EMPIRE

The Acorn Replay Movie Editor
Empire is an application for editing and creating ARMovie files. It
was launched at the Acorn User Spring Show in 1993 to accompany the
Acorn Replay DIY kit from Irlam Instruments Ltd. It offered easy to use
facilities at an affordable price for schools and individuals wishing to
edit their own Acorn Replay Movies. It can edit video, video+audio or
audio only movies. It can also export frames and sound tracks in various
formats.
It can import files including.
- ARMovie files
- ViA files (created by ReplayDIY version 1)
- Any bitmap format importable by ChangeFSI
- DrawFiles
- Microsoft WAVE, AIFF, Armadeus, AudioWorks and other audio files
It can edit any frame rate and size video, any sample rate audio.
EMPIRE Version 2 now offers many more import and export options and
much greater flexibility of use. It can now load any Acorn Replay movie,
decompressing frames on the fly if necessary as well as handling any
size or frame rate of movie.
EMPIRE is fully Risc PC compatible and the player application that was
originally developed for use with EMPIRE is now bundled by Acorn with
every Risc PC sold.
EMPIRE can import most sound sample and still image file formats and
whilst EMPIRE is primarily an Acorn Replay Movie Editor the fact that
sound and video may be edited seperately means that EMPIRE can also be
used as an audio only editor with its capacity only being limited by
disk space rather than memory.
The number of applications that can create and import Acorn Replay files
is growing all the time.
As well as the original Replay DIY kit you can now capture video with
the Wild Vision Eagle M2 card or the new Irlam 24i16. Movie files can
also be created with packages such as RePhorm, Morpheus and Architech
amongst others.
Movies created and edited with EMPIRE may be imported into multimedia
authoring packages such as Genesis, Magpie and Key Author, presentation
packages such as Cable News as well as databases e.g. Datapower and
S-Base.
EMPIRE will run happily on any RISC OS machine with a hard disc and 4MB
RAM It really comes into its own however when used on a Risc PC where
displays such as 1024 by 768 pixels in 32 thousand colours are
available.
EMPIRE utilises a unique film strip display to allow the preview and
editing of Acorn Replay movies and sound tracks, allowing very fast
access to any portion of a clip along with a configurable cacheing
system to give fast screen redraws whilst using the minimum of
memory.
Tracks can be viewed at any scale with the highest allowing every
sample of a sound track to be seen or the lowest giving an overview of
an entire 5 minute video clip across one screen.
For ease of operation EMPIRE features three main windows.
Clip bank
Movie clips and sound samples are loaded into the Clip Bank for
titling and easy reference. The display may be configured to show the
full information about a clip or simply its title frame.

Preview window
The preview window allows clips to be viewed and can also be used to
set Edit points. Drawfiles may be overlaid onto the Output track using
the annotation features built in to Version 2.

Timeline
Clips are displayed on the Timeline as a series of frames in the
style of a film strip along with a waveform display of the sound track.
Clips are edited by placing Cue markers at the required point on the
timeline to define a start and end point for both audio and video
tracks. The portion to be edited is indicated in green above the
track.
The selected sequence is then transferred to the Output track by
using the Edit button and a new sequence is built up with subsequent
edits of audio or video material using any of the three edit modes i.e
Insert, Replace and Delete.
The edited sequence may be previewed at any time and when completed
it may be used as is or compressed using an Acorn Replay compressor
(available separately in the Replay Starter Kit).

EMPIRE FEATURES
- Fully RISC OS compliant.
- Import any Replay movie or sound track. Video and audio tracks are decompressed on the fly.
- Import most sound sample and still image formats.
- File size only limited by hard disc space, not by memory.
- List based non destructive editing system.
- Can resample video frame rate and sound sample rate to match input format to requested output format.
- Fully supports Acorn !Help system.
- User defined choice settings.
- Full keyboard shortcuts for main operations.
- Uses Dynamic Memory Areas on the Risc PC for faster operation.
Video Editing
- Insert selected frames from source clips into output track.
- Replace selected frames in output track with frames from source tracks.
- Delete selected frames from output track.
- Undo edit list.
- Selective Re-do of Edits.
- Import Edit Decision Lists.
- Alter video speed for slow-motion or timelapse effects.
- Overlay Draw files onto video for titles and annotations.
- On-the-fly decompression of compressed Replay Movies.
Sound Editing
- Same edit modes as for video.
- Edit audio only movies.
- Replace individual audio tracks on Replay files with new audio tracks.
- Modify audio level of selected clips.
- Add sound fade in or fade out.
- Mute selected audio section.
- All sound editing internally as 16 bit.
- Customisable Audio Effects, including Echo/Reverb, Fender Vibro and Muting.
Timeline Display
- Film strip display shows sequence of frames in source clips and edited movie sequence.
- Edit marker shows position of in and out edit points and selection of Audio or Video Tracks to be edited.
- Goto selected time point.
- Fast scroll along film strip using Track scroll bar or by using cursor keys.
- Goto Cue points or start/end of clip.
- Display Cue Points in Timecode (Hours, Minutes, Seconds, Frames) or as decimal seconds.
- Variable scaling for frame size and frame scale.
- Track locking to keep Source Tracks and Output Track synchronised.
Preview window
- Preview source clips or edited sequences and timeline tracks at full size, half size or in full-screen mode.
- Fast scroll through source frames using scroll bar.
- Jump to start of clip or edited sequence.
- Single step forward or backwards through a clip or edited sequence.
- Arrange positions of overlaid Draw file elements for overlay. OLE support to allow easy editing in Draw.
- Export displayed image as sprite.
- Playback interpolation to give smoother colour gradation in large screen modes.
- Play Big option to allow preview in full screen modes.
Clip window
- Display details of source clips.
- Thumbnail descriptive sprite.
- Full info display shows thumbnail sprite, clip title, duration, sound and video type and frame size.
- Save clip lists.
- Edit descriptive sprite and text of source movies.
Input File types
- Any Replay file (compressed or uncompressed).
- ViA files produced by Acorn Replay DIY kit version 1.
- Sound samples in 8 bit or 16 bit Mono or Stereo, linear, µ-Law or ADPCM format.
- Clip lists.
- Edit Decision Lists.
- Sprite files.
- Any bitmap format supported by ChangeFSI.
- Draw files.
Output file types
- Uncompressed Replay movies.
- Sound only Replay files (8 bit,16 bit and 4 bit ADPCM.)
- Export individual frames as 256 colour, 256 grey scale, 15 bit or 24 bit per pixel sprites or Clear files.
- Export sound as Armadeus, Wave, AIFF or raw data files.
- Edit decision lists for matching EMPIRE edits to original video tapes.
Capacities
- Type 3 Replay source files (uncompressed) with 12kHz stereo audio - 20Mb per minute.
- CD quality sound - 10 Mb per minute (2.5Mb per minute with ADPCM).
- Acorn Replay Compressor source chunks 7Mb per minute (average).
- Final Acorn Replay Movies 6Mb per minute (average).
- Unlimited number of source clips (subject to disc capacity).
- Unlimited edits per output sequence.
- Unlimited UNDO edit buffer.
SPECIFICATIONS
To run EMPIRE you need
- RISC OS 3.1 or later.
- ARM250 (ARM3 or better for real time preview).
- 4 Mb of Memory.
- 80 Mb Hard Disc.
Network support
It is NOT recommended that EMPIRE be run over a network using shared
hard disc facilities, but it may be installed on a network file server
if local hard disc facilities are available on the client machine.
Additional recommended equipment
- On Archimedes and A5000 machines a graphics card will give you more useable screen area and more colours.
- For archiving a removeable drive such as a 3.5" Magneto-optical or Syquest drive is recommended.
- For better quality sound you can use any 16bit sound card with Replay sound drivers.
Supplied Utilities
- Splitter
- Takes completed Acorn Replay Mmvies and splits them across a number of floppies.
- Re-joiner
- Re-joins movies that have been split up onto seperate floppies using Splitter back onto a single file on hard disc.
Other useful software not included
- EmConvert
- Compiles movies from collections of sprites, clear files or other bitmap formats.
Available from Uniqueway.
- CDSampler
- creates sound-only movies direct from a CD player.
Available from Uniqueway.
- Replay Starter Kit
- Includes
- Two video compressors (Moving Lines, Moving Blocks)
- Compressor front end (AREncode)
- CDROM of movies and example multimedia software
- Detailed guide to ARPlayer, AREncode and ARMovie
- Detailed introduction to getting the best from Multimedia.
The OLESupport module is © Computer Concepts, 1993 and is used
under licence.
The 'rink' system used to implement plug-in audio effects
is © Ben Summers, 1994 and is used under licence.
Ordering
- Single User version £99.00 + VAT
- Site Licence Primary
- Site License Secondary
© Copyright 1995 Uniqueway Ltd.
Comments to
webmaster@uniqway.demon.co.uk