** V3.04 ** V3.04 ** V3.04 ** V3.04 ** V3.04 ** V3.04 ** V3.04 ** V3.04 ** - The two most annoying bugs (filerequester-bug and qualitymode-bug) as well as a lot of other nasty sideeffects and small bugs are removed! IMPORTANT CHANGES TO THE MANUAL: - If you start an unconfigured VDController now, you are not only able to choose the used digitizer, but also can choose an existing configuration. If you have copied VDC to your harddisc or workdisc, you can choose your already existing configuration in the PopUp-menu "Config. on startup" and leave the requester with "Ok". If you do not have a configuration, you are able to choose all parameters according to the manual, chapter 6.5. Even the Save-Gadget works if you do not load a configuration, because otherwise the configuration-state overrides the save gadget. - The mask within the filerequester was expanded: If you enter a ~ at first position, the rest of the mask is evaluated and the result inverted. This means: The mask "~*.info" means: show all files that do not end with ".info". You therefore can not only choose the files which you want to see, but also state which files you do NOT want to see. - Filerequester: The window title of the requester now states what is going on: e.g. "Load ILBM-picture" or "Save Color Map". - International Keyboard Support: Up to now the software worked with the german keyboard-layout. Now it works with every layout. For this reason all existing keymaps have been copied onto the VDController-disc. For changing to a keymap of your country, please either edit the startup-sequence or set the keymap using the SetMap-utility which is also provided. For use of SetMNap please refer to the AMIGA-users manual. - Xchg1/Xchg2: In interlace-mode sometimes the two halfframes are exchanged. The reason for this often is a bad videosignal, which is delivered from the source. Some cameras have troubles in delivering correct halfframe- information. The software does not wait eternally untill - maybe - the correct halfframe appears. This is the reason why it might come to the effect of exchanged halfframes. Xchg1/Xchg2 can exchange the two halfframes after the picture is taken: -> ----------------------------------- - line 1 Xchg1:| -> ................................... - line 2 Xchg2:| -> ----------------------------------- - line 3 Xchg1 exchanges line 1 with line 2, line 3 with line 4 etc., Xchg2 exchanges line 2 with line 3, line 4 with line 5 etc. This should eliminate all nasty sideeffects. - Keyboard support: In the sections Setup and Color Processor the Edit-Gadget is called up with "t", in the section Color Map with "e". It is changed to "t" also. Please note this if you work with keyboard most of the time! - Quality-Colormode: The routines are much better now. ** misc. (V3.00 - V3.03) ** misc. (V3.00 - V3.03) ** misc. (V3.00 - V3.*** The demopictures stated in the manual have been deleted. But there is a slideshow-disc which comes with every VDController. It is autobooting. If you want to make own slideshows, just delete all pictures from this disc. There is no scriptfile you need to write. => VDC_Install also updates an existing installation of VDC! <= Insert the VDController disk into the internal drive! Copy (drag) VDC_Install into the directory/onto the disk you want VDC installed in/on. Now doubleclick on the copied VDC_Install-icon. Everything else is done by VDC_Install. There are some errors in the manual or some differences between manual and release: - The Memory-Discard option has been deleted, but is still shown in the manual and on the cover. - Function key labeling is not shown on the cover. (These differences are due to the timing difference between making the manual, fixing bugs in the software and doing last changes.) - The "(A)lign"-option in the Printer Setup Requester as shown in figure 4 in the manual has been changed to "(C)ent." as it is described under "Center" in the manual. By mistake in the manual was used an old screen-shot. - The "Copy"-option in the Color Edit Requester is triggered with key "c" and not with "o" as described under "special requester functions" in chapter 7.4.2. - The subsections 8.0.1. to 8.0.4. have not been discarded. The following subsections are numbered wrong. That means: 8.0.5. is 8.0.1. and so on. (Found out the day after giving the manual to print! - Greetings to Murphy.) QUALITY-MODE: I have been told, that the quality mode is not described in very much detail in the manual. Here is a more detailed explanation: - In this special mode, each color way (R, G, B) is treated seperatly as an 8 bit value. That means, each pixel is represented by 24 bits or one of 16 million colors. No digitzer does support 8 bit per color way at the moment, but this enables VDC to be upgradable for the hires color graphics card. The picture of VDAmiga or Framer consists of 4 (or 6) bit per color. These 4/6 bits are mapped to 8 bit and stored in the Amiga's memory. After having digitized the picture, the color processor modifies the raw data into a backup area, taking into account the gradation curve, the RGB-circle and the soft/sharp/sat-pots. So in the intermediate backup-area a completely modified picture with 16 million colors is generated. From the backup-area now the real Amiga picture is calculated. During the calculation process the color processor tries to dither the picture and to get more than the normal 4096 colors on screen. Of course this is only possible, if additional information is available which means that the pictures has been digitized with more than 4 bit per color way. In B/W-mode the process is basically the same, but it has no sat-pot, no RGB-correction and has 8 bit per pixel instead of 24. For the correct functioning of the color processor it is necessary to have width x height x 6 byte of memory in two consecutive chunks available. For a 320 x 256 picture this means: 1/2 MB! (In hires/interlaced this means: 2MB!!!). If you have only 1MB of memory installed, you have to be very careful which device you enable. Every installed/mounted device feeds memory - only a few kB, but in whole it adds up to enough memory to prevent VDC working in color qualitymode. If you are not familiar with the Amiga and are unable to edit the original startup-sequence Commodore provides, please boot only from the backup of the VDC-disc. The disc contains a workbench and a short startup-sequence which leaves enough memory for VDC to work in color quality mode! Here are some tips for advanced users how to change the original startup-sequence: - Do not mount devices you do not need (speak:, aux:, pipe: ...) - Do not "AddBuffers"! It may speed up disc access, but it takes a lot of valuable memory. - Make no commands "resident", especially if you are only working from Workbench! - Do not mount the RAM:-Disc untill you really need it. - Try to assign as few directories as necessary. It might be true that all the junk the original Commodore startup-sequence means that the Amiga behaves better. But it feeds up 150 to 200 kB memory!! On an 1MB-Amiga you have only almost 800kB available afterwards! - One last remark concerning the quality-mode: Maybe it is now clear why VDC takes that long to calculate a picture and why it needs that much amount of memory. ColorProcessor: - The SAT-pot has a range of 0 to 1.2! This means that in it's upper position it enhances saturation a little bit. I found out that this is quite handy sometimes. If you want no enhancement, you have to drag it down a little bit. Tip: the SAT-pot has 32 positions. If you click it down from position 31 (topmost position) to 25, you have no modification of SAT. 3D-MODE: - Please wait for the right picture to be finished before digitizing the left picture. The best way to check this is to have the panel down and to wait until the right picture appears on the screen. - During open/save the filename is modified with ".left" or ".right" at the end. So it is sufficient to enter a name without appendix and VDC saves automatically a ".left" and a ".right" picture. If you open a picture it is sufficient to click on either picture in the filelist or to enter a name without appendix. Again VDC appends ".left" or ".right" to the given name and laods both pictures. If the filename already contains a ".left" or ".right" appendix it is replaced by the correct one. (So VDC does not generate a "Picture00.pic.left.left.right" filename!) ProfiIF: - does not suport 3D-Mode! - has also key-shortcuts: If the ProfiIF-window is active (which implies that it is open) you can use the following keys: a ... e: Load setup A...E w: switch to BW mode o: switch to color mode " ": do one picture g: start/stop digitizer F1: activate Bri/Con-pot F2: activate Sat-pot Cursorkeys: change the activated pot in the appropriate direction ESC: duplicates the "Close Window" gadget. - supports AutoSave! (Of the frontmost screen!!) - You can hide the pointer by simply clicking into the picture! As ProfiIF has no error-output it does not report any errors during operation. So do not hesitate in operating ProfiIF. If something does not work ProfiIF is either busy or it can't perform the operation. It is very hard to use an error-output on ProfiIF because you can close down almost anything. Where should errors be displayed? Also error messages take up quite a lot of memory and error-numbers are out of date! Do not worry. I will add some error-handling in a later version. - The Transfer option works, but was not a good idea. It has problems with transfering colors. This is no problem if you are working with BW-pictures. You only have to setup the destination screen in such a way, that it holds the correct grey-levels. In color mode you have to lock the color map! (Or you transfer picture with the save-option.) I have tested the Transfer option with the following programs: DPAINT II: Performs badly! As Dpaint does some sort of "busy wait" (CRAZY!) if you have the pointer positioned within the dpaint-screen, ProfiIF does almost not work. My tip: Pull down the dpaint screen so that one scan line of some other screen is visible above the dpaint title bar. If you want to operate ProfiIF, just position the pointer in the top left edge, do not press any button, and enter CTRL-ALT-D. You do NOT need to press the left mouse button before that operation. ProfiIF now digitizes a single picture. Transfering of pictures into the dpaint screen is only advisable in color-mode, because dpaint holds its colors off screen. To transfer a picture be sure you have no requester open, use F9 or F10 to turn off the title bar and the toolbox and use CTRL-ALT-T. After the transfer the only thing that is really working is to cut out a brush. To paint into the picture is possible, but outside the rectangle (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax) of your drawing operation the old picture is restored after doing something else. So to generate brushes the Transfer option works, all other dpaint operations have yet to be tested! PIXMATE: Besides the color-problem Pixmate performs good with Transfer. Also check that there is no requester open before doing a transfer! Afterwards you can open all requesters you like and modify the picture as usual. I only have tried the Image Processor, but this works fine. As I didn't have time to test both programs in depth, you will be notified of further experiments with the updates. I will gladly welcome and spread all experiences that are reported! If you have any further suggestions or wishes how to improve ProfiIF, please let me know but remember: ProfiIF is supposed to be a small program. It will never have a hypertuned user interface or some great error checking routines. YOU are responsible for what you are doing with ProfiIF. It will never check if your operations are valid at a given stage! (Exept a certain amount.)