file. This can be used to convert foreign file types to standard IFF24 for use with Rend24. You will probably not need to use this very often, if ever. Lock Palette: When checked, this will keep the palette the same across multiple conversions. That is, it will generate a palette for the first frame only, and then use that same palette for all subsequent frames. This is most useful for HAM-E animations and for creating animations for, say, DPaint (which doesn't support different palettes for different frames). Ordered Dither: When generating greyscale images, you now have the option of selecting an ordered dither pattern. Ordered dithers are very useful for creating animations, both for speed of playback and for reducing the size of the animation. Selecting ordered dither for color images does nothing. F/S Dither: This enables the Floyd-Steinberg dithering algorithm, which can increase the number of apparent colors in an image. It generally does not work too well for HAM images, though, and in all cases increases the amount of time it takes to convert each image. For animations, this can also significantly increase the number of changes between frames, causing the animation to play slower and consume huge amounts of memory. Double Width: When selected, Rend24 will double the width of any images that are smaller than 384 pixels wide. This was added for rendering HAM-size images into DCTV format without squishing the image horizontally. When rendering to DCTV, you probably want to leave this checked. Halve Width: When this is checked, Rend24 will halve the width of any images that are larger than 384 pixels wide. This is handy when converting hires 768x480 images into HAM images. Halve Height: When checked, Rend24 will halve the height of any images that are larger than 240 pixels tall. Handy for converting what would normally be an interlace image into non-interlace. Rotate 90 Degrees: This will rotate each input image 90 degrees counter-clockwise. Handy for reading images saved by ASDG's ScanLab, which for some reason only saves images in portrait mode. NTSC Limit: When checked, this will reduce the brightness of each input image to fit into NTSC limits. Note that my implementation is a VERY simple algorithm, and may not be what you want. Delete Source's: When checked, Rend24 will delete each input 24-bit image after it has been converted. This is most handy when converting frames from, for example, Lightwave or VistaPro as they generate the images. It will reduce the amount of hard drive space you need free while converting. However, it also eliminates the possibility of redoing the conversion since the source images will be gone. So be careful with this one. I recommend leaving this off (unless you are really pressed for hard drive space) and delete the source images only after you are satisfied with the results of Rend24. Hide Conversion: When checked, Rend24 will not show you images as they are being converted. For 16-color Hires images, this can significantly speed up the conversion process. It's also handy if you don't want to be annoyed by a bunch of screens popping to the front all the time. Don't Pause: Normally, Rend24 will pause after each image is converted and wait for a mouse click. When this option is enabled, it will go into "batch" mode and perform all of its conversions without user involvement. For converting animations, you will probably want to check this item. Wait for Source's: When checked, Rend24 will sit in a loop waiting for each input file to appear. This is especially useful for converting frames produced by Lightwave as the frames are generated. Ping-Pong Anim: When generating an animation from a numbered series of frames (ie. when you have a number other than zero in the Frame Count gadget), this will cause Rend24 to create the animation such that it will ping-pong when played back. It does this by duplicating all the frames in descending order after processing all the frames normally. Thus, it takes about twice as long to do this and the animation will be about twice as big. Also, since it requires all the frames in order to step backwards through them, make sure you don't delete the frames. No Loop Frames: Normally, Rend24 will append two "looping" frames to the end of any animation it creates. Turning this option on will keep Rend24 from doing this. X: Y: These two gadgets let you perform arbitrary scaling on source images. Enter the width and height of the resulting images you want in the X and Y gadget respectively, and Rend24 will scale the source images to this size, regardless of the original image size. Thus if you enter 160 and 100 into these gadgets then all resulting files will be 160x100 images/animations. Enter 0 and 0 to turn off the arbitrary scaling. Begin Conversion Click this when you have everything setup the way you want it to let Rend24 start working. Quit Click this or the window close gadget to quit Rend24. The front-end also has a few menus. They are described below: Save Settings (Right Amiga-S) This will save all your current front-end settings to a file in your S: directory. After you have things setup the way you want them, you might want to save the settings so you don't have to re-setup each time you run Rend24. Default Source Directory... Lets you choose the directory where input images come from by default. This is the directory that first comes up when you click the Choose gadget next to Source Image Pattern. Default Destination Directory... Lets you choose the directory where images are saved to by default. This is the directory that first comes up when you click the Choose gadget next to Dest Image Pattern. Default Animation Directory... Lets you choose the directory where animations are saved by default. This is the directory that first comes up when you click the Choose gadget next to Dest Animation. Show Animation... (Right Amiga-A) This is a simple way to show an animation created by Rend24. It brings up a file requester from which you can choose an animation file to play (it defaults to the animation file displayed in the Output Animation gadget). Rend24 defaults to using the program VTs to display the animation, but this may be changed by editing the "s:Rend24_105.prefs" file. The second line is the template that Rend24 uses to show the animation; where a %s appears in this line will be replaced with the filename selected by the user. Enter a line that you would normally type in the CLI here to change the animation viewer that Rend24 uses. For example, if you wanted to use ShowAnim for showing animations, you could change the line to: ShowAnim "%s" Show Image... (Right Amiga-P) This is a simple way to show an image possibly created by Rend24. It brings up a file requester from which you can choose an image file to display. Rend24 defaults to using the program VTs to display pictures, but this may be changed by editing the "s:Rend24_105.prefs" file. The third line is the template that Rend24 uses to show the image files; see above for details. RUNNING THE PROGRAM FROM CLI Is a bit more complicated. Useage from CLI is as follows: 1> Rend24 [options] <input_file> [input_file] ... The input file(s) must follow the options. You may specify more than one input file on the command line, and each input file may contains wildcard characters (standard AmigaDos patterns). Options consist of a dash (-) followed by a single (case-sensitive!) letter. You may specify more than one option letter after a single dash, except options that require an argument; they must be separate. Following is a list of all options currently supported in Rend24: -D Generate DCTV format images (note that CAPITAL D). Requires dctv.library. -6 High Quality ("6-bit") HAM-E mode. -aFILE Pack output files into the given animation file "FILE". -CNUM Bitplanes to render in output images (1-8). -c Call Black Belt's Convert for each input file. The Convert program must be in your current command path somewhere (ie. your C: directory). -d Enable Floyd-Steinberg dithering. -e Generate HAM-E format images. Requires hame.library. -fNUM Convert "NUM" input frames. -g Generate greyscale (average) images. -H Use a special ordered dither pattern for greyscale images. This is very handy when generating animations, as the anim size will come out smaller than one generated with Floyd-Steinberg dithering. -h Generate HAM images. -L Do not add looping frames to animations. -l Generate lumascale (luminence) images. -NSCREEN Open Rend24 on the given named public screen (2.0 only). -n Do not pause after converting each image. -o[PATTERN] Specify individual output image pattern. If PATTERN is not given (ie. -o by itself) then each file will be saved to the same directory as the source image with a representative extension. -P Generate a ping-pong animation. -p[FILE] Palette locking. If "FILE" exists, then a palette is read from it. If "FILE" does not exist, then the generated palette is saved to it. -r Delete (remove) input files after converting. -SNUM Starting frame number, defaults to 1. -s Only generate palette, do not actually render an image. -t Enable NTSC limiting. -v Hide conversion process. -w Wait for input images to appear. -X Double the width of input images. -x[WIDTH] Scale width by half, or to the given pixel width. -y[HEIGHT] Scale height by half, or to the given pixel height. -z Rotate image 90 degrees counter-clockwise. Note that you do not *have* to specify any outputs at all; if you don't then each input file will simply be rendered and viewed. This can be used as a simple (but effective) deep color image viewer for stock Amigas. The arbitrary scaling (-xN and -yN) does not anti-alias (or interpolate). It is meant to be fast. Rend24 writes standard ILBM palette files that can be read by DPaint. It will also read a standard ILBM palette file. Thus you can save your favorite palette from DPaint and have Rend24 render all its images using that same palette. It is not possible to select display modes from CLI. You must use the front end for this. In other words, from CLI, Rend24 always assumes the "Auto Mode" option. FILE FORMATS Rend24 will load most all types of IFF-ILBM images, including 8- and 24-bit images and standard Amiga resolutions. The only things I know of that it doesn't load are SHAM, Dynamic HAM, and Dynamic Hires images. It should handle images with mask planes. It will also load Compuserve GIF format images. It will handle interlaced and non-interlaced formats. For multiple-frame GIF's, it will just load the first frame. And it will also read JPEG images stored in the standard JFIF file format (the format used by all Amiga JPEG implementations that I know of). Rend24 reads and write standard IFF-ILBM palette files (ie. a BMHD and CMAP, no BODY). Rend24 writes images in standard IFF-ILBM format suitable for viewing with any standard picture viewer, and writes animations in standard IFF-ANIM Op 5 format. It automatically creates "looping" frames on the end of any animation it generates, unless turned off with No Loop Frames option. QUIRKS Rend24 does not handle "odd" sized images very well (images whose width is not a multiple of 8). All of the 'standard' images sizes should work fine. Since Rend24 uses hame.library for opening and maintaining HAM-E screens (it does NOT use renderhame.library!), Rend24 is subject to that library's limitations. The version of hame.library that I have does not like to open screens of odd sizes, so you may have to scale your images to a "regular" size to get it to work right (320x200 or 320x400, with/without overscan). Rend24 relies completely on dctv.library for generating DCTV format images, so if there are problems with DCTV renderings, it is more than likely the fault of dctv.library. EXAMPLES What you've all been waiting for... These examples assume you are using the front-end. You'll have to interpret a bit if you are using the CLI interface. Example #1 - Lightwave ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (Note: This is based on memory as I don't happen to have a Toaster sitting in front of me. I haven't seen much of Toaster 2.0 either, so this could be completely obsolete.) Suppose you want to convert a 30 frame animation generated with Lightwave into a standard Amiga animation. You might want to do this if you A) want to see a color preview of your animation before single-framing to tape to save wear and tear on your recorder, or B) don't *have* a single-frame recorder. We will call the animation scene "DollFace". 1. Go into Lightwave and create a killer 30 frame animation, ready for rendering in 768x480 mode. 2. Go into the "Record" menu, and choose the "Save Images" gadget. Save Images will save each frame generated on disk as a standard IFF-ILBM file - perfect for Rend24. Do NOT choose "Save Frames", as this saves in FrameStore format which Rend24 cannot read. You will be presented with a file requester from which you choose the image prefix for the frames generated. For this example, we will choose a prefix of "DollFace" - pick a convenient directory (we'll use "Images" in this example) and enter "DollFace" into the file gadget. Each frame generated will now be called "DollFaceNNN", where the "NNN" will be replaced with the number of the frame. (Ie. DollFace001, DollFace002, etc.). 3. Now pop back to Workbench (Left Amiga N) and run Rend24. When the front-end window appears, open the file requester to enter a source image pattern (by clicking the Choose gadget next to the Source Image Pattern gadget). Pick the same directory you entered in Lightwave ("Images" in our example), and also enter the exact same image prefix you entered in Lightwave ("DollFace" in our example, without any trailing numbers). So the result in the Source Image Pattern gadget should look something like "DH3:Toaster/3D/Images/DollFace". 4. Since the animation will be 30 frames, enter the number 30 into the Source Frame Count gadget. This tells Rend24 to append 001 - 030 to the source image pattern given above to get the name of each file to load, exactly like Lightwave does. Choose a starting frame number of 1. 5. Now choose the filename of your destination animation. For our example, we will simply save it to RAM:. You may, however, want to save the result to somewhere on your hard drive. Open the file requester (by clicking on Choose next to the Dest Animation gadget), and enter your output filename. For our example, we'll use "RAM:DollFace.anim". 6. Now decide on your animation image format. In this example, we'll keep things simple and just render to Amiga HAM mode. Click the Image Format cycler gagdet until it reads "HAM Image". We will also use the default maximum number of colors, so we leave the # gadget at 0. 7. Decide on your conversion options. If you plan to be loading this animation into DPaint, you should choose the "Lock Palette" option to keep the palette the same for all frames. A HAM image needs to be lores (< 384 pixels wide) so we need to turn on the "Halve Width" option to reduce the width of Lightwave's hires images down to lores. If you don't want interlace images (desirable to make the animation run faster and reduce conversion times), click on the "Halve Height" button as well. If you want to delete the files that Lightwave generates from disk as Rend24 finishes converting them, choose the "Delete Source's" checkbox. This will save a lot of hard drive space, but make it impossible to redo the conversion process if something goes wrong. If you don't want Rend24 to show each frame as it's converting (probably desirable in this case), check the "Hide Conversion" gadget. You will definitely want to check the "Don't Pause" gadget to make Rend24 not wait for a mouse click after each frame is converted. And you DEFINITELY want to check the "Wait for Source's" gadget as this will make Rend24 sit around in the background waiting for Lightwave to generate each frame. 8. Now that everything is setup, click the "Begin Conversion" gadget in Rend24. It will open it's status window and say that it is waiting for "DollFace001". 9. Now pop back to Lightwave (Left Amiga M) and tell it to begin rendering. As Lightwave finishes rendering each frame, Rend24 will kick in, convert the image to HAM, pack it into the destination animation, and then go back to sleep waiting for the next frame. When all the frames are finished, Rend24 will build looping frames on the end of the animation, and you will have a completed animation file ready for playing ("RAM:DollFace.anim" in our example). At this point you may use the "Show Animation..." menu item to view the animation immediately, or you may load the animation into (for example) Deluxe Paint for further editing. THE AUTHOR AND ACKS I can be reached at the following U.S. Mail address: Thomas Krehbiel 10747 Surry Road Chester, VA 23831 This is where you want to send your donations (cash, check, or money order; U.S. funds please). If you have a modem and don't mind calling long-distance, I can also be reached on the Late Nite Amiga BBS (804-262-9944) as Tom Krehbiel (user #13). Note that in older versions of Rend24 documentation I got the Late Nite phone number wrong (oops). The latest distributable version of Rend24 can always be found on Late Nite, as well. I can also be reached on BIX as "tkrehbiel". BIX is now connected to Internet, so my Internet address is "tkrehbiel@bix.com". BTW, I much prefer E-mail to regular mail... and I really don't have the time to give phone support (sorry!). If you do manage to find my phone number, be warned that I am VERY hard to reach. Thanks to the following people for helping to make this program like you now see it: Kermit Woodall . . . . . Promotion/Research/Testing Mike Vunck . . . . . . . . . . . . Promotion/Testing Bob Fisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Testing Stuart Ragland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Testing (And everyone else in the Late Nite Developer sub.) Thanks to Mike Vunck for the spiffy icon! The JPEG decoder was originally written by the Independant JPEG Group, headed by Tom Lane. These guys deserve a great deal of credit for bringing the somewhat convoluted JPEG compression format to the computer world at large. REVISION HISTORY (for the curious) 1.05a Fixed crashes loading non-24-bit ILBM's under 3.0 (oops). Release ASL requester opens a lot taller. 2/2/92 Now defaults to using VT_Small (included) instead of ShowAnim. Fixed second and subsequent HAM8 renderings. HAM and HAM8 palettes save only 16/64 colors again in CMAP. Fixed "problems" with loading odd-width GIF images. Fixed crashes when loading certain types of GIFs. Shows size of GIF as it's loading. When rendering to HAM, if Scale Width is on, it always scales, regardless of width. Fixes problem of cutting HAM-E pictures in half (oops). Fixed problems of not saving CMAPs in each ANIM frame. 1.05 Complete AGA (A1200/A4000) support. Release New options to support rendering to most any mode. 12/10/92 "New look" menus in the front end. 1.04i Rendered Amiga screens are now autoscrollable (V36+). Release Added an ordered dither option for greyscale images. 9/13/92 Fixed major bug in handling large size images (>768w). Fixed fairly harmless Enforcer hit on program startup. Added untested support for AGA modes (HAM8, etc.). Fixed bug that caused ANIM compression to crash sometimes. 1.04h Added utility menu to show pictures, animations. Release New and improved overscan calculation (V36+). 7/8/92 Can now open front end/status on public screens (V36+). Fixed some bugs in the GIF loading code. 1.04g Now handles any number of digits in frame number extensions. Beta Can render images with arbitrary number of colors (bitplanes). 6/30/92 Can now start generating from frames other than 1. Now handles non-8 point system fonts in status window. 1.04f Added Double Width option for DCTV fanatics. Release Added option to make Ping-Pong animation from numbered frames. 3/14/92 Added option to not tack on looping frames to animations. Revised front-end to include new options. 1.04e Pads odd length DLTA chunks for !#$!@#$ buggy DPaint. Beta Fixed CMAP chunk lengths for (once again) DPaint. 3/8/92 1.04d Will now load GIF images directly. Beta Will now load JPEG images directly (if somewhat slowly). 2/28/92 Now returns to front end after Aborting an operation. New documentation! Better? Good question... No longer detaches from CLI for better script handling. 1.04c Clicking Close gadget while waiting no longer exits. Beta Refreshes screen properly under 2.0 after a Zoom. 11/15/91 Can scale images to any arbitrary width and height. Now reads and writes standard IFF ILBM palette files. Fixed an occasional massive crashing bug in ILBM saving. Fixed scaling settings being "forgotten" over multiple files. 1.04b Now detaches from the CLI; don't have to Run it anymore. Beta No longer opens a console when run from Workbench. 11/10/91 Closes front-end window while doing conversions. A nifty iconify feature added for Workbench 2.04. 1.04a Fixed a couple of bugs in animation creation. Beta 11/9/91 1.04 Now includes a built-in Front End, runnable from Workbench. Beta (Drumroll, please)... now generates DCTV images! 11/7/91 1.03 Compiled with the SAS/C Global Optimizer. Reg Only Now includes a version compiled for 68020/68030 machines. 10/22/91 Now loads standard IFF images and converts to 24-bit. Fixed some Enforcer hits and "free non-tracked" messages. Can now click on Rendered screen to continue. 1.02 Now handles odd width images correctly (I hope). Release Fixed numerous Enforcer hits during loading (oops). 7/11/91 1.01 Fixed a bug in IFF24 loader code. Release Fixed bug in the WaitFor routines. 6/3/91 Now loads ADPro 8-bit greyscale images. 1.00 First public release. Release Now includes `RendFE.rexx' front-end program. 5/18/91 Fixed trying to add loop frames to non-existant ANIMs. 0.18 No longer clobbers numeric filename extensions. Beta Recognizes ^C again to abort for compatibility. 5/16/91 Added dither "threshold" control for Color renders. 0.17 Fixed scaling "forgetfulness" over multiple files. Beta HAM rendering significantly faster. 5/14/91 Better overscan display (I hope). Nice little output window with status bar. Loop frames now tacked onto end of animations created. Added 90 degree counter-clockwise rotation option `-z'. 0.16 Recompiled with SAS/C 5.10. Alpha Now requires `hame.library' for HAM-E rendering. 5/8/91 Much faster IFF24 loading; as fast as ADPro now. Wildcarding rewritten; requires Arp under 1.3. Added `-t' for NTSC Limiting. Beginnings of better documentation. Generally faster rendering times, especially greyscale. Can now scale image height in half with `-y' option. Scaling now a seperate operation from the rendering. Significantly faster rendering under 2.0. Loader will handle anywhere from 9- to 24-bit images. 0.15 Palette save/load now functional. Alpha Fixed memory leak in ANIM compression. 4/9/91 0.14 Fixed Hame reg mode color wrongness. Alpha Now overscans picture under 1.3, too. 4/5/91 Now alphabetizes wildcarded input files. 0.13 Color palette selection rewritten. Less redundancy. Alpha Now takes scaling into account when building histogram. 4/5/91 Histogram (unfortunately) noticeably slower. But palette selection is faster and uses less memory. Fixed left-edge-HAM-fringe-in-non-dithered problem. Definitely a speed decrease here. 0.12 Fixed phantom palette load/save problem. Alpha I think I fixed the death on out of memory during load. 4/2/91 Fixed small memory leak problem. Pads width of input images to a byte boundary. Slight speed increase in non-HAM, especially dithered. 0.11 Fixed bug in -hx mode. Alpha New `-a' animation packer option. 3/30/91 New `-f' for specifying Lightwave frames. New palette locking method with `-p' option. 0.10 Added `@' input script file option. Alpha Now overscans Hame cookie and palette lines if it can. 3/27/91 Added `-w' to wait for input files to appear. Added `-r' option to remove input files when done. Hides screen while saving for those of us with 2090's. 0.09 Grey24, Color24, and Ham24 consolidated into Render24. Alpha Command line options changed somewhat. 3/26/91 Better output file pattern parsing (eg: -oPics/*.reg). 0.08 Fixed occasional after-save guru. Alpha Supports uncompressed IFF24's now (I think). 3/26/91 ^C will break a rendering in progress (hurray!). Clean Hame ham mode support! 0.07 Does not use Hame color register 0 at all. Alpha Hame ham support added, but looks terrible. 3/26/91 0.06 Makes FORM length even for DPaint's mangled-IFF bug. Alpha Only deletes Convert temp file AFTER image is rendered. 3/24/91 Initial HAM rendering -- slow, no Hame. 0.05 Fixed all-black-horizontal-line-turning-off-Hame problem. Alpha Allows Unix-style wildcard input pattern. 3/23/91 Added Kermit's kludge to call BB's Convert on input files. Color rendering 1x-3x faster non-dithered. 0.04 Color rendering about 4x faster non-dithered. Alpha 3/22/91 0.03 Initial color rendering -- VERY slow. Alpha 3/21/91 0.02 Initial REAL greyscale rendering. Alpha Added option to save resulting image. 3/20/91 0.01 Experimental greyscale rendering. Alpha 3/19/91