just want to inform you about something thats going on at atari-age. phaeron / Avery Lee, well known for creating Virtual Dub and Altirra has achieved playback of 256 colour videos with 6.5 bit (15.7khz) audio and incredible 60 frames per second. The phenomenal thing: It works on a real Atari with 64k RAM and SIDE or SIDE2 (and CF card).
Read more about it, watch the movies and download the software (sources) here: ->link<-
Furthermore I have written a small private mail to Avery to make sure it really works on an A8 (and not only on the emulator):
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"Hello Avery,
will the impressive videos also work with a real Atari XL/XE with 64k RAM and SIDE cart (with CF inside) ?!? I do have several 800XL computers (two with 64k RAM, one with 576k RAM and four with U1MB/1088k RAM) and one SIDE cart, what else would I need to get this working on my Ataris as you did...?!?
Or is it more or less an emulation trick (changing the behaviour of Antic, which is not possible on a real A8)...?!? I would like to test it with my A8 equipment...
- do you have a driver available for the A8 to make this work ? (a driver that works on the A8, not on the PC) - what resolution is required for the pictures/frames (or the whole video)? non-flicker 80x96 pixels resolution (Gr. 9+11) or some interlaced / flicker 80x192 pixel resolution or what ? - what quality or resolution is required for the audio ? 2 bit, 4 bit or 8bit with 15khz or... ?
I am very impressed with the videos you have shown. Now I am hoping that I can do this on my A8... Greetings, Andreas Koch. "
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And this is what Avery answered:
"You just need a SIDE or SIDE 2 cart on an NTSC Atari that's stable, and a fast enough CompactFlash card. The technique can be used in PAL, but the interleaving and frame rate would have to be modified. And yes, it does work on real hardware (at least, on mine).
Video resolution is 64x91 at 59.9227 fps with mixed Gr.9/11, and audio format is 15.7KHz at 8-bit precision. I'll post more details in the thread, along with the multiplexer that I forgot to include in the .zip. "
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As said before, the downloads with sources are available in the forum (link above). Hopefully someone can patch or modify the software for PAL systems (and maybe program some conversion tool on the PC and an automatic-video-player on the A8). While 60fps is great, I guess PAL tv works with only 25fps and NTSC with 30 fps, so maybe by lowering the framerate one can make the graphic resolution a bit higher. (Maybe one could also use other gfx formats than 9+11, like e.g. Gr. 15 PAL blending RAW/MAX mode to achieve up to 160x200 pixels resolution with 16 or more colours or even Gr.8 HR/HR2/etc. with up to 320x200 pixels resolution and up to 8 colours)...
It would be cool if more such A8 videos could be presented and more software would get available for the mode (or similar modes) Avery has achieved...
I wonder why people still doubt(ed) about that. The stock Atari is able to handle approx. 20MB per second. The good part is that PHAERON put some long waiting stuff into reality.
Sadly, many of those "real facts threads" got ripped by that Commodore contingent at Atariage....
