PEGGER V2.0

                              by Steve Bolton


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    Those of you out there who play around with 3D rendering/ray tracing
  packages will also know just how large 24bit images can be, and if you are
  rendering output frames to later process into an animation you'll need a
  LOT of hard drive space (forget floppies!) just to store them.  My own
  animations are rarely ever smaller than 704x564 and 100 frames so I can
  only store the frames for a few animations on my system before I run out
  of space.

    A while ago I came across the package called XPK which is a realtime
  compression system and after installing that I freed up quite a lot of
  room on my system but once again I have run out of room.  Being unable to
  afford a multi-gigabyte hard drive (and will not even to bother
  considering anything smaller) I needed a solution.

    Enter Pegger 2!  This is a commercial realtime JPEG compression package
  for 24bit images.  As the ray tracing packages I use don't support the
  input of JPEG files I was forced to keep my extensive online collection of
  texture maps in full 24bit (or JPEG and then uncompressed manually as I
  need them which is time consuming and unsatisfactory).  Pegger 2 does the
  job for me cleanly and invisibly.

    Now, I know that JPEG is a "lossy" type of compression (it loses
  unnecessary pixels from a picture in order to achieve its great
  compression ratios, the more loss the better the compression) but you can
  set the quality level of the JPEG compression and even at 100% quality
  (which in reality is 99.99%) you still achieve 3-4:1 compression ratios
  which is far better than XPK which 2:1 at the best.  I always work with
  higher resolutions than my final output so any loss in the JPEG
  compression dissipates in the final processing of my work.  I use a
  quality of 90% which gives a ratio of around 13:1!  Now that is what I
  call real savings!

    Not only can Pegger assist 3D packages but also paint programs which
  don't directly support JPEG images can now read these compressed files in.
  Any JPEG file you have can be automatically decompressed for viewing.

    Pegger 2 has three "programs" to it.  The first two are compression and
  decompression programs which can be used to batch process files and even
  view files in the resolution of your choice (such as HAM8, DCTV, etc) so
  you don't need a 24bit graphics card to view these 24bit files.  The third
  program is called Snoop.  This is the realtime program which sits in the
  background and you can set it up so that certain programs only use the
  Pegger processing (such as Brilliance, Imagine, etc) or you can get it to
  "snoop" any number of specific directories for compression/decompression.

    When Pegger is running it does slow down the system a bit such as doing
  a directory list, since it is looking at what you do and has to decide if
  it has to do any compressing or decompressing, but this isn't too much of
  a problem since Pegger is really only necessary at certain times and has a
  full ARexx interface I simply get it to start up when I start a package
  which will require it and close down afterwards.  When Pegger is running
  it doesn't slow down the processor at all so rendering times will not be
  affected at all.

    Overall this is an essential package for anyone who has to deal with
  24bit pictures and being able to have 24bit texture maps online whenever I
  need them is trully wonderful.  To use Pegger 2 you will need WB2+ and 2MB
  ram but an accelerator is highly desirable (68030 minimum) and more ram.
  Only one thing left to say:  it's only $129 so BUY IT!!!


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