VIDI-AMIGA VERSION 1.13, 16th January 1990 ------------------------------------------ (c) 1990 Rombo Productions, written by Keith Wilson --------------------------------------------------- This file is intended to supplement the Vidi-Amiga manual, detailing the various improvements made to the software since the manual was produced. If you have just bought Vidi or upgraded from an earlier version, you should read all this stuff to make sure you're using Vidi to its full potential! GENERAL ------- Amiga 1000 users will require a special parallel port gender changer available from Rombo - pins 23 (+5v) and 25 (RESET) are different from the A500 pinout. This may be used in conjunction with the parallel port extension cable or switcher. NEVER try and connect Vidi to the serial port instead - it will cause serious damage to your computer hardware for which Rombo cannot be held responsible. When connecting Vidi-Amiga to your video source please check that you're using VIDEO OUT rather than the RF AERIAL OUT which you would normally connect to a TV set - the two signals are entirely different. You may find that your video has a BNC type socket or Scart Euroconnector in which case you will need a suitable cable or adaptor - see below. If you are using another device from the parallel port such as a printer and don't wish to keep disconnecting Vidi, our parallel port switching box will allow you easily switch between the two. Alternatively, a parallel port extension cable will prevent the interface obscuring the serial or video ports at the back of your Amiga. Prices of additional items available from Rombo at the time of writing are as follows; Phono-BNC adaptor £1.00 Phono-Scart adaptor £2.50 Parallel port extension cable £4.95 A1000 gender changer £4.95 Parallel port switcher £19.95 INSTALLING THE SOFTWARE ----------------------- Rather than booting from the Vidi-Amiga disk, you may wish to install the software on your hard drive or another Workbench disk. To do this you should boot up from your hard drive / Workbench disk and double-click the 'Install' icon on the Vidi- Amiga disk, this will copy the necessary libraries. You must then drag the VidiGrab program icon to a suitable place on your disk. MAJOR ENHANCEMENTS ------------------ FILE REQUESTER -------------- We have only just discovered that the ARP file requester is capable of handling wildcards in directory names. After the pathname you may specify a template for files to show such as 'Pictures:Faces/#?.pic' - this will only show files ending in '.pic'. PROJECT: SAVE SEQ. (D because it's next to S!) ---------------------------------------------- This allows you to save animations to disk. First set the frame number to the start of your sequence, if this is a FREE frame only FREE frames are saved and likewise with HELD frames. Upon selecting Save seq, the File Requester will prompt you for a sequence name which must be of the required format. Sequence filenames must contain a number with enough digits to handle the entire sequence - eg. a name of Picture5.ILBM will save the first frame as Picture5.ILBM, then Picture6.ILBM up to Picture9.ILBM and stop. If you were saving a sequence of, say, 152 frames you should enter a filename such as Animation000.pic (experimentation may clarify this if you're getting confused). After entering the initial filename, VidiGrab will ask if you want to cancel, save all frames with that status or select the end frame of the sequence. Choosing End will give a frame select display and you should click on the sequence's final frame. The frames are then saved as individual pictures which may be reloaded either separately or as a sequence. Make sure that you have enough space on the disk, each frame takes about 32K or 40K for 256 line PAL screens. BEWARE- any existing files with identical names as a sequence file will be wiped from the disk before saving and will be lost even if the save is abandoned half way through. LOAD SEQ. (K) ------------- This option loads a numbered sequence into FREE frames. Again, a File Requester appears and you should specify the first frame of the sequence to load - this need be the first frame in the sequence. The conventions detailed above for sequence filenames apply. You will then be prompted whether you wish to make each frame HELD or FREE upon loading, or you may cancel. Frames are loaded until a gap in the sequence is found or when all FREE frames have been used. If you delete a file in the middle of a sequence, loading will stop at that point. DELETE (Del) ------------ This works as before except for files which have a number in their title. VidiGrab will then ask you if you want to delete only a single file, cancel, or delete sequence files until the next gap. FRAME SEL. (F) -------------- There are now several handy keyboard options available whilst in the frame select display; < > these keys (unshifted) move the display around if there are more than 16 frames H switched frame status between FREE and HELD - frame numbers appear bright when HELD 0-9... number and function keys are now active space selects a frame ESC abandon the selection [ ] change the frame's palette QUANTIZE -------- There are now two extra quantize options, 8-shade even and 8- shade odd. These produce pictures which only use every other palette ink and if used carefully can give the effect of two separate palettes in the same frame. NO ICONS -------- Switch this option on if you specifically don't want to save Workbench icons along with each of your pictures. Note that if the icon.library is not found, no icons can be saved anyway. Vidi will save a standard filmstrip icon with a default tool of ':Utilities/Display', but you may now specify your own custom icon by calling it 'FrameIcon.info' and placing this file in the current directory when VidiGrab is loaded. PALETTE ED. (now accessed by E) ------------------------------- The palette editor now has an Undo feature which doubles up as copy. When you enter the palette editor, the current palette is remembered and can be recalled by clicking Undo or pressing ESC. The Keep option will remember the current palette so that any subsequent Undos will replace the palette with this instead. So, to copy from palette 3 to palette 7 you would move to palette 3, select Keep, move to palette 7 and Undo. The ESC key option is good for rescuing you from the old black-writing-on- black-background syndrome. SMALL ALTERATIONS ----------------- Print (which was disabled anyway) and Save options have been removed from the Project menu. The window type on the panel now cycles between INS (inside defined window), OUT (outside window) and ALL (whole screen). The File icons option is now called No icons, so the default is to save icons. You may press 'N' to start a New project 'B' will allocate or get rid of a Clipboard 'U' is now used to switch the Use clipbd. option ON/OFF. 'J' is a new function which jumps straight to the clipboard frame if there is one. VidiGrab is now supplied on a Workbench 1.3 disk and in the Utilities drawer you'll find some useful bits and pieces; VirusX for use if you're a bit worried about disks being infected by a virus. More and Display are programs which let you view text files (such as this) and IFF pictures respectively. The default VidiGrab picture icon uses Display as its default tool so that you only need to double-click on a picture to view it. BUGS ---- VidiGrab will only load IFF screens of a certain size; 320 x at least 200 (or 256 for PAL versions) in 16 colours with no mask plane. However, ByteRun1 compressed files (the sort used by DPaint) may be loaded - albeit slowly. If you discover any other strange inconsistancies please report them as soon as possible. VIDI LIBRARY ------------ All you programmers out there can find documentation for all the Vidi routines in the Library drawer. Check out the read me file in there first. UPGRADES -------- The Vidi software is continually being updated and upgrades are available every so often - if you send us your registration card then you'll receive details automatically. VidiChrome-Amiga is now available! It allows digitising of pictures in true colour when used with a video camera. Works by grabbing red, green and blue pictures and merging them into a 4096-colour HAM image. Colour results can be obtained in a matter of seconds, not minutes. No hardware mods needed and is supplied with colour filters, software and manual for only £19.95 inclusive. With the addition of our RGB splitter unit to be released first quarter 1990 for around £35, any colour camera or VCR with a stea dy freeze-frame may be used without optical filters. This means that red, green and blue frames are all digitized in under one second! Also under development is the Vidi-Amiga bus adaptor which will increase the speed of grabbing frames tremendously by connecting the interface direct to the processor bus instead of the parallel port - and no more of that tedious mucking about if you want to use your Centronics printer! KEEP IN TOUCH ------------- As always, send your suggestions or comments to me at Rombo and if you produce some particularly stunning pictures, demos, videos or programs, please send them in. Finally, many thanks to Robert Baker and friends for their invaluable help and patience. CREDITS ------- Hardware designed by Colin Faulker Software written by Keith Wilson File Requester from ARP library Produced by Rombo Productions, (c) 1990