View is a program that allows you to view all ANIM opcode 5 or 6 animations and all ILBM IFF format pictures. You can also view RGB Raw (Sculpt), or Pro RGB files. This viewer program is freely re-distributable. This means that you may distribute it to anyone, or anywhere that you so desire providing that this unaltered file, and the original unmodified program are distributed together.
View 2.0 supports IFF ANIM OpCode 5 animations. This is the standard ANIM format that has been adopted by the Amiga community. Old animations from VideoScape, & HASH Enterprises may NOT be OpCode 5. Some ANIM and ILBMs have non-standard methods of filling the Bitmap Header structure. Meaning that the values are not what View or other viewers expect. This is very unfortunate and impossible to detect. Therefore View will ignore the questionable values and insert the values that are set in the users preferences. This way ALL pictures and animations will be centered onto your display (that is if your preferences places your WorkBench screen into the center of your monitor's display). This also is useful for those of you that have Flicker-Fixers connected.
OpCode-6 Animation is my own creation and has not been recognized as a standard IFF ANIM format by Commodore. The format is exactly the same as OpCode 5 but is QUAD buffered instead of DOUBLE buffered. This allows the player to show 2 screens at one time for the X-Specs Glasses. Each picture MUST be viewed for 1/60th of a second, therefore to see a 3D-Picture the viewer can only play ANIMs at 30 frames per second. (2 pictures = 1 frame).
Once I hear from Commodore the OpCode may or may not change depending on whether OpCode 6 has been taken already, so don't write any code that may depend on it. There is a problem inherent in this QUAD buffering technique! The problem is in the fact that standard Amigas only have 512K of CHIP ram, and some is taken for the workbench screen. But since you probably haven't got an animation that is Op-Code 6 (since I haven't released any yet, and 3D Professional isn't out yet to make your own) these problems are not yours. I will attempt to do some memory magic to require only 2 of the four bitmaps to be in chip ram at one time. But I have a feeling that this will cause the animations to slow down, due to data swapping that may or may not need to be done.
The programs execution should be fairly easy to understand. To view a single animation or picture either run view from CLI passing it the filename, or click onto the PROJECT icon of the file.
Example: if desired ANIM is named "foo.anim"
<CLI> 1> view foo.anim
<WORKBENCH> double click the "foo.anim" icon. The icon
MUST be a project type icon, with its DEFAULT
TOOL set to point to the View
program.
To view multiple animations or pictures simply run the view program with no arguments. A file requester will appear and you may select a file. After viewing the picture or animation the file requester will reappear. When you have seen enough click on the CANCEL gadget in the file selector.
Example:
<CLI> 1> view
<WORKBENCH> double click the "VIEW" icon.
VIEWING CONTROLS:
<ESC> stops viewing for an animation or picture.
<ARROWS> move the view offsets of the picture or
animation.
<FUNCTION KEYS> change the playback speed of the animation.
<RETURN> Default speed. This will use the timing
information in the
ANIM file for its speed. This option is DEFAULT
on.
<SPACE> Freezes the animation at the current frame.
<a> Advances forward one frame. (must first freeze it of
course).
To view RGB pictures simply select the file to view. If it is a Raw-RGB file it must use the standard ".red", ".grn", ".blu" extensions. You will be prompted for an input resolution and an output format. If the RGB file is in Pro-RGB format the input resolution can not be modified. Once the output format has been selected you can click on the "SHOW", "SAVE", or "CANCEL" buttons. If you select "SAVE" the picture will be shown and when you press
the <ESC> key you will be prompted for a filename to save with. If you are not sure whether you wish to save the picture or not select the "SHOW" button. After viewing the picture pressing the "S" key will save the picture.
