ohnielse@ltf.dth.dk (Ole Holm Nielsen) (11/19/90)
Announcing Movietool version 1.2.
This is an improved version of Movietool version 1.1. Movietool is a
display tool for sequences of Sun rasterfiles, providing "video animation"
in a SunView window. Movietool may also be used as a multi-rasterfile
previewer.
Version 1.2 differs a little from previous ones in that the control panel
is now a separate frame that can be moved around independently of the
animation canvas. This makes it easier to accomodate large images.
In addition, I have now made Movietool into a "multi-media application",
since I have added the possibility of controlling an attached SCSI CD-ROM
drive. Read the file README.CD-ROM for further instructions.
How to obtain movietool:
------------------------
From titan.rice.edu you get the files movietool-1.2_kit[1-6] (the source),
movietool.uu.[1-8] (an audio sample), and possibly movieras.uu.* (rasters).
Movietool is also available by anonymous FTP from oersted.ltf.dth.dk
(129.142.66.16) in the ~/pub directory. Here, the files are:
-r--r--r-- 1 ftp 48662 Oct 31 12:34 movietool-1.2.shar.Z
-r--r--r-- 1 ftp 80841 Jun 26 14:08 movietool.au.Z
-r--r--r-- 1 ftp 486761 Dec 12 1989 movietool.rasters.tar.Z
Please use titan.rice.edu from the American side of the Atlantic.
If you don't have FTP access to Internet, please use the Rice archive server.
[[Ed's Note: They'll be in the archives. -bdg]]
FTP: Hostname : titan.rice.edu (128.42.1.30)
Directory: sun-source
Filenames: movietool-1.2_kit{1-6}
Filesize : 6 files totalling 102770 bytes
Archive Server Address: archive-server@rice.edu
Archive Server Command: send sun-source movietool-1.2_kit{1-6}
Testing:
--------
There is a compressed tar-file of rasters: movietool.rasters.tar.Z which may
be unpacked by "make rasters" (almost 1 Mbyte in 50 files). To play this
(monochrome) movie, say "movietool tp*".
To do:
------
The decoding of RT_BYTE_ENCODED images could ideally be performed by a
graphics hardware accelerator such as the GX, reducing CPU and bus load.
However, it seems that presently available GX software (i.e., the XGL library)
will NOT do this. Sun would have to implement decoding in a future upgrade.
Unfortunately, I have no indication that this has any priority inside SMI
(HOW ABOUT IT, SUN ???).
Alternatively, it would be great is someone who knows the SPARC assembler
well would recode and optimize the module pr_decode.c in order to boost
performance. ANYONE VOLUNTEERING ???
I will convert Movietool to XView once we decide to use that window system.
Author:
-------
Ole H. Nielsen
Lab of Applied Physics, Bygn. 307
Technical University of Denmark, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark
E-mail: OHNielsen@ltf.dth.dk
Fax: (+45) 45 93 23 99