It's taken a while to get here but Graeme Sandiford believes that Amiga animators will definitely find the latest version of ClariSSA well worth the wait.

One of the things that the Amiga has been justly well-renowned for is its animation prowess. Not only does the Amiga have a selection of fab programs for making mind-blowing animations, it also does a damn good job of playing them back. There is no other affordable computing platform that can come close to matching the Amiga's animation abilities - not without spending a lot of cash on hardware add-ons.

Even so playing back animations is jolly hard work, and even a machine with the Amiga's substantial talents has its limitations. In most instances it's unlikely that the average user will encounter any problems, especially if they are sticking to creating cartoon-style animations. However, many a 3D-enthusiast has stared in slack-jawed disappointment as their action-packed animation plays back at about 5 frames per second.

There are things you can do to improve playback speeds. If you have a big box machine you probably dream about owning one of DPS's PAR (Personal Animation Recorder) cards. However at almost a grand, it's a dream that isn't likely to come true for most Amiga-owners. For most, the best they can hope for is to improve the playback of their animations by taking measures such as reducing camera movement and the resolution of their images.

Dual purpose

ClariSSA is a program from Germany that provided Amiga animators with a third option - software optimisation. However ClariSSA did more than simply improve the playback of animations, it also doubled as an animation editor by giving you extensive control over the frames in the animation.

Now, after a year-and-half wait, ClariSSA Pro has finally been translated into English and will certainly provide even more Amiga-animators with a reason to smile inanely at their computer's screen.

As torturous as it has been,
ClariSSA Pro appears to be worth the wait. Most people were overwhelmed by the number of features in the original program, but ClariSSA Pro makes the previous version look positively simple. There are more features and tools than most people would have thought could possibly reside in a single program.

Despite the addition of so many new features you would be hard pushed to notice the differences between ClariSSA Pro and the previous version just by looking at the interface.
ClariSSA Pro's interface is built around a highly configurable window system. This has the advantage of enabling you to have as many, or as few, windows open as you want. Where applicable the windows have cycle-gadgets so that you can access several sets of tools from within the same window.

However, while this system has plenty of advantages and, given the number of features that need to be crammed in it's possibly the only way that it could work, it also has its disadvantages. For example you occasionally have to slog your way through a series of cycle-gadgets to get to the tool that you're after. Although you can get around this through good use of the program's menus, it can be initially quite difficult to know where to look. This is only a minor grumble though and it shouldn't take you long to familiarise yourself with where everything is.

The secret of ClariSSA's success is not to be found in its interface, rather it lies in the seemingly odd capitalisation of its name. SSA stands for Super Smooth Animation, and if you ever have the pleasure of seeing a SSA animation you'll understand why. After an animation has been processed and then saved in SSA format it will play back smoothly and at about twice the speed.

A cunning plan

The reason for this is most ingenious and decidedly cunning - each frame is halved and played back quickly enough to convince the eye that it's seeing one image instead of two. Using this method it's possible to achieve playback speeds of up to 50fps which is more than sufficient for most video work. However, while this technique is more than adequate for most people's needs, it isn't perfect. Some users, most likely those using the program professionally at high resolutions with lots of colours, have apparently experienced problems with halting frames. To solve that problem ProDad have created High-end SSA.

Incredibly, this new format is 80% faster than SSA, which should cure most people's problems. This should enable most 3D-animators to add all the panning and zooming in and out camera motions without fear of horrendous slow-down. While the artistic benefits of this might be questionable it certainly enhances the playback of most animations, although you may find that your animations playback too quickly!

Not content with simply improving the speed of the SSA format ProDad have also introduced a format call SSAd. This new format can be used to playback animations directly from disk and as you might expect it's fast at doing it - faster than an anim5 played from RAM. This means that the length of the animations you can playback is limited by your available disk space, rather than how much RAM you have.

Another gem that is served up in ClariSSA Pro is Multi-Anims. That's what the program calls the feature that enables the mixing and matching of animations of different formats and characteristics - different colour palettes, screen resolutions or offset positions. Ordinarily, if you tried to do this in previous versions of the program, when it came to playing back the animation it would stop for a while to make the necessary adjustments. Not so with Multi-Anims they switch smoothly from one format to another. This is especially useful if you are trying to combine animations from different sources such as video and raytraced or line art and video.

Well, those are ClariSSA Pro's animation playback-enhancing features and these alone would be enough of a reason for some people to buy the program, but ClariSSA Pro has even more to offer. The program can also provide you with extensive information about your animation so that you can analyse it and even get a more exact idea of what will happen when it's played so that you can spot potential problem frames.

As well as providing in-depth and accurate information the program can also give you precise control over the animation and add different effects. Admittedly getting the results you are after can be a bit difficult, but once you are on the same wavelength as the manual things can become quite straight-forward.

One of the features that will appeal to professionals that aren't interested in playing around with fancy effects, is the Bezier control system. This can be used to control and optimise the performance of an animation by manipulating a Bezier curve. The process can be a little confusing though, and is best left to the experts who are trying to fine-tune their animations.

Myriad of tools

Aside from this feature there are a myriad of other useful tools which can be used to perform all manner of features. While it might be argued that several of the functions of the tools are not unique, and the same results might be accomplished through good use of an image processor, you'll never find such a varied selection in one place.

ClariSSA keeps its special effects in depots or groups and they are divided into; Fade-Effect, 2P-Movement, Colour-Effect, Clip-Effect, Keying, FX-Wipe, FX-Blend, FX-Fade and up to three user-defined depos. The depos can be used to do anything from making a simple palette change or fade to clip-based effects and video-titling wipes. The depos are essentially a window containing icons that can be dragged-and-dropped onto a section of an animation and you will be prompted for the frames that are to be effected.

Other important features include some advanced palette manipulation, memory management, importing images straight from MacroSystem's Vlab cards, optimization routines and tons of macros as well as a healthy share of Arexx commands. It's these last two features that are going to ensure the program's future as a large number of the program's new features have been added in this way - not to mention the existing ARexx macro to link up with ADPro. Hopefully as more people get to grips with this excellent package, we may see even more wonderful new features appearing perhaps in the Public Domain.

There are only two things to grumble about with ClariSSA Pro, one is the interface which I've already mentioned and the other is support for a few more image and animation formats. While it is possible, if you have good understanding of Arexx and both ClariSSA and ADPro, to create a macro to do this it would be much more convenient to have support for formats like FLI and JPEGs.