HPAVC/HPAVC CD-ROM.iso/FLICIT25.ZIP/FLICIT.DOC

Text File | 1994-04-07 | 12KB | 315 lines

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   FLICIT V2.5  - Mar, 1994   Copyright (C) 1993,1994 Andrew W. Baucom


                      **** Distribute Freely ****

Flicit is a powerful program for creating Autodesk Animator Flic (.FLC) files
from either GIF or TGA images or a combination of both.


================================================================================
This version of Flicit is shareware and has the following limitations:

 1) output flics are limited to 320x200 (input images can be bigger).
 2) 30 frame limit
 3) no background image capability

If you like this program and find it useful, you may register and get a
version, without the above limitations, by sending:

 $45 (U.S.) for a single user version or
$199 (U.S.) for a 10 user site to:

Andrew Baucom, 8605 Imperial Drive, Laurel, MD 20708
[phone] or [phone], email: [e-mail]

(UNIX versions of Flicit are also available)

================================================================================
Files:


 flicit.exe   - Flicit program for creating .FLC files

 flicit.doc   - This document

 flicex.exe   - A bonus program for exploding .FLC's into individual GIF/TGA
                images.  (see flicex usage command)

 dos4gw.exe   - Rational DOS4GW 32-bit DOS extender.  Make sure that this
                file is somewhere in your DOS PATH when you run flicit.exe
                or flicex.exe

================================================================================
Requirements:

 1) 386/486 class PC.  Flicit uses the DOS4GW 32-bit DOS extender.

 2) 2+ megs of RAM.  The bigger the images, the more memory it will need.

 3) Some sort of FLC player.  (this is not really a requirement)
    There are a number of public domain FLC players.  The Autodesk Animator
    Pro Player is a good one.  There is also a MS-Windows Version.

================================================================================
Features:

 1) Works with GIF and/or TGA images.

 2) Automatically quantizes 16 and 24 bit color TGA images down to 256 color.

 3) GIF palettes need not be identical, Flicit can combine and compute the
    best palette to use.

 4) Add a background image to the flic.

 5) Ping, builds flic forward and then backward, 1 --> N --> 1.

 6) Able to reduce NTSC/PAL "hot" colors to acceptable levels.

 7) Select a percentage of the image palettes to random sample for computing
    the best final palette to use.  This saves alot of time if there are alot
    of frames.

 8) Allows text overlays in regular text size or double width/height size.
    You can also include changing numerical values in the text overlay
    string.  This is helpful for adding a timestamp to each frame.

 9) Allows the use of wildcards on the command line for specifying image file
    names.  Not the cruddy DOS wildcards, but real UNIX like!!!

10) All image file named are sorted canonically to determine the order in
    which the images are to be assembled.

11) Fastest flic builder and best color quantization I've seen yet...


================================================================================
Caveats: (You knew there had to be some...)

 1) All the images must be the same size (width x height).

 2) GIF images must be 256 color.

 3) Text overlays are made using the brightest R+G+B combination found in
    the final palette, so text overlays will disapear if overlayed on any part
    of the image where that brightest color occurs.

 4) The background image can be a different size from the frames but will
    always be placed starting in the upper left corner of the frames and
    clipped to the size of the frames if it is bigger.

 5) Requires a few megs of memory, the bigger the images the more it needs.


================================================================================
Usage:  flicit.exe


-@ <file>     = Loads all switches and info from a script file see below
                for a sample script file.

-o <file>     = output flic file name to create. A .FLC extension will be
                appended if no extension is specified

-q            = quiet flag, this suppresses all text output

-i            = ping flag, this builds the all the frames into the flic
                forward and then reverses the order of the frames and adds
                them to the flic.  This gives a ping pong effect.

-v <1|2>      = turns NTSC/PAL hot spot checking. -v1 for NTSC, -v2 for PAL

-c <image>    = use <image> as a background image for the flic.

-r <#>        = used with the background image to control the RED threshold
                to use when deciding whether to display background pixels or
                forground pixels.  ie. -r0 -g0 -b0 specifies that background
                pixels will show through only where the foreground pixels are
                black.  Values can be 0-255.

-g <#>        = GREEN threshold.  Values can be 0-255.

-b <#>        = BLUE threshold.  Values can be 0-255.

-d <#>        = Time delay in milliseconds between frames. This is used during
                flic animation playback.

-k <#>        = Quantize colors down to # colors. ie. -k64 will result in a
                flic with only 64 colors.  .FLC's are limited to 256 colors
                max.

-z <%>        = Percentage of image palettes to random sample before computing
                final palette for flic. Value can be 1-100.

-p <file>     = Load final palette from file.  This file is simple a 768 byte
                file containing RGB triplets and will be used as the palette
                for all frames in the flic.

-s <file>     = Save the final palette computed by Flicit in file.

-t <string>   = Text overlay string to be placed in image.

          <string> must have the format:

          "<x coord>,<y coord>,<text>,<size>,<start>,<delta>"


           <x coord> = X coord for upper left corner of text string.
           <y coord> = Y coord for upper left corner of text string.
           <text>    = text string to display in single apostrophes 'text'.
           <size>    = the keyword NORMAL or DOUBLE for normal or double size
                       text.
           <start>   = starting floating point number to place in string where
                       there is a %w.pf 'C' style format for floating point
                       numbers.
           <delta>   = delta frame floating point increment number.

           examples:

            1)  -t "10,10,'this is a test',DOUBLE"

                 will display the text "this is a test" at image coordinates
                 10,10 in double size text.

            2)  -t "10,10,'T-minus %4.2f seconds to liftoff',NORMAL,20.0,-0.5"

                 will display the text:

                  "T-minus 20.00 seconds to liftoff" on frame 1 of flic
                  "T-minus 19.50 seconds to liftoff" on frame 2 of flic
                  "T-minus 19.00 seconds to liftoff" on frame 3 of flic
                  "T-minus 18.50 seconds to liftoff" on frame 4 of flic
                  etc.

                 at image coordinates 10,10 in normal size text characters.

            3)  -t "@text.txt"

                will load all "-t strings" from the file text.txt.  The
                contents of text.txt may look like:

                # this would be a comment line
                10,10,'this is a test',DOUBLE
        10,20,'this is a another test',DOUBLE
                10,300,'%.5f seconds',NORMAL,1.0,0.025


================================================================================
Script:

The following is a sample movie.txt file that contains all the possible
switches for Flicit.  This file would be used with the -@ switch when
running Flicit.  All the Flicit options will then be set from the info in
this file.  This makes it easy to configure Flicit as a backend program.


# <file starts here>
#
# FLICIT MOVIE MAKING SCRIPT FILE
# Andrew Baucom (Nov 1993)
#
# this file contains all possible options for the flicit utility.  you
# should leave all these lines in here and comment out the ones you don't
# need so that you can easily see what is available.
#
#
[options]            # general flic options section

ping    = true            # ping frames 1--> N--> 1 <TRUE|FALSE>
#ping     = false        # ping frames 1--> N--> 1 <TRUE|FALSE>
quiet    = FALSE        # quiet <TRUE|FALSE>
quantize = true            # quantize colors <TRUE|FALSE>
delay    = 50            # frame delay in milliseconds
sample_palettes = 30        # % of palettes to sample
output_flc = \tmp\foo.flc        # output flic name
#input_palette  = foo.pal    # use input palette for flic
#output_palette = fee.pal    # write final flic palette to file


[tv]                # Television color reduction section

type        = NTSC           # tv type color reduction <NTSC | PAL | NONE>
method      = REDUCE_SAT    # method=<REDUCE_SATuration | REDUCE_LUMinence>
hot_black   = FALSE        # TRUE=(hot=black)  FALSE=(hot=safe)
pedestal    = 7.5           # pedestal value
gamma       = 2.2           # gamma value
chroma_lim  = 50.0        # chroma limit
compos_lim  = 110.0        # compos limit

#type       = PAL           # tv type color reduction <NTSC | PAL | NONE>
#method     = REDUCE_SAT    # method=<REDUCE_SAT | REDUCE_LUM>
#hot_black  = TRUE        # TRUE=(hot=black)  FALSE=(hot=safe)
#pedestal   = 0.0           # pedestal value
#gamma      = 2.8           # gamma value
#chroma_lim = 50.0        # chroma limit
#compos_lim = 110.0        # compos limit


[text_overlays]            # text overlays section

#text = x,y,"text string",DOUBLE,start,delta

text = 10,10,"This is a test",DOUBLE
text = 20,20,"T-minus %5.2f seconds to launch",NORMAL,10.0,-0.25


[frames]            # file specifications of flic frames section

file = c:\tmp\*.gif        # frame file spec
file = c:\tmp\*.tga        # frame file spec

#file = c:\tmp\*.gif        # frame file spec
#file = c:\tmp\*.gif        # frame file spec


[background]            # background image section

#file = c:\tmp\earth.tga        # background image
#red_threshold = 0        # background transparency for red
#green_threshold = 0        # background transparency for green
#blue_threshold = 0        # background transparency for blue

# <file ends here>

================================================================================
The author can be reached at:

Andrew W. Baucom
8605 Imperial Drive
Laurel, MD 20708

[e-mail] (192.111.253.6)

[phone] or [phone]

(UNIX versions of Flicit are also available)

================================================================================
History:

V1.1 - V1.8  - initial development
V1.9         - added switch -d# for frame delay in flc (milliseconds)
V2.0         - added -i ping capability
V2.1         - restructured code...
V2.2         - added -c background image
V2.3         - added tv NTSC/PAL color reduction & scripting option
V2.4         - recoded to automatically detect gif/tga
V2.5         - Fixed TGA compressed algorithm


Enjoy!