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- From: mcastle@mcs213d.cs.umr.edu (Michael R Castle)
- Newsgroups: comp.graphics
- Subject: Re: Animation using gif or jpeg files. Conversion to .gl or .fli?
- Message-ID: <1992Nov7.030718.7908@umr.edu>
- Date: 7 Nov 92 03:07:18 GMT
- References: <1992Nov2.231556.20933@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> <1992Nov5.214002.23583@comp.lancs.ac.uk> <1992Nov6.132238.11560@bsu-ucs>
- Sender: cnews@umr.edu (UMR Usenet News Post)
- Organization: University of Missouri - Rolla
- Lines: 40
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-
- In article <1992Nov6.132238.11560@bsu-ucs> 00rbspelman@leo.bsuvc.bsu.edu writes:
- > Quick question: Say you have a 640x480(?) 16-color picture you want to
- >use for your run of .gif's. You have say, 8 of these in a series. Separately
- >these files would take up around 1meg of disk space total, right? Now, when
- >you take the run of .gif's and merge them into a .fli animation, will the
- >.fli file(s?) take up MORE or LESS space?
-
- Probably depends on frame-to-frame coherency. FLI only use run length encoding
- which does not save all that much. But, they also only store the pixels that
- change from one frame to another. If you have an animation that is a pretty
- solid (or just unchanging background), and the objects don't move far between
- frames so you only have pixels changing at the edges of some objects, then
- it's possible for the fli to be smaller.
-
- On the other hand, if you suddenly change scenes in the middle of the animation,
- the fli spec calls for you to just copy the frame into the fli file without
- even rle compression (I assume this is for speed reading the image off disk,
- don't want to change speed in middle of animation to decode a rle frame, but
- decoding the initial frame on start up is ok).
-
- So, it depends.
-
- Hmm... I just decided to break apart a fli file and convert to gifs.
- The fli in question (slider1.fli) was 320x200, but only about 1/3 of the
- screen was used for the actuall animation. The fli was 147092 bytes, but
- the sum of the gifs was only 86166. Compressing the fli with arj made it
- only 71900 bytes. I must admit to being surpised by this. Part of it may
- be due to the fact that the animation also only has 32 colors, which the
- gif standard may be able to pack better because of it more bit-oriented
- compression (lzw).
-
- Hmm... don't have quick access to any 256 color fli's to test this theory
- wish.
-
- oh well...
- mrc
-
-
- ps: with any luck, i will be able to re-write and distribute ppmtofli/flitoppm
- over thanksgiving weekend.
-