NielsJL
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
@peterigz wrote:
I’ll keep looking at the possibility of video export and weigh up the effort/time ratios 🙂
That’s fair enough, I appreciate how time-consuming software development is from own experience. I had hoped other TimelineFX users would speak up if they wanted to see this feature as well so as to give you a sense of the demand.
@peterigz wrote:
How are you currently managing it? Are you exporting a sequence of images and then converting those to video using something another tool like mplayer?
Yes, I export separate .PNG images (with transparency turned on) which I import into Adobe Premiere Elements and then export as a DV-AVI file. Having all video pre-processed as uncompressed DV-AVI files works better when it is time to piece everything together.
I completely agree with not wanting to limit any features to just one platform.
OK, I confess I did some further digging to see how challenging it would be to find (favorably licensed) source code and to educate myself more on the structure of AVI files. Turns out that AVI files are Microsoft extended RIFF format files (from the days of the Amiga…I used the BBC Micro and Atari ST myself so I don’t know about such things… yes, I know please grit your teeth and smile. 😛 ).
But, back to the question at hand. Turns out there is public domain Blitz Basic source code for reading & writing RIFF format files which may be a helpful starting point toward creating simple video AVI files,
see: http://www.blitzbasic.com/codearcs/codearcs.php?code=2582Other reference material that may be of help:
-
Microsoft’s AVI RIFF File Reference http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms779636.aspx
Microsoft’s DV Data in the AVI File Format http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms783421.aspx
AVI File Format (PDF) http://www.alexander-noe.com/video/documentation/avi.pdf
OpenDML AVI File Format Extensions (PDF) http://www.the-labs.com/Video/odmlff2-avidef.pdfUnderstood. I did some searching around the Net and found a possible option. http://www.wischik.com/lu/programmer/avi_utils.html.
The licensing appears favorable. i.e.
(c) 2002 Lucian Wischik. This code is free, and anyone can do with it whatever they like, including incorporating it in commercial products.
This assumes that TimelineFX is written in C/C++ and that it is possible to integrate Lucian’s source code. Hopefully, food for thought. 😀
Excellent! The “Shield with electric” effect is working great, as proof I’ve attached an animated GIF from the Animation Props dialog:[attachment=0:hwqlvtgl]Shield_with_electric-Forever.gif[/attachment:hwqlvtgl]
Though, when I exit out of the Animation Prop dialog, the Preview Pane is missing the shield effect. However, resizing the TimelineFX application window appears to bring the shield effect back — forcing a refresh of the window appears to be the solution.
I didn’t see any delay with the Animation Prop dialog appear, but I will let you know if there is a problem.
BTW, opening the Animation Prop dialog a second time shows the complete and correct effect.
Thanks for getting an update out so quickly. 😀
EDIT: Just to add that after using the Animation Props dialog to generate the separate PNG files, opening of the Animations Prop dialog a second time gives the Windows error dialog “Windows exception”, “EXCEPTION_INT_DIVIDE_BY_ZERO”. Clicking OK closes the application.
Hi Peter,
Understood, thanks for the quick response.
Not sure what is the problem with integrated Intel GFX chipsets, though I had an odd problem with it when I was using Blender 3D (http://www.blender.org/) last year — ironically, the Blender app worked perfect running with WinXP inside VirtualBox’s VM (http://www.virtualbox.org/), but as soon as I ran it on the real hardware there were rendering problems.
Let me know if I can be of help with testing?
