Atari800win 4 plus and video saving

[+Cafeman]

I have created a few AVI's of myself playing some 5200 games, using Atari800win plus 4.0.

 

It took some time to realize I can only save videos if I'm using windows of size (336x240 in a window) or (672x480 in a window)with GDI for Windows checkmarked of course.

 

Codecs: the only one I've had success using from the drop-down list has been "Microsoft Video 1". I compress at 100% and don't see any problems.

 

Still, the AVI files seem big to me, compared to what I've seen on Youtube or AVI's done with my own digital camera. So I'm looking for advice, in case there is a solution to drop file sizes.

 

For example:

 

1. An 800win avi at 336x240, at 100% compression using MS video 1, is 46 megs on my hard drive. It is 50 seconds long.

2. In comparison, a digital camera AVI I have stored (of a Disney Street band clip) at 320x240 is only 14 megs. It is 25 seconds long.

 

There are various codec options on the Atari800win drop-down, but most don't actually seem to work for me. Cinepak for example is there , but doesn't work well.

 

Any advice? Maybe if I want to make Youtube videos, I should just use my digital camera and take pictures of the screen? (then you run into quality/noise issues though).

 

Any advice?

[+Cafeman]

I think I accidentally just answered my own question!

 

I just used the Microsoft RLE compression at 100%. The file size is much smaller and I can't see much if any difference in quality.

 

I just created a 50 second AVI which is 21 megs. This is again at the smaller resolution of 336x240.

[+Cafeman]

Here is how the low-res version (336x240) of an Atari800win session appears after uploaded to youtube - it looks fuzzier than when I see it on my own PC --

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isx_kF6N_kg

 

 

Here is the disney street band avi by way of comparison -- it is (320x240) originally:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Reha-SlLWk8

 

Next I'll upload a higher res version AVI from Atari800win and see how it compares to those above:

[+Cafeman]

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Cafeman2#play/uploads/0/tUHUthDoaVk

 

It doesn't come up with a search, but the higher res AVI is on Youtube. Yep, it does look better so that's what I'll use from now on with any Atari800Win vids.

[+Cafeman]

Here is how my gameplay footage appears after being run first thru Windows Movie Maker and then Youtube:

 

Anyway, my first gameplay movie, and again its about Koffi: Yellow Kopter, as I'm most familiar with my own game!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yloXjxWelVY

Edited August 29, 2009 by Cafeman

[Shannon]

I only glanced at the first and it seemed good enough to me. Too bad I didn't know this about doing movies earlier (I used uncompress AVI) which limited my record time.

 

But from now on I'll probably record on my DVD recorder and atarixlbox with the NTSC filter to get the proper colors...

[+Cafeman]

I've seen people post on AA in confusion, trying to get the video to work, so thats why I decided to post all this.

 

Doesn't Atarixlbox (being an emulator for Xbox I assume) also have the incorrect colors, as all 5200 emulators seem to?

[Shannon]

Well I dunno if you've been following Kr0tki's progress with getting a more accurate palette or his work on an NTSC filter.. But I've implemented them both into atarixlbox and the NTSC filter does an excellent job of reproducing artifact colors. I've even hooked up my XEG and compared because I didn't believe it on a couple of games.

 

I still need to try both on Koffi and see how the colors look with his NTSC filter. Although I can't remember if the Koffi demo is on the 5200 multicart that I have. I wonder what burst phase the 5200 used, or which Atari it was comparable to. Atari computers had like 4 different burst phases that affected artifacting..

[+Cafeman]

I am unfamiliar with burst phase, as a term.

 

If you test Koffi, on emulators the rain appears green, and the fire appears purple. The correct colors are blue and red. However, on the ground underneath the evergreen trees in the "Coniferous Forest Stage", I am using staggered pixels and taking advantage of artifacting on some of the color settings for this stage - I used a color debug mode on a real system to choose the final colors of Koffi, and was surprised at how nicely the colors could appear on the real hardware, as opposed to on Atari800win.

 

As far as artifacting, for the most part I don't like it anyway. One really bad example in the bright 1-pixel border between land and the river, in River Raid. It just stands out and doesn't look good. I always thought this kind of artifacting was caused from the RF connection.

[Shannon]

Here ya go... I didn't realize you released a disk version of Koffi for the 8-bits. So I loaded it up in Atarixlbox and tooks some snappies.

 

The first snappy is with the NTSC filter on at 10% scanlines..

 

The second is after I loaded it on my XEG and after comparing screens adjusted the saturation and brightness a little to try to get it to match (I think my XEG displays a little darker than usual on my HDTV). Plus it was a little hard comparing since the TV does not switch between display inputs very quickly...

 

Hopefully I'm not mis-using/representing Kr0tki's palette controls...

[Kr0tki]

Kr0tki's progress with getting a more accurate palette or his work on an NTSC filter

I haven't worked on the NTSC filter at all; I've only adjusted the palette generation.

 

I wonder what burst phase the 5200 used, or which Atari it was comparable to.

Fire up the 5200 version of Cholplifter in Atarixlbox and adjust the burst phase to make the US flag look good.

 

However, Koffi does not use atrifacting much, so the difference won't really be noticeable.

 

The second is after I loaded it on my XEG and after comparing screens adjusted the saturation and brightness a little to try to get it to match (I think my XEG displays a little darker than usual on my HDTV).

Seems that the raindrops are still green in the emulator. Are they green on your real machine? Can you post a screenshot from the real machine?

Edited August 30, 2009 by Kr0tki

[Kr0tki]

If you test Koffi, on emulators the rain appears green, and the fire appears purple. The correct colors are blue and red.

I've downloaded Koffi from the AtariAge's 5200 section, run the "Koloring book" mode and checked that you have used the colours $b4 and $b8 for the raindrops; that is, hue 11. Hue 11 in the GTIA specification is named "Green-Blue". So if your 5200 system displays hue 11 as a clear blue, then it is actually incorrect, and your unit has to be adjusted.

[+Cafeman]

I've downloaded Koffi from the AtariAge's 5200 section, run the "Koloring book" mode and checked that you have used the colours $b4 and $b8 for the raindrops; that is, hue 11. Hue 11 in the GTIA specification is named "Green-Blue". So if your 5200 system displays hue 11 as a clear blue, then it is actually incorrect, and your unit has to be adjusted.

 

It appears predominately a blue-ish hue on my 5200's. On Atari800win, it appears GREEN. The red fire appears purple on emulators. Anyway,based on the above picture running in AtariXLbox - that palette looks pretty much correct.

 

I picked $b4 and $b8 by sight, back in the day - these colors looked the best , to me. I think Koffi's Eyes and details are also the same color as one of the raindrops, and that played into my decision too. Pretty cool work you've done nonetheless - is it possible for Atari800win to use your hues? Hue correct is LONG overdue in these 5200/A8 emulators.

[Kr0tki]

It appears predominately a blue-ish hue on my 5200's. On Atari800win, it appears GREEN. The red fire appears purple on emulators. Anyway,based on the above picture running in AtariXLbox - that palette looks pretty much correct.

The raindrops turn out green on that picture, however. Hue 11 also appears green on all NTSC Atari XLs/XEs I've seen (look at screenshots in this thread).

So it seems that:

- you have adjusted the game's colours using a 5200 unit that has slightly misadjusted palette, according to the GTIA spec,

- then you released the game, assuming that your 5200 shows correct colours (which might had been wrong) while the emulator does not (which was correct).

 

I don't want to point mistakes, I might be wrong in your case; it's just a funny observation that sometimes the reason of the colours being way off in a game is not a user's machine, but the programmer's. It makes me wonder how many times it happened back in the day, that a programmer spent hours of work to make the colours look just right, only to discover later, thast his work was futile.

 

 

Pretty cool work you've done nonetheless - is it possible for Atari800win to use your hues? Hue correct is LONG overdue in these 5200/A8 emulators.

 

For now, forget about Atari800WinPLus and just use the SDL version of Atari800. The Windows port was never updated regularly together with the emulator's core, so when the core was being updated and rewritten, the WinPLus stayed more and more behind, up to the point of it being very diffcult to update it anymore. Personally, I think that a number of engineering mistakes (like adding new bells and whistles to the Windows port and not to the Atari800 kernel, and introducing a lot of conditional compilation which made the Atari800 source a mess) also contributes to the problem. So, I'd rather be improving the kernel, trying to make the sources maintainable, before touching anything concerning the WinPLus.

 

That said, Atari800 already supports the difference between NTSC and PAL colours for over a year; the NTSC filter also works fine. None of my adjustments are in the kernel yet, but the emulator already produces a rather good (but slightly off) representation of real palettes. So, give it a try, if you don't mind sacrificing the comfortable Windows UI.

Edited August 31, 2009 by Kr0tki

[Shannon]

There probably is a way to modify Atari800winPlus to use the new palette code and NTSC filter.... Because I had to do so for atarixlbox. But I wouldn't count on anybody doing it anytime soon. No one seems to be too interested in messing with the code and it would require changes to the "interface" half of Atari800winplus which I am unfamiliar with.